Number two hundred and three in a series…
Recommended Reading
James Surowiecki analyzes the budget proposal that Rep. Paul Ryan is pushing. Basically it comes down to let's keep the military ready to go to war with Russia and/or anyone else, spend something (but not enough) on the Social Safety Net and shut everything else down. It's never going to happen but the fact that this man is taken seriously by some is chilling.
Additional Info
Keith Scott, the fine voice actor (and historian of that art form) informs me that the Mickey Mouse's Birthday Party record featured as Today's Video Link was recorded at the Capitol Records Studio on April 8 and 9, 1953 — the latter date being 59 years ago today, as it turns out — and the record was released on August 3 of that year. Keith would know. I suspect the confusion over its release date flows from the fact that it was originally a 78 rpm record but a 45 was released later.
He also informs me that Dave Barry, Dorothy Lloyd and Mexican actor-singer Nestor Amaral were in the cast. I assume Amaral did the singing voice of Jose Carioca but the speaking voice was obviously provided by Stan Freberg. Señor Amaral was a supporting player in one of the two features Disney did with Jose, The Three Caballeros, but he did not do Jose's voice in either. José Oliveira did.
Dave Barry, I should have guessed, did the voice of the goldfish. He was one of the unknown voices in Warner Brothers cartoons…usually the guy who did Bogart when he turned up in something. He did Elmer Fudd in one cartoon (Pre-Hysterical Hare) and actually played Bugs Bunny in one Capitol kids' record. His main line of work was as a very popular stand-up comedian who was featured often on Ed Sullivan's program and all the top variety shows of the fifties and into the sixties. He was very good and probably would have done a lot more cartoons (he told me) if he wasn't out of town so much performing on the road.
But the main thing to note about this whole record is this: If you walked into any record/CD company (whatever they call them these days) and said, "Hi, I'd like to produce an audio story for kids. I'll need a full orchestra, a sound effects man, six or seven singers and maybe ten top voice actors and I'll need most of them for two days," what do you think the odds would be of not getting catapulted to the pavement within seconds? Yet that's how they did these.
Let's See If Thomas Wolfe Was Right…
In this item, I will make frequent reference to the annual event in San Diego we all know as the Comic-Con International. Before it was called that, it had a number of different names and to simplify matters, I'm going to ignore them and just refer to it as Comic-Con.
It changed in other ways over the years, as well. The first one in 1970 was in the basement of the U.S. Grant Hotel. The second one was on the campus of the University of California at San Diego. The third one was at the El Cortez Hotel and the fourth one was at a Sheraton out on Harbor Island. Then Comic-Con went back to the El Cortez for six years before shifting to the city Convention Center (the old one) for two years, then back to the El Cortez for one, then back to the Convention Center for nine more years. In 1991, the new Convention Center was completed and Comic-Con moved in there, occupying (as I recall) about a third of it that year. At this point, attendance had climbed to a staggering 15,000 attendees. That was quite an increase from the years at the El Cortez when the con seemed huge with 4000-5000 people showing up.
Last year, as a point of reference, it had somewhere around 130,000 folks on the premises at one time or another over its four days. Hall H, where they do the big movie-oriented programs, always has around 6,500 people in it — or more than used to attend the entire convention.
But it's really not one convention. It's several occurring simultaneously in one building. Or at least I find that it helps to think of it that way. It's like a big buffet where you have to go around and help yourself and maybe you want to avoid the salad bar and the display of Mexican food and focus on the stuff you like. There's a full-sized Videogaming Convention going on in that hall and I largely avoid it as surely as I avoid bean burritos. And though I have been attending that con at that convention center for 21 years and having a great time, I not only have never set foot in Hall H, I'm not entirely sure where it is. I know which end of the building it's on and I've seen the lines waiting to get in but that's about it.
You can not only find a Videogaming Convention there, you can find a convention that's all about current animation or one that's all about forthcoming movies. You can pick and choose events to create a con about Anime or one about collecting original art. There's a cosplay convention and a Small Press convention and there's even — I know it's hard to believe — one about comic books. There's actually a pretty good convention there about comic books…the paper kind, not to be confused with the kind that appears on movie screens.
