The seven dumbest things that BP execs have said about the oil spill.
And come to think of it, is "spill" really the right word for this mess? Doesn't "spill" suggest the oil was all collected and then somebody dropped it? Isn't this more like an uncontrollable leak?
This time each year, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce votes thirty more names to be embedded in the coming year in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That's thirty more people (or acts) who'll have their handles placed into the sidewalk so tourists can walk over them and read the names aloud and dogs can editorialize. This year, the thirty are as follows…
MOTION PICTURES: Penelope Cruz, Bruce Dern, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Ed Harris, The Muppets, Kenny Ortega, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ridley Scott, Sissy Spacek, Donald Sutherland and Reese Witherspoon.
TELEVISION: Danny DeVito, Tina Fey, Simon Fuller, Neil Patrick Harris, John Langley, Ed O'Neill, John Wells, and Oprah Winfrey.
RECORDING: Melissa Etheridge, Los Tigres Del Norte, Rascal Flatts, Go-Go's, Slash, Will i. Am, and Bebe & Cece Winans. Posthumous: Buddy Holly and Louis Prima.
LIVE PERFORMANCE/THEATRE: Joe Mantegna.
No dates have been announced for the unveiling ceremonies. Something will be worked out with each star and their agents, and the celebs have up to five years to schedule their ceremony. Every so often, they don't. Stan Lee was voted a star in 2008 and I guess he's been too busy…or something. It hasn't happened yet.
The next ceremony is on June 25 at 11:30 AM. It's for the recording group Rush and like most recipients, they've timed the unveiling to coincide with some project they wish to promote. In this case, they have a new CD, a new tour and a new documentary all happening. If you want to be kept up to date when future ceremonies occur, follow this person on Twitter.
Sixteen years ago today, there was something on the news about O.J. Simpson…something about his wife and another person being murdered over in Brentwood and they said Simpson was a suspect. I was busy that day getting an assignment done and getting ready for a big dinner that evening to honor June Foray so I didn't pay much attention to stuff like this. (You may have to watch a brief commercial before you get to the stuff to which I didn't pay much attention…)
That evening, a bunch of us were at this dinner…and I remember that though it wasn't strictly formal, I wore my tuxedo because I thought it would amuse June and also I'd forgotten to send my suit coats out to be dry-cleaned. We were milling during the pre-supper cocktail hour when someone came in and said, "O.J. Simpson's on TV! He's in a car and the police are chasing him and he's threatening to blow his brains out!" Well, there's a distraction. Everyone drifted (some scurried) out of that ballroom and over to an adjoining room where a TV was on. There, we saw news coverage like this. (You may have to watch a brief commercial before you get to the news coverage to which we did pay much attention…)
Eventually, most drifted back to the reason we'd gone to that hotel that night, though many ducked in and out to watch, and we got periodic updates from the next room. I remember feeling sorry for June that her big evening was marred by this distraction…though if it bothered her, she sure didn't show it. I also remember thinking how what was on TV was surreal but it was even more surreal for me because I was wearing a tuxedo. I'm not sure I can explain why that is.
No one, I'm sure, realized we were witnessing Chapter One or Two (depending on how you count) of a spectacle that would consume our nation, change so many lives and call our entire system of justice into so much question. Amazingly, the "slow-speed chase" and Simpson's quasi-suicide note were barely mentioned in the subsequent criminal trial. The defense didn't want to mention them because they seemed to denote guilt. The prosecution didn't want to mention them because they feared they'd evoke sympathy. It was that kind of trial.
June had a very nice evening in spite of it.
As some readers of this site seem to be able to discern from my posting rhythms, I've been pretty swamped the last week or so. I'm sorry…for myself as much as for you. It's a lot of fun to write things for this blog, at least when they're not about friends of mine dying. "Why do you blog?" is a question I get a lot and the answers (plural) have a lot to do with networking and keeping in touch with people but primarily with the same reason that a professional artist sometimes likes to just sketch, drawing what he feels like drawing, not what someone else is paying him to draw.
One of the things I learned from Jack Kirby — hey, there's a name I almost never mention — was the concept of commitment to your line of work. Jack accepted that long hours at the board were a part of the path he picked for himself; that having chosen to write and draw comics, he had to look not for reasons to not work (you can always find good ones) but for reasons to accept and even enjoy the grind. He'd complain about the labor and with good reason. At times, it was excessive and he was always underpaid. But had they suddenly showered him with dollars, he would not have quickly become a man of leisure. He would have continued writing and drawing…just at his pace, not their pace.
