I had a very good time last evening reading the first two volumes in what I hope will be a long series from Craig Yoe — Arf Museum and Modern Arf. These are nice books from Fantagraphics in which Craig has picked out interesting items of comic art from his, and I suppose some other folks' collections. There are panel cartoons, stories, illos…diverse material that is somehow united by Craig's mere celebratory selection of it. It's hard to explain why. It may be no deeper than that Mr. Yoe likes the same kind of stuff I do. Anyway, I suggest either ordering them or at least paging through them at a store or convention, which will lead to you wanting to buy them. Great stuff.

Above and beyond the fascinating contents, there's something else very nice about these books: They're beautifully designed and totally legible. Lately, those two virtues have seemed mutually exclusive in the book world. I've gotten a lot of books that were quite lovely to page through but at some point, I found myself unable to actually read some extended section of text. Somehow, it was more important that the designer put a busy color pattern behind a flimsy type font or something…and you can almost hear someone say to someone else, "It's okay. There's plenty of other text here they can read if that's what they want."

The other day, I received a printed copy of a book for which I wrote an article and I cannot read my own text. I have 20/20 vision and I kinda already know what it says…but I still can't make out what I said in some paragraphs. This is not a trivial complaint, nor is it particularly arguable. The last time this happened to me, the company's art director had all sorts of defenses. Apparently, the aesthetics of unified thematic composition required a certain page layout and the fact that it rendered some of those pages unreadable was just nitpicking on my part. I felt so foolish.

Anyway, that's not a problem with Craig's books. Just one of the reasons you'll enjoy them.

Like I said, I haven't been to New York in quite a while. As a result, I haven't seen The Wedding Singer, a new Broadway musical based on the Adam Sandler movie of the same name. You probably haven't seen it, either. So here, for the both of us, is a little "screen to stage" promotional film that gives us a quick glimpse of the show.

I have a whole bunch of things I need to post here and I'll get them out of the way in one item…

• An attention-getting topic on this website some time ago was my encounter with a crooked tow truck driver. I got an awful lot of e-mail from folks who said they'd had experiences not unlike mine and had come to the same reluctant conclusion: That there was very little a swindled person in that situation could do. I'm happy to report (and to direct you to an article that Dana Gabbard sent me) that something is finally being done about this racket. Read all about it. The company that ripped me off is not among those named in the article but it's among the indicted, as I found out today by calling the office of one of the detectives who'd advised me at the time of the offense. I am quite happy about this and am rethinking my reservations about the Death Penalty.
• Since I haven't been to New York in a couple of years, I have limited interest in this Sunday's Tony Awards ceremony. But the TiVo's set and I look forward to a nice sampler of what's currently playing on and around Broadway. As you can see here, there doesn't seem to be a lot of doubt as to who will win, so the big suspense may be whether the broadcast will be any good. I suspect its producers are erring by not having a central host this year. In the immortal words of Rocket J. Squirrel, "That trick never works."
• My pal Joe Bevilacqua has been doing wonderful things with audio comedy for XM Satellite Radio. Now, he's making the inevitable transition to video. You can see a promo at this link.
• In the text accompanying this morning's video link, I made reference to a very old Van Johnson. Actually, he wasn't that old at the time. He was 69. Some of you may be surprised to learn that the actor in question is still with us. He's ninety years old and is now a very old Van Johnson.
• A very public thank you to Tom Stewart, whose keen articles have appeared in a number of TwoMorrows magazines lately. Tom sent me one of the nicest gifts I can recall receiving — a hardcover copy of Moss Hart's Winged Victory, autographed by the author. Tom is a fine scholar of comic book history and I'm glad to see his reputation has survived the accusation, once made by a primary industry figure, that he was just a pseudonym for me.
• Lastly, speaking of people giving me things: After a long drought, this site is again receiving donations. This comes just in time because I'm just starting to receive the bills for the Gastric Bypass Surgery I had two weeks ago today. The first bill was for $73,282.87 and this does not (repeat: NOT) include doctors. That's just for the operating room, the room in which I spent two nights and so on. Additional fees, including the tests I had to have to qualify for the procedure, will kick the whole thing over the 100 Grand mark…and while insurance will take care of most of it, I'm still going to have to come up with a fifth to a fourth of it. Given how good I feel, it may be the best bargain I've gotten in my life but it's still nice to log in and see that a reader of the weblog has sent a gratuity. So thanks to those of you who have and if you'd like to kick in, this link will gladly accept your PayPal contribution. If you're attending this year's Comic-Con International, you might want to show your gratitude for the fact that the convention hall will seem less crowded with a skinnier me in it.

