Twitter has been doing so badly since it was acquired by Elon Musk that it's now gone into hiding, reportedly working under the name "X."  If I were doing that poorly, I'd start signing my work that way too.  I still check in on it now and then.  Enough people who post interesting things are still posting interesting things on it but I haven't put a message on there since 1/6/23.

I recently opened an account on Bluesky, which strives to be a quieter, less inflammatory place for social messaging.  So far it seems to be that but I must admit to having some trouble with the way it works.  When someone reposts a message by someone else, it doesn't identify who the original author was.  And I frequently am shown replies to messages but cannot locate the message to which that reply is replying.

I'll give it another few weeks to see if they improve the software or I get the hang of it.  If you're a member there, you can follow me there.  I'm @evanier.bsky.social but I haven't decided yet if I'm going to stick around.  If you're not a member there, you need an invite code to join but I don't have any to give out yet.

Comedian John Regis died last night at the age of 94. He'd been living for some time at the L.A. Veterans Home and he recently took a bad fall there. I'm told John had a very distinguished military career — he was in the Air Force for nine years — but I never heard him talk about it. He did however have an endless stash of anecdotes about performing in dives, dumps and Playboy Clubs. I never saw him work but he had a rep as a guy who could sing, dance, tell jokes, play an array of musical instruments and so on. Whatever it took to please a crowd.

John was one of those performers who for a long time just worked wherever he could — clubs, cruises, Vegas, industrial gigs, wherever. I don't think he got on TV very often but a lot of folks can make a decent living without that. He did sometimes talk about how his income plunged as those Playboy Clubs closed. I think that's where I first saw his name: In ads for a Playboy Club. He said that for a long time, he just went from one to another, working eventually at every one of them.

I knew him mainly from Yarmy's Army, the social group for comedians, comedy writers and other funny people. The last few times I saw him at meetings, maybe five or six years ago, he had some sort of medical shuttle service bring him over from the Veterans Home and then take him back there after he shared food and jokes with a lot of his friends. Nice man.

Sergio is fine. Just picking up a few things that fell over.

Fae Desmond has announced her retirement as Executive Director of Comic-Con International in San Diego Comic Convention. As long as I can remember — and I can remember pretty far back — Fae has been the person at or near the tippy-top of that organization which also runs WonderCon in Anaheim and a few other events. She started as everyone did in the con's early days as a volunteer and was the first such person to transition to a paid position and a longtime job.

Employees at companies may come and go but often the continuity of one or two people provides the continuity of certain principles and working premises. I have found that Comic-Con — which some outsiders still don't understand is a non-profit enterprise unlike most other conventions — is very benevolent and very well-run and Fae's steady hand has been a major reason for all that benevolence and competence.

This sweet lady has been there 47 years and while she (of course) is entitled to retirement, I am sure there will be times when both staff and attendees will miss her a lot. Read what former Director of Programming and Director of Publications Gary Sassaman has to say about her.

Today is the anniversary of the day in 1977 when the world lost Groucho Marx. Shelly Goldstein and I were talking today about how his passing didn't get the attention it deserved, coming only three days after the death of Elvis Presley. I remember a hastily-assembled special on ABC hosted by Dick Cavett…and that was about it. Not nearly enough reverence was shown for a man who many of us felt was as important to American culture as Elvis…and maybe more so.

Here's a Groucho appearance you may not have seen. It came late in his career but before the strokes and other ailments that affected his performing and made his last few times in front of audiences rather sad. It's an episode of The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine, a little-known TV series produced in the early seventies as some sort of co-production of American and British talent. Larry Gelbart, who was then living in the U.K., was one of its producers.

Aired briefly on ABC, it looked a little like Monty Python's Flying Circus because of animation inserts made by Terry Gilliam, but portions of it looked like The Dean Martin Show because that program's producer Greg Garrison, who I mentioned in the previous post here, took control of The Comedy Machine at some point. He did serious editing on the shows, including but not limited to cutting it from an hour to a half-hour and adding in segments with stand-up comedians that were taped for Dean's show on NBC.