What isn't in there? A smaller, intimate convention where most attendees know most other attendees…or at least the subject matter and programming are sufficiently narrow that we all feel a common interest with one another. That's a lament that I sometimes hear: Comic-Con, some say, was better when it was just 3000 of us hanging at the El Cortez. Those cons were less like industry trade shows and more like a big, three-day party and the biggest "star" on the premises wasn't some Hollywood flavor-of-the-month who was doing a movie playing a character Jack Kirby had designed. The biggest star at those El Cortez cons was Jack Kirby.
You know, the comic book artist.
I loved those cons. I love the current ones too and I don't fault these cons for not being those cons. I can and do go to other cons from time to time and feel a lot of what I felt about the days when a con in San Diego felt more intimate…if "intimate" can even be applied to a gathering of thousands. They haven't asked me back to the Mid-Ohio Con in Columbus (now called Wizard World Ohio) lately but that felt a lot like a vintage San Diego Con the last few times I was there. So has the Super Con (now called the Big Wow! ComicFest) in San Jose I'm attending next month.
And still later this year, I'm going to be the Fan Guest of Honor — and I'm really proud of the "Fan" part — at the San Diego Comic Fest 2012, which will be held in that town October 19-21.
Let me make the point clearly that while this event is organized by several folks who were responsible for starting the Comic-Con International decades ago or working on it, it is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by that entity. It is, in fact, trying to carve out its own identity not as a competitor but as a small, loving attempt to recapture that feel of a smaller convention where everyone's largely interested in comics and not what we used to call "mainstream media" before "comic book movies" made $100 million-plus.
There will not be 130,000 people there. There won't be a tenth of that number. There will be few if any movie stars or videogames. If you've always wanted to attend one of the big Comic-Cons, this is not the one you want to attend. This is one that aspires to be like the ones back at the El Cortez. (They'd be holding it there but for the fact that the El Cortez is no longer a hotel. It's now a mixed-use facility — condominiums, apartments and retail outlets.)
I'm looking forward to it. If you harken back to the days at the El Cortez, you'll probably look forward to it, too. Over the next few months, I'm going to post some convention memories here that may explain just why we're looking forward to it. In the meantime, you can do two other things you can't do at Comic-Con International. You can order a membership and you can reserve a hotel room that's in the same zip code as the convention. Check out the convention website.
Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy
Number two hundred and two in a series…
Recently Tweeted by me
- My mother turned 90 today and I gave her a nice gift: The day off from doing my laundry.
- Just read the 800th article saying the next primary is "make or break" for Santorum. Just like the one before and the one before…
- Gingrich admits his campaign is hopelessly in debt; vows stay in race and to keep making speeches about how Democrats spend too much.
Today's Video Link
Here's a little treasure…one of the lavishly-produced kids' records done by Capitol Records. It's Mickey Mouse's Birthday Party and it came with a full-color booklet that you followed along as you played the record. The cast is rather amazing, especially when you find out who it is doing the voice of Mickey.
It's Stan Freberg. Stan did a lot of voices on Capitol's childrens' records but I believe this was the only time he did Mickey. Usually, a Mr. Walt Disney played Mickey and when he got tired of doing it, he handed the job over to Jimmy MacDonald, who was mainly a sound effects engineer. In fact, Jimmy handled sound effects on this record and did some other voices but Freberg played Mickey, reportedly at Walt's request.
Exactly when this record was produced is the subject of some argument among the kind of folks who'd argue about this kind of thing. Some say 1953, some say 1954 and some say 1955. I asked Stan and he wasn't sure. Whenever it was, it was after he was already a major creator of comedy records for Capitol. He did "John and Marsha" in 1951. In addition to voicing The Mouse, Stan further demonstrates his great versatility in the roles of Doc, Sneezy, maybe another dwarf or two, Dumbo (!), Br'er Fox, Joe Carioca (speaking, not singing), The Crocodile, The White Rabbit, The Mad Hatter…and hey, how about that great Jerry Colonna impression as The March Hare?
Clarence Nash did the voice of Donald Duck. Vance "Pinto" Colvig played Goofy, Practical Pig, Grumpy and he probably provided the sounds of Pluto. June Foray played Snow White, Thumper, Pinocchio, Peter Pan and Alice. Nick Stewart, who originated the role in Song of the South was Br'er Bear and I think that's Johnny Lee reprising his part as Br'er Rabbit. Jimmy MacDonald played Gus Gus and Jaq.
A few of the other voices, I'm not sure about…and I imagine some of the one-line parts are studio singers. It's a great cast but they were fibbing in part to advertise this as featuring "The original voices of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and other famous Disney characters." Neither Stan nor June did any of those voices in the movies.