This one runs almost nine minutes and if you start watching, you may have trouble tearing yourself away from it.

Back in 1982, producer Alexander Cohen whipped up a three-hour special for ABC called The Night of 100 Stars. It was quite an event with well more than a hundred stars appearing in songs and production numbers…though as I recall, some of them just walked onto the stage, received a round of applause and left. The bulk of them, in fact, just performed for a few seconds and then split…but there was still something kind of exciting about a three-hour show where every few seconds, a new surprise guest star appears. (This ties in with our discussion the other day of something I miss — genuine surprises on television. The Night of 100 Stars may have been the first show on TV with too many of them.)

It did so well that Cohen produced two more — in 1985 and 1990. Again each time, there were a lot more than 100 stars on the premises though in these two shows, the definition of "star" was lowered a bit. There are even a couple of people I never heard of in the clip below, which is from the '85 outing. Fortunately, almost everyone is identified by a chyron of their name and a number that represents a running count on the number of stars in the special. A couple of people — like Dick Van Dyke — aren't labelled this way because (I'm guessing) they had already appeared and been counted earlier in the show.

So here's a dance number with an incredible cast. Keep your eye out for a very young Christopher Walken and a very old Van Johnson.

One of the most-accessed articles on this website has been my piece on Rod Hull, a comedian who was popular in Australia and Great Britain. Rod, who died in 1999, worked with a grotesque but very popular bird puppet named Emu.

I'm happy to learn that Emu is back in business, now operated by the arm of Rod's son Toby. Here are the details with a thank you to Rob Rose for letting me know about this.

George Kashdan, who worked as an editor and writer at DC Comics from around 1946 until 1968, died last Saturday, apparently from complications relating to a stroke. He had been depressed for some time because of his failing health and that afternoon, he laid down for a nap and never woke up from it.

Kashdan was born May 17, 1928 in The Bronx. He got a B.A. at the University of Chicago and promptly secured a staff editorial position at DC Comics where his brother Bernard was among the most important people in the business division. DC put George to work editing, writing and rewriting scripts, mostly for back-up features (Congo Bill, Captain Compass, Green Arrow, Johnny Quick) but he got an occasional shot at Superman and Batman. Through the early sixties, he worked under editor Jack Schiff (and sometimes, Mort Weisinger). In a book like Action Comics, which featured Superman in the front and strips like Congorilla and Tommy Tomorrow in the back, it was not uncommon for Kashdan to edit the back-up features while Weisinger took care of the cover and lead story.

In 1961, one of the back-up strips he'd long helmed, Aquaman, graduated to his own comic and Kashdan became a full editor, soon taking on House of Mystery, Tales of the Unexpected and several others, including a strip that was a particular favorite of his — Rip Hunter, Time Master. Later in the sixties, he presided over the launch of Metamorpho and Teen Titans, and began the "team-up" format in The Brave and the Bold. Other comics he edited at times during the sixties include Blackhawk, Sea Devils, Bomba the Jungle Boy and Hawkman. He also found time to write several scripts for animated shows produced out of New York such as The Mighty Hercules (1963) and for DC's television projects, including The Superman-Aquaman Hour which was produced by Filmation in Southern California and which aired on CBS's Saturday morning schedule.

In 1968, as part of a program of editorial restructuring, Kashdan was let go by DC. Several people who worked with him said it was because he was "too nice" and had occasionally clashed with management in arguing that freelancers should be paid and treated better. Others suggested that his tenure was ended because of upper-level dissatisfaction with his work. Either way, he was let go and Dick Giordano was hired to take over most of his books.

Kashdan returned primarily to writing, most of it for the New York office of Western Publishing Company. He wrote dozens of stories for Gold Key Comics like The Twilight Zone and Grimm's Ghost Stories. He did extended stints for them writing Flash Gordon and Star Trek, and also penned several childrens' books for Western's non-comic divisions, along with freelancing for other publishers (comics and otherwise) and even doing a couple of scripts for DC. In the eighties, his freelancing slowed due to failing health and several personal tragedies. He relocated to Los Angeles to be near his remaining family.