Mr. Feldman was, as you might imagine, very unhappy at what was done and at the way ABC dumped the series so quickly. I believe what we have here is an episode as aired on British television — one on which Mr. Garrison never laid a finger. It's missing the music and dance numbers but those were trimmed out by the gent who posted it to YouTube.

I know more about this series but not a lot more. What I do know, I posted here some time ago. Now I'm just going to introduce this episode which has several segments in it with Groucho.

In case you don't stay around for the end credits, they say this episode was written by Chris Allen, Rudy DeLuca, Marty Feldman, Larry Gelbart, Barry Levinson and Spike Milligan, with additional material by John Cleese and Graham Chapman. I believe the Cleese and Chapman credits are because the series reused material from earlier shows they'd done with Feldman. Either way, that's a pretty impressive writing staff…and Milligan was in the show, as well.

For some time now, we've heard that the original uncut episodes were going to be released as a DVD set in the U.K. but I don't believe that's happened. So here is this episode which you can watch in full — or if you just want to see Groucho's spots, click here, here and here. I think I got them all…

The last few days, it seemed like Trump was trying to get some judge to throw him in jail so he'd have an excuse for not showing up for the Republican debate. In truth, he seems to have agreed to do some sort of show with Tucker Carlson opposite the debate. Me, I think he'd be better off in jail but it's a close call.

William Saletan summarizes some of the revelations of the Georgia Indictment. My, there sure was a lot of lying going on.

Donald Trump and his attorneys have lost a staggering number of challenges and motions and attempts to change the dynamics and/or timing of all the trials they're facing. Still, I have friends who are going to panic if/when Trump and his motley crew of office temp lawyers win one battle even if it's like one out of a hundred.

I may not watch the debate. I have a feeling it's going to look like one of those old Dean Martin Roasts if all the jokes were written by Alex Jones. It's too bad Greg Garrison — who produced and directed Dean's show — is gone. We could have him direct the debate and put in lots of obvious edits and every so often, cut to the stock footage of LaWanda Page and Charlie Callas laughing uncontrollably. I have the feeling Ron DeSantis is studying the DVDs of those roasts and is copying down all the Orson Welles insults to use on Chris Christie.

And someone will do a line like, "Ron DeSantis beating Joe Biden? Are you kidding? Ron had his ass handed to him by Mickey Mouse!"

I keep hearing rumors that the Arclight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood will soon reopen. These appear to all be rumors, even though a couple came from folks who anyone would consider good sources. According to this article in The New York Times, it's still closed as it has been since The Pandemic shut down so many things in this world.

This theater was more or less built to show its debut attraction, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and it's where I first saw what I describe as my favorite movie. Since that first viewing there, I've seen the film many other places and many times at the Dome. It's a special experience to see it at the Dome and not just for me for nostalgic reasons. It kind of fits in there perfectly, reminding me of those theaters in Disneyland and other theme parks that were built to show just one thing. I've seen other movies there too.

I don't have much else to say about this. I just thought I'd bring you the news — which is that there's no news — and say for the umpteenth time that I hope the Arclight will reopen soon. It really was a great place to see any movie, not just my favorite.

My buddy Vince Waldron is the world's foremost expert on my favorite TV program, The Dick Van Dyke Show. On August 14, he posted some vital information on Facebook and with his permission, I'm quoting some of it here. The first season, the show had a different opening from the one most folks today remember. It involved still photos of the characters spilling out of a manila folder. I'll let Vince take it from here…

Today marks a little known but nonetheless significant anniversary in the history of The Dick Van Dyke Show, for it was on this date, August 14, in 1962 that director John Rich finally got around to filming a new opening credit sequence for the show's second season — a short live-action scene in which Rob stumbles over an ill-placed ottoman and falls flat on his back in the Petrie living room.

Actually, Dick and company also filmed the alternate version of the scene — in which Rob doesn't fall, but instead deftly sidesteps the ottoman — that same night, making this anniversary a double-header.