Give a listen and don't worry about turning any pages when Donald commands. The video will handle that for you…
Comic-Con Blues
A couple of folks have written me about what I wrote about Comic-Con International here recently. Some seemed to think I said that everything that has changed about it has changed for the better. No, I didn't say that nor do I think that. I just think that there's much to enjoy within the new stuff.
I received a couple of messages that said something to the effect that two things have unquestionably changed for the worse: The prices and the fact that it's difficult to get admission. The con sells out so quickly each year that longtime attendees sometimes find themselves shut out. They're right that neither of these is for the better.
The price of a badge has skyrocketed, true. And I could point out that the price of almost everything has skyrocketed but that would, I know, be small comfort. All I can say there is that the con is non-profit and that they spend a lot of money on programming and other benevolent purposes. It's not like the operators are pocketing vast fortunes. If a for-profit convention was turning away at least 100,000 people each year, I suspect they'd figure they could double or even triple the cost and still fill the hall.
That many folks can't get in at any price is troubling and I don't think there's any solution. I can write a longer post about this some day but after hearing all these rumors about the con moving to Anaheim or the con moving to L.A. or Vegas and learning many upsides and downsides, I'm convinced none of those locales are viable.
Meanwhile, the San Diego facility is expanding in size and will soon be able to accommodate more bodies. Alas, I sense the number of bodies that wish to attend is expanding at an even greater rate. If anyone has a solution other than to hold the con outside and just let it stretch to Tijuana, I'm sure the convention committee would be glad to entertain it.
In the meantime, watch this space over the next few days for some posts about and around this topic.
Mr. Chuckles
Our pal Chuck McCann has a nice honor. He's going to be the Grand Marshal of the annual Doo Dah Parade, which is scheduled for April 14 this year in Ocean City, New Jersey. People love Chuck everywhere but those who grew up where they could watch his kids' show on New York TV in the sixties really love him. Here's some press coverage of this honor and my thanks to Richard Gersh, who told me about it.
But that's not what I really wanted to tell you about Chuck. What I really wanted to tell you is that he's just set up the best website on the Internet — better than this one even because his is full of clips of Chuck McCann. It's Chuck McCann's "Let's Have Fun" Club and you definitely want to join this…that is unless you're one of those weirdos who doesn't like having fun. Just go. Sign up. Browse around. And you'll see why you want to be there.
Great, Scott!
Last evening, a bunch of us went up to Hollywood to see the first of six presentations of the Oddball Comics Show by my longtime buddy Scott Shaw! Scott has amassed a great collection of comic books that cause you to stare and wonder, "What the hell were they thinking?" Some are hilarious even without the scathing commentary Scott provides.
He's done this for years at comic book conventions, often to packed houses that love every minute. You have five more chances to see him do it, Saturday nights at 8 PM at the Oh My Ribs! comedy theater up on Santa Monica Boulevard near Cahuenga. Each week, he also has a special guest to provide some additional play-by-play and last night, it was me. Next week, it'll be animation authority Jerry Beck and Scott is also promising some of his racier covers.
The theater is not large so you might want to reserve seats now. I promise you will laugh and laugh a lot.
P.S. In case you can't read the word balloons on that Betty and Me cover on your monitor, she's saying, "Archie, did you have any trouble rescuing me?" And he's saying, "I sure did, Betty! I had to beat off three other guys!" Like I said: What the hell were they thinking?
Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy
Number two hundred and one in a series…
Recommended Reading
Al Franken, whose name I don't believe I've read anywhere in the news for months now, has a funny fund-raising letter out. That's great, Al, but what are you doing to advance all those worthy goals we've heard from you?
An Easter Memory
Once upon a time, the May Company was the sacred place to shop in Los Angeles — especially the formidable outlet at the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax. It marked the west end of a strip of Wilshire full of department stores and that strip was known as the Miracle Mile. It's still called the Miracle Mile even though there isn't a single department store left there. Orbach's is gone. Harris & Frank is gone. Desmond's is gone. Mullen & Bluett is gone and so on. The May Company's lovely building is still there but inside it now is some sort of off-shoot of the L.A. County Museum of Art which is next door.