I knew I could never match Jack for the sheer brilliance of the output, nor could I come close. Few have. But it was and is theoretically possible for us mere mortals to work that hard. We can be that committed to finishing projects and assignments that meets whatever dubious standards we set for ourselves. So I write a lot. Dorothy Parker famously said, "I hate writing, I love having written." I've never understood that approach. Why become a writer if you hate writing?
Writers, for the most part, tend to over-romanticize their profession and I don't mean to do that. I've never thought whether my job is better than somebody else's except, of course, to decide that it suits me better than some other vocation might. So I guess the reason I blog is that writing is what I do and this is an enjoyable outlet for which to write. Maybe that's not the best reason in the world but I'm afraid it's all I've got.
If you can spare a half hour in the next five days, you might want to give a listen to this BBC radio documentary about the Marx Brothers in Britain. But five days is all you have because it goes away after that.
Stan Lee was on with Craig Ferguson last night and I thought the segment was terrific…
"When do you sleep?" is an oft-asked question in my e-mailbox. It comes from folks who notice the timestamps on my posts here and on my Twitter and Facebook activity. I average about five hours a night, which is down a bit from a few years ago when I was heavier, and way down from about twenty years ago, before I was diagnosed with Sleep Apnea and began sleeping with a CPAP mask strapped on my puss.
Five now seems to do it for me but about once every two weeks, I lie down for a quick nap and wake up many hours later. That happened to me last night, plunging me into a state of deep hibernation. I should have known this would happen. At the moment, I have no immediate deadline. I have things due next week but at the moment, no script that absolutely has to be done tomorrow. That's usually when my body goes all Rip Van Winkle on me.
But as I get older, I increasingly find my need to sleep is linked to my having the time for it. Not always. There are times when I'm up into the wee small hours and I realize things are going way too slowly and I think, "I can plod along here at eight miles an hour or get some sleep and maybe do sixty in the morning." So off to bed I go…sometimes. Or sometimes I just lie there fidgeting and thinking of what I'll write next…and I do it so long that I finally decide to get up and just write what I'll write next.
Years ago, I read an interview with some writer (forget who) who said he always kept a pad and pencil on his bedside table. That was so if he had a brilliant idea, he could write it down and have it in the morning and not lose it. That sounded logical so even though I couldn't recall ever having such a thought and losing it, I placed a pad and pencil bedside and at the ready. It stayed there for about three nights. I never wrote in it but the feeling that I should be jotting something down was a powerful inducement to remaining awake. It was like taking my work into the sack with me, making me feel like I should still be writing. When I took the pad away, I slept better.
That was at least fifteen years ago and in all the time since, I've never lost a brilliant idea. That's because you can't lose that which you don't have in the first place.
Fred Kaplan sees the collapse of General Petraeus in this morning's Senate hearing as not unlike our prospects for the Kandahar offensive. Scary.
What happens when a turtle somehow winds up on his back and can't get up? Well, if he's a lucky turtle, a friend will come by and help him…
Harry Shearer has a message for those who hold stock in British Petroleum.
Tonight's guests on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson: Ice Cube and Stan Lee. Hope at least one of them does a funky rap number.
Well, sadly, it's true. Al Williamson was 79 years old and while we haven't heard a cause of death, we'd all heard how he'd been suffering from Alzheimer's for the last few years.
Al was a great talent and a great guy. I can't think of anyone who saw his comics and didn't love the way he drew and I'm darn sure I don't know of anyone who ever met the man and didn't enjoy his company. Al Williamson was born in New York on March 21, 1931 but spent much of his childhood in Bogota, Columbia. He fell in love with comics at an early age, especially Flash Gordon in both the Alex Raymond newspaper strip and the Buster Crabbe serials. Al used to joke that all the heroic males he drew either looked like him or like Mr. Crabbe.
He studied at Burne Hogarth's Cartoonists and Illustrators School and struck up friendships with many artists around his age, most notably Wally Wood, Angelo Torres, Frank Frazetta, Roy G. Krenkel and MAD editor-to-be Nick Meglin. Most of his friends wound up working for EC Comics and it was there that Al did the work that gave him his reputation. He was an amazing illustrator, especially in the line's science-fiction titles where his work had a pageantry and beauty.