Both variations were filmed, rather quickly, as a kind of bonus assignment that the cast undertook immediately after filming the show's 32nd episode, "The Two Faces of Rob." That's why if you look closely at the opening credit sequence, you'll notice that Buddy, Sally, and Laura are wearing the same wardrobe they had on in their respective closing scenes in that episode.

Although Carl Reiner has said his intention was to randomly rotate the two original ottoman sequences at the start of the show to keep the audience guessing, in fact, the version where Rob trips over the ottoman appeared almost exclusively in the show's opening titles until well into the second season.

The tripping version of the opening first appeared on the season two opener, "Never Name a Duck," which debuted on September 26, 1962, and was then repeated at the top of the next seven consecutive episodes. As it happens, audiences didn't get their first glimpse of a more sure-footed Rob until the second variant that shows him sidestepping the ottoman appeared on episode #39, "The Night the Roof Fell In," which premiered on November 21, 1962 — almost two months after Rob took his first tumble over the family footrest.

Vince goes on to note that there was a third opening sequence filmed for the third season. It was shot on August 13, 1963, the same night they filmed "The Masterpiece," the episode in which Rob accidentally buys a painting by the great artist, "Artanis." In it, everyone was dressed a little nicer than in the first two versions and Rob again sidesteps the ottoman before he stumbles on his own.

This one first ran on "That's My Boy??" — the one in which Rob thinks they brought the wrong baby home from the hospital — which first aired on September 25, 1963. It was then used intermittently during the show's third season. For the fourth and fifth seasons, they went back to the two original openings, leaning heavily on the one in which Rob avoids the ottoman and doesn't fall.

My thanks to Vince for letting me post this here. If you love The Dick Van Dyke Show anywhere near as much as I do, you must have a copy of his wonderful volume, The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book It's a must-have for lovers of Rob, Laura, Buddy, Sally, Ritchie, Mel and even Alan.

Part 1 is still right here and Part 2 is still here and Part 3 is right where I put it (here) while Part 4 is over here it should come as no surprise to you to learn that Part 5 — that's right, I said Part 5 — can be found here. Oh — and below this line, you'll find Part 6, which I think at the moment is the last part but we'll see. Remember I warned you.

---

This part is about how I really learned to "do" Comic-Con. Mostly, it's about the many personal mistakes I made at comic book conventions of the seventies and into the eighties. For instance, it took me too long to realize that I didn't really like sitting behind a table for any length of time signing autographs and that I was under no obligation to do that. I somehow felt that I was.

I don't hate it. If my publisher thinks it'll help them sell books, okay, fine. If someone approaches me and asks me to sign a book I've worked on, sure, no charge…and if it leads to a friendly conversation, that's great. In a "Could I have your autograph?" situation, it too often does not. Being sometimes as dense as a certain wandering comic book character I work on, it took me a while to realize I didn't have to spend all day writing my name and sitting at a table, pen at the ready, to invite that.

I also didn't like selling anything. That's the business model for most folks in comics when they're guests at most conventions: They fly you in, give you a table and you're expected to put up a little display that announces your presence and then sit there for 3-4 days, selling books or scripts or sketches or just your signature. It works for most professionals — I'm not knocking it for others — but it's always given me an "I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing" feeling.

In a similar sense, I didn't like approaching a convention as a place to get work. I was sometimes offered projects at cons and I've established (or renewed) relationships with people who at some point — probably not at a convention — would offer me things to do. That's fine but I learned the slow way that I enjoy a convention a lot more when advancing my career is not among the uppermost topics on my mind. I also learned I didn't like having a responsibility to advance anyone else's…

With rare exceptions, I didn't like critiquing samples of art or scripts from people hoping to break into the business. I'm fine with offering advice in a general sense but I often don't feel qualified to tell someone, "You're not ready" or worse, "Give it up."  Just because I think someone lacks potential, that doesn't mean there aren't people out there with hiring power who will feel otherwise.  There are those getting steady work in comics these days who, if they'd shown me their work that publishers are now publishing, I would have told them one of those two things.