This memory takes place back when it was still the May Company, inside and out. For two or three years running, they did a special Easter promotion involving Bugs Bunny. Ads would appear giving a special phone number that kids could call to "talk to Bugs Bunny." Well, naturally, I had to call. I think I was six or seven the first time this happened but I knew how to dial a phone. And note that I said "dial," as in running one's finger around on one of these:
So I dialed and got a busy signal. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Isn't "cut-and-paste" wonderful? Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again.
And finally, it rang. And Bugs picked up.
Well, it wasn't Bugs, of course. Even I knew then it was Mel Blanc. But it also wasn't Mel Blanc. It was the recorded voice of Mel Blanc. But even that was exciting. In later years, it would be no big deal to call some number and hear a recorded announcement. Heck, there would be times when it would be a novelty to dial a number — any number — and not get a recorded announcement. But at the time, this kind of thing was kinda rare…and the fact that it was a cartoon character was very special.
I remember the first thing he said. It was, you may be surprised to hear, "What's up, doc?" And I remember the last thing he said. It was an admonition that I should hang up now so that someone else could get through. In-between, there was a pitch to get my parents to take me to the May Company at Wilshire and Fairfax where Bugs would have a special gift for me and a special, personal message. Well, you can guess where we were going…the next day, in fact. This was a few days before Easter.
That night, I was lying wide awake in bed, as I often did. I didn't sleep much as a kid. I would lie there half the night it seemed, making up incredible stories involving cartoons and characters I saw on TV or read in comic books. They were all about my phone buddy Bugs Bunny that night and I suddenly got the idea that I'd like to hear his message again…and also, I was curious. Was there just the one message or were there several and they rotated? And what would have happened if I hadn't hung up immediately? Would the message have repeated? Would Bugs have said something else?
I checked the clock by my bed at it said it was 4:10 in the morning. I had a hunch the phone might not be quite as busy at 4:10 in the morning.
So as not to awake my parents, I crept carefully out to the kitchen, which is where our only phone was. From all that dialing earlier, I had the number memorized so I called, worrying slightly that Bugs would answer and say angrily, "Hey, didn't you call earlier, kid?" Or maybe, "What the big idea, waking me up at this hour?"
I got a busy signal. At 4-friggin'-11 in the morning. Someone else obviously had the same idea.
I put some peanut butter on a cracker, ate it and then dialed again. This time, I got through and heard the exact same message I'd heard earlier. At the end, when Bugs said to hang up so someone else could call, I risked him getting mad at me and didn't. And I heard…absolutely nothing. After about a minute, I hung up and went back to bed.
The next day, we went to the May Company. Near the center of the top floor, there was a huge display with big cut-outs of Bugs and Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig and other Warner Brothers characters. The phone message had made it sound like I could actually meet Bugs Bunny there and while I knew that wasn't possible, I figured there'd be something like a guy in a Bugs Bunny suit or a big robot or — and I knew this was a longshot but you tend to dream at that age — maybe they'd have Mel Blanc there.
They didn't. There were two cute young girls dressed in bunny ears and tails. This was a year or two before the Playboy Clubs opened with waitresses in bunny ears and tails and I always wondered if Hugh Hefner or someone working for him drew any inspiration from Bugs' helpers at the May Company. Probably not but you never know.
One gave me a little Bugs Bunny coloring book with a bag of crayons and candy attached. The other was in charge of a telephone on a pedestal. She held out the receiver for me and I took it and heard another message Mel Blanc had recorded. It was something about how he was sorry he was so busy he couldn't be there in person but you know, "us rabbits" are pretty busy just before Easter, painting eggs and figuring out where to hide 'em. He told me to be a good little kid and eat all my carrots and to make sure his helpers gave me his special Easter gift. And then he hung up on me and his assistant yanked the receiver from my grasp.
I didn't feel cheated by this since I'd known going in I wasn't going to really meet Bugs Bunny. I remember being rather thrilled to have gotten that close to him. And then my parents went shopping.
That's about everything I remember about the Bugs Bunny promotion. I'm going to guess they did it the first time in 1958 or 1959 when I was six or seven. If I had to bet, I'd bet the latter. I know they did it at least one following year, maybe two. Same ad in the paper, same message on the phone. We only went to the May Company in response that one time, presuming that since the phone message was the same, the pay-off when you got to the store would be the same. In 1961 or so, they did the same deal with Fred Flintstone, even though, having lived before Christ, his connection to Easter was at best tenuous. A recording by his voice Alan Reed was on the phone and when you went to the May Company, they had two cute ladies in ratty cave girl outfits filling the same function as the bunnies.