Al was the perfect example of the Second Generation of comic book artists — the kids who got into the business because they grew up on comics drawn by the guys who started the business. He was an enormous fan of almost everyone. The first time I met him was in 1970 at a New York convention where he pumped me for information on Jack Kirby. The last time I saw him was (I think) at the '97 Comic-Con in San Diego. One of the other guests that year was George Tuska, and Williamson had as a child been inspired by Tuska's work. When I went off to do a panel interviewing George, Al asked if he could sit in on it, ask a few questions himself, and tell the audience how much he admired Mr. Tuska.
Williamson was passionate about his work. Even back when he knew the art would not get decent reproduction and the originals would not be returned to him, he'd spend hours on a panel, adding detail that would never survive the printing process. It mattered to Al that the work be as good as possible when it left him. After that, he had no control over it.
He worked for most publishers in the fifties and sixties, including Atlas (Marvel), ACG, Charlton and Harvey. No matter what they paid, he gave them the best work possible within the deadline…and was known to miss deadlines in order to get the work the way he wanted it. In the sixties, he especially distinguished himself with his work for Warren on Creepy and Eerie, and with a short run on a new comic book version of Flash Gordon in which he astounded readers with his ability to capture that world as drawn by Alex Raymond. That work brought him an offer, which he grabbed, to carry on another Raymond character. He and writer Archie Goodwin produced the newspaper strip for Secret Agent X-9 (now retitled Secret Agent Corrigan) from 1967 until 1980. He and Archie later handled the Star Wars newspaper strip for a time, following Al's acclaimed work on the graphic novel adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back. In the late eighties and through the nineties, his comic art jobs were mostly as an inker for DC and Marvel.
Al won the National Cartoonist Society award for Best Comic Book Artist in 1966 and later won two Will Eisner Awards (and four other nominations), plus he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2000. He also won seven Harvey Awards and numerous other accolades. He was also, as I mentioned, a really, really great guy to be around. As much as we'll all miss his art, I think we'll miss the guy who did it even more.
Most of the comic news sites are reporting the death of the great comic artist (and one hell of a great guy), Al Williamson. This would not be surprising as we've been hearing for some time now that Al was in failing health. However, we have our own little standards about sourcing on this kind of thing and so far, I haven't heard the news from a firm enough source that I'm going to presume it's so and post an obit. You understand.
In December of 1964, Jim Henson and his crew of Muppeteers got an important booking on The Jack Paar Show, which was a weekly prime-time series Mr. Paar did after stepping down from The Tonight Show. After dress rehearsal, the puppet squad had plenty of time to kill so they decided to create a little something. In this clip from Dave Letterman's old NBC show, Paar tells the story and takes Dave to see what the Muppets left him…
Actually, Paar was wrong. The creation hadn't been hidden quite that long. Many folks at NBC knew about it and it had actually been shown on TV before…but it's still quite a wonderful thing. More recently, it was decided that it should be shared with the world — or at least the part of the world that takes the NBC Tour. Here's a segment from The Today Show for last Tuesday…
I thought Sean Hayes did a fine job hosting the Tony Awards despite a surplus of tech screw-ups and missed cues. Is it obligatory that every year, the opening musical number has to start with someone's microphone off?
But there were enough nice moments that I wasn't bored…and hey, who would have thought the steamiest heterosexual moment on television this year would be on the Tony broadcast and would involve Kristen Chenoweth and a gay guy? And Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth managed to achieve that rare feat: Being funny as presenters. (For those of you who thought Lane's quip about Passover sounded familiar, you're right. It's a famous line from the Academy Awards uttered there by Mr. Robert Hope.)
As usual, a lot of awards went to people most of us never heard of before for work in shows most of us will never see. But I suspect Memphis won big, not just in the awards department but in the real competition, which is to stage a scene from your show that will make people want to buy tickets. By contrast though, the excerpt from La Cage aux Folles had the opposite effect, at least on me.
I haven't been to New York in a while and have been hoping to get back there before the year is out, maybe before the summer is over. Wish I'd been there in the preceding months so I could have seen some shows and had some rooting interest.