Again, it took me a while to realize I didn't have to do this and that I wasn't being a bad guy by declining. I think that revelation came to me one con when a "stage father" (in the sense that Gypsy Rose Lee's mom was a "stage mother") badgered me into evaluating sample pages drawn by his fifteen-year-old son. Both Father and Son were pretty angry that this did not lead to me dragging them over to whoever was qualified to hire the lad to draw Spider-Man so the kid could go home with Todd McFarlane's career.

And yes, I do remember the young artist's name and now, a good fifteen years after that non-recommendation, I have yet to see it on a comic book. I just Googled to make sure I hadn't missed one.

I know people for whom an important part of conventions is a social scene that involves the downing of alcohol. One guy told me this year that his big complaint about Comic-Con is that the "bar scene" is not as good as it is at some other cons.  For some reason, he faults the convention for this. I guess they should hold it near hotels where the bartenders know how to make a proper gin 'n' tonic.

Again, not something that interests me in the slightest. I like talking with people. In fact, it's one my favorite things in this plane of existence. But I don't drink and don't like being around excessive consumption. Several times in my life, I have had to depart social gatherings because one or more people whose company I enjoyed when they were sober would morph into one or more raving assholes after a few beverages…and yes, this also goes for recreational drugs. I'm not condemning something because I choose to steer clear of it…and it took me a while to learn how to avoid or escape such situations.

And as my knees, feet and the rest of me got older, I began to dislike just standing or walking around the exhibit hall for 3-4 days. There were times when I couldn't see a way to be there where I could encounter people I wanted to see while still being able to sit down. Not unless I let them give me a table…and if I took a table, I was expected to sit there and sign things or sell things and…well, you see the problem.

There were a few other realizations…and I hope I'm making it clear that I'm only talking about me deciding something wasn't right for me. Your mileage not only can vary, it probably will.

In the mid-to-late eighties, I began paring back my San Diego Comic-Cons. I went to every one but I'd arrive the second day and/or depart the morning of the last day. I also did that for other reasons, as well. In '88, I didn't stay for Sunday because Sunday was the big meeting in Los Angeles where the Writers Guild was voting to end what at this moment is still the longest strike in our history — a distinction it may lose in around seven weeks.

And then a few years later, I fell in love with Comic-Con all over again. I suddenly realized how to customize my con-going experience to suit my needs…which was a lot easier to do once I really understood what those needs were.

Wha' happened? Well, I had all the above revelations. Slowly but certainly, I realized I didn't have to sit behind a table, sell stuff, critique portfolios, hustle editors for work, be around drunks, stand for most of four days, etc. And two other things occurred, one being that it became easy to pre-plan my Comic-Con with the aid of the Internet. The con had set up a website that listed program items and which exhibitors were located where in the big hall along with other valuable info.

Before I got to San Diego, I could figure out where I wanted to be and when. I could ask myself a question I somehow hadn't felt I could answer before — a two-part question, actually: What do I want to do at this convention? And how do I find it?

I began making up a schedule. E-mail, which had become a very efficient way to communicate with people, could be used to set up breakfasts, lunches, dinners or even just "Hey, let's get together at 3:30" with folks I wanted to see. I'd list booths in the exhibit hall I wanted to visit and even figure out, via maps on the convention website, a plan to hit them in a sequence that would save me walking time. No more wandering that massive room aimlessly, hoping to stumble upon that which interested me.

My schedule, of course, included the two or three panels I might appear on at each Comic-Con. As their number began to expand, I finally realized what I enjoyed most about Comic-Con…hosting panels. That was the second thing that occurred and as I'm typing this, I realize that to explain how that happened, I'm going to have to take this series to a seventh (and final, I promise) part. Don't be shocked. I warned you this might happen.

And here, as expected, "Legal Eagle" Devin Stone explains the Georgia indictments. It's pretty scary stuff…

Part 1 can be found here while Part 2 can be found here, Part 3 can be found here and Part 4 can be found here. Part 5 starts right after the line below and I think Part 6 will be the last part of this series, at least for a while. But don't hold me to that.