What they did have, I think in lieu of a phone message, was a robotic Fred Flintstone. It was a very good likeness about five feet high. His mouth opened and closed, not particularly in sync with a constantly repeating voice recording — Fred welcoming us to the May Company and wishing us Happy Easter. His right arm went up and down. My mother took a photo of me next to him but, damn it, the pictures didn't come out. A day or two later, they trucked the Robot Fred over to the local ABC studios and I saw it "perform" on the morning cartoon show hosted by Chucko the Birthday Clown. The voice didn't work and the moving arm kept stopping and starting, and Chucko (who was a pretty funny guy) kept warning Fred that if he didn't talk, ABC would cancel his prime-time show. I assume that robot is long since gone but I'd give about a year's pay to have it in my living room.
This has been an Easter Memory…and just about the only one this Jewish kid has from his childhood.
Today's Video Link
Two funny friends of mine, Bill Kirchenbauer and Brad Slaight, are giving voice to The Diabetes Duo, Captain Glucose and Meter Boy. Together, the two super-heroes promote Diabetes Awareness…a good and important thing. (The three of us share a mutual friend who lost his feet and later his life because he was Diabetic and didn't take better care of himself.) This message deserves to be spread to a wider audience and we're hoping someone who can make that happen will pick this project up and help the guys take it to the next level. Any producers who read this weblog have a venue in mind? How about comic book publishers?
Meanwhile…in the latest installment, Captain Glucose and Meter Boy appear on a popular late night talk show. That's Marcel Forestieri as the host and here's another clip of him at work.
From the E-Mailbag…
Someone who signs his name "G.E." and is presumably not General Electric, writes about Craig Ferguson getting a bigger studio…
I agree the larger space never made a TV show better. But I think it's to prep him for taking over at 11:30 when Dave retires in 2014 (he'll be 67). So if network TV still exists in its current form in 2014, I think you're looking at Craig Ferguson vs. Jimmy Fallon at 11:30. The networks may or may not decide to keep programming the 12:30 hour. And Dave and Jay will have disappeared as suddenly as Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw.
I may be wrong but I don't see either Ferguson or Fallon as inevitable at 11:30. Some people act like there's some grand tradition in late night of the 12:30 host moving up an hour when the 11:30 guy departs. That's happened exactly once and it was a disaster.
Ferguson reportedly has a contract that guarantees him 11:30 on CBS if Letterman drops dead or something. I find it hard to believe that the network would commit to him in that time slot far in the future. One of the key things that went wrong in the Jay/Conan substitution was that NBC projected that during the five years before Conan took over, Leno's ratings at 11:30 would atrophy and Conan's at 12:30 would remain high. Then the opposite happened.
Do we think CBS is prepared to risk making the same mistake? They may well have Ferguson in mind to succeed Dave but I somehow think they'll leave other avenues open. Maybe Craig has a deal to move into that slot but the contract has a lot of ifs and escapes in case, say, his ratings drop just when Jon Stewart is suddenly a free agent.
When Dave Letterman will retire is a decision that will probably be made wholly by Dave Letterman and it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't know when that might be…or if he decides, then changes his mind, then decides, then changes his mind, etc. The answer may hinge on him answering the question, "What do you do with the rest of your life after you give up doing the only thing you ever wanted to do?" A lot of folks close to Mr. Carson thought it was not good for him to, in effect, have nothing to do all day once he gave up The Tonight Show.
Even if that wasn't really the case with Johnny, I'm inclined to think Letterman won't make that mistake. Is he ready to abandon his little family (staff) and the audiences in New York and retire to that ranch in Montana? His entire career, Dave's shown close to zero interest in appearing on anyone else's program. He'll do Oprah or he went on with Regis a few times in exchange for them visiting him…but even there, I think the formula was that Regis had to do Dave's show 25 times to get one return appearance from Dave. If Letterman finds some other way to remain active, he might set an abdication date. Or if the show starts to plunge and he feels he's despoiling his legacy and/or looking like a has-been who doesn't know when get off the stage, he might retire. I don't know about the former but I don't see the latter happening in the next two or three years.
I also don't see Leno leaving that soon. Then again, his network seems to like to get rid of him when he's in first place so anything can happen. My guess is Fallon would only be one option to take over for him and some pretty high-powered names would also be in contention. Could NBC possibly be thinking of moving their 12:30 guy to 11:30? I mean, we saw how well that worked just three years ago.