---

If you missed this past Comic-Con in San Diego, you can visit it from afar via YouTube. There are dozens of "walk-thru" videos online now showing what folks experienced while attending this year's gala event. Here are three such videos and as you'll see, they're all pretty long.  Comic-Con is a vast environment peopled with unusual beings…

…and if you don't like these videos, you can easily find others. I've watched none of them in full but I've seen enough to know this: None of these even remotely resemble the Comic-Con I attended. I walked down some of those aisles. I saw some of those cosplayers. I glanced at some of those exhibitors and their wares. But I "made" my own Comic-Con — one tailored to what I wanted to see and do — and mine in no way resembled any of these videos.  If you were there, you can probably say the same thing.

I am absolutely not suggesting that mine was better than yours or that you would have enjoyed mine. But I started this series of blog posts by saying that to "do" Comic-Con, you need to figure out what you want out of it and then engage in enough research to figure out how and where to find it.

As you've heard ad nauseam, I've been to every mid-Summer multi-day edition of the annual event now called Comic-Con International. This past one was #55 for me. Contrary to what you might think, I did not love every one of them but I loved enough each year to return the following year.

At some point, what I realized was that whatever I hadn't loved was my fault for (a) not getting truly in touch with what I wanted out of Comic-Con and therefore (b) not adequately planning how to focus my convention on that. I also realized (c) that sometimes not getting what you want in this world is a matter of unrealistic expectations. And I even realized a (d), (d) in this case being that I had to fully grasp the concept that Comic-Con wasn't just there for me.

It was, for example, also for people who love Star Trek, a franchise which at no time in any of its forms and incarnations has had the slightest interest for me.  It was also for people who loved Tolkien or Star Wars or zombie movies or certain kinds of gaming or even comic books I never liked. There's tons of stuff in that hall and on that programming schedule that doesn't interest me and there's nothing wrong with that…

…because there's way more than enough that does.  There are also people around that I just plain enjoy seeing and in many cases, the only time I see them is at Comic-Con.

When I attended the early Comic-Cons, most of what was there was of interest to me. It was mainly — mainly, not wholly — about the comic books I was then following and the comic books I grew up on, all of which were the output of a relatively modest number of publishers. As the years passed, there were hundreds and hundreds more publishers and thousands and thousands of new comic books, most of which I didn't read. In 1970, the first year of what's now Comic-Con International, I probably knew 80% of all the comics then being published.

I'd be surprised if there's anyone who follows more than about 20% of them — and that percentage is probably high.  A lot of attendees who love comics have very little interest in the current ones. A lot of those who love the current ones have very little interest in the older ones except sometimes as backstory to the current ones.  So even if every single dealer in that hall was selling only comic books and every single program item was about comic books and you weren't even allowed to cosplay unless you were dressed as a character from a comic book, most attendees would not be interested in a majority of what's there to be seen, purchased and experienced.

Of course, that's only one way to look at it. I've come to think that most of what's there these days is about comics — maybe not comic books but comics. Because I've come to feel that the definition of comics has expanded over the years and this is not an original thought of mine.  I kinda stole it from the same person from whom so many people stole so much: Jack Kirby.

Not long before Jack passed away in 1994, he saw the redefinition in progress, identified it for what it was and expressed total approval. He always wanted comics to be bigger and bolder and covering more subjects and reaching a wider audience, He especially wanted them to escape the ghetto of being printed on the cheapest-available paper by the cheapest-possible method. He didn't even think they had to be on paper at all.

To Jack, a certain kind of movie was comics — and he didn't just mean a movie about Superman or Spider-Man. He also meant the kind of movie that captured the energy and supercharged storytelling of many comics. He meant films that featured the imaginative visuals that a great comic book artist could create on his or her drawing board. To Jack, videogames could be comics, TV shows could be comics, sculpture could be comics, dance could be comics…just about any means of expression. It didn't have to be something stamped onto newsprint with its narrative conveyed through a series of drawings with word balloons all over them. It just had to be imaginative in the way the best comics were and are imaginative.

And when Jack said these kinds of things to me, I thought: "Well, he's the King of the Comics. He oughta know."

---

Once I started to think of Comic-Con that way — as a festival of imaginative arts spinning off and around certain fundamentals of comic books and other visual arts like cartooning and animation — I began appreciating it more and more. But I also had to take a hard look at what I was doing wrong…at certain erroneous assumptions and bad choices I was making. I'll try to itemize and explain them in Part 6…which like I said, will probably be the last part of this series, at least for a while. But like I also said, don't hold me to that. I made a lot of mistakes.

Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone is probably working hard now on a video that will explain the Georgia Indictments in the way that he explains things. If you can't wait, here's an article that seems to do a pretty good job of it.

Some folks who've written me seem to think I was trying to say that Rudy Giuliani was a good man who went bad. No. I was trying to say that Rudy Giuliani was a man with a good reputation, warranted or not, who pissed it all away in the service of a bad man who went badder. Here's a piece about how Trump is refusing to pay all of Giuliani's crippling legal bills. Hope you think it was worth it, Rudy.

As this article notes, lots of different political observers are offering theories as to the identity of the unnamed sixth conspirator in the Georgia case. The indictment describes this person as "a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding" and that description could fit a lot of people. It could, as the article notes, be Ginni Thomas…and wouldn't that have interesting ramifications? I, of course, have no clues; just wondering why none of the guessers are mentioning the name of Roger Stone — no relation (that I know of) to Devin.

If you're concerned about polling that says Biden and Trump are neck-and-neck in the presidential race, remember how worthless polls are this far ahead of Election Day. And if you insist on following polls, follow this one: As Ben Mathis-Lilley notes of a recent AP poll…

Overall, about both Georgia's vote count and "what happened at the U.S. Capitol," 64 percent of American adults said Trump's conduct was either illegal or unethical. And only 21 percent said he did nothing wrong in relation to Jan. 6, while 15 percent said he did nothing wrong in Georgia. If you boil things down to "what he did was bad" or "what he did was OK," Trump is a loser by margins of 64–21 and 64–15.

Those would be pretty lopsided scores in the United States' beloved sport of American football! And the numbers aren't even that great for Trump among Republicans. A combined 42 percent of Republicans told the AP that Trump's conduct in Georgia was illegal or unethical, while only 31 percent said he'd done nothing wrong. Regarding Jan. 6, 38 percent of Republicans said Trump behaved illegally or unethically, with 46 percent coming down on the side of "nothing wrong."

Trump may well get the G.O.P. nomination just because a whopping majority of Republicans are fierce about seeing someone of their party win and they don't see any other Republican who would have a chance. All they've got is this one guy who couldn't beat Joe Biden the last time around…and that was before that one guy was out on bail in four different matters and facing possible (maybe probable) prison time. Do we really think that one guy can win the presidency back if that much of his own party thinks he's unethical and/or a criminal?

I continue to be stunned by how Rudolph William Louis Giuliani went from being "America's Mayor" and a widely-respected figure to a laughingstock lawyer who's being disbarred one state at a time, an indicted co-conspirator in a major crime, an unindicted (so far) co-conspirator in another major crime, a guy who's likely to lose a huge defamation suit and the target of a huge sexual harassment lawsuit…and I think there are a few more charges and lawsuits beyond all this — or there will be. I feel like I've used this line here before but nobody likes this man. Democrats dislike him because he tried to steal the election for Trump. And Republicans don't like him because he did such a bad job of it.

One of my favorite online writers, Fred Kaplan, writes about the irony of Rudy, the King of RICO prosecutions, becoming the target of a RICO prosecution. Meanwhile, Andrew Kirtzman and David Holley write about how far Giuliani has fallen and Bess Levin writes about Giuliani's financial woes. It may not sound like it but I really find this very sad.

It's been a while since I featured one of those clips of an American musical being performed in Korea. Here from a Korean production of Les Misérables is "One Day More." I almost like it better this way…

P.S., ADDED LATER: Okay, okay. Les Misérables is not an American musical. But you all know what I meant.