I have to insert a personal note here. When I was a kid, I would often buy the new comics at a little store called Parnin's Pharmacy located on Westwood Boulevard near Olympic in West Los Angeles. One day in 1966, while waiting in line with my purchases, I paged through the new Aquaman I was about to buy and saw — to a numb amazement I can recall to this day — that the editor had published a note from me in the letter column. I was 14 years old and it was the first time I'd ever seen anything I'd written in print with my name attached.

This sounds very trivial but anyone reading this who's ever made a buck as a professional writer can probably relate to that thrilling moment. The editor who printed it was George Kashdan, who was then far off in New York City. But — and I swear this is true — Mr. Kashdan lived his declining days in a retirement home located in West L.A. on Westwood near Olympic…directly across the street from where Parnin's used to be.

A number of us historian-type people found him there a few years ago and he was extensively interviewed by phone. I talked to him at length…and for a man who was recovering from a stroke, he had an amazing memory for most things, though not the passage of time. Every time we spoke, I had to run over a list with him of who among his old associates was still alive. He kept hoping to recover enough to get to a Comic-Con International some day and see some of them, especially his old pal Arnold Drake, who remained in touch. My friend Jim Amash taped several more extensive talks with him and they'll be turning up soon in Roy Thomas's fine publication, Alter Ego. (Thanks to Jim for helping me with this obit, by the way.) Even though I drive by that retirement home two or three times a week, I never got to go in and visit Mr. Kashdan in person. He just never felt up to receiving visitors that way.

But I did tell him via phone how much I'd enjoyed so many of his comics. I even told him about the one I really didn't like, which was the super-hero revamp of Blackhawk in 1967, and he didn't seem to have liked it much, either. He sounded like a charming and bright man, and even though I never got to drag him out to lunch down the street at Junior's Delicatessen, as we often discussed, I feel like I've lost a buddy.

News from the world of show business falls into two categories. Some new projects are announced because they're actually about to happen. Others are publicized because they aren't. The people behind them have some of the elements necessary to make their new endeavor a reality but not all of them. They're lacking financing or a star or distribution or something…and they hope that the announcement will cause the missing piece(s) to materialize. If you look back at an old Variety, you'll see items about movies that are about to start shooting or which were "already in production" but never, in fact, went in front of any camera…or TV shows that were "a definite go" and which were never heard of again. These are the "partway-there" projects that were presented as if actually happening by someone hoping to find whatever was necessary to make them actually happen.

It's sometimes easy to tell the real announcements from the hopeful ones, sometimes hard. And of course, there are projects in the second category that do eventually manage to become real…but they weren't at the time they were announced. To survive in and around this business, you have to develop a decent sense of what's definite and what's wishful. I've had pretty good luck turning down involvement in things that weren't going to happen. That's because I follow an old Show Biz maxim that I made up: If it's at all doubtful, it's highly doubtful.

Today, it was announced that a musical comedy version of the Jerry Lewis movie, The Nutty Professor, is "heading for Broadway" with Jer himself directing. Here's the announcement and I'm putting this one in the "wishful" category. It's actually not a bad idea at all for a musical but look at where they are. They have no composer or lyricist. Those are not minor details when you're putting on a musical. They also aren't announcing the name of the book writer(s) yet, which does not suggest Mr. Lewis is working with anyone with any experience at all in doing a musical. They hope to do a tryout at the Old Globe in San Diego in 2007 but apparently, no one's bothered to tell the Old Globe about this. It's a little late to be booking for '07, plus a brand-new musical by new people will probably need more outta-town tryouts than a few weeks in San Diego before it'll be Manhattan-ready.

If this show is ever going to happen — and I'm not saying it can't — it's going to have to take on some heavyweight investors and some producers and other behind-the-scenes people with Broadway chops. Since it seems to have neither yet, I'd say the announcement is intended to perhaps shake some loose, get some interested. It will especially need a director who's done this kind of thing before. Mel Brooks did not direct the stage version of The Producers, after all, and he had more stage experience than Jerry Lewis.

Let's watch how this one develops. It just might…but it's got a long way to go before it gets anywhere near the Great White Way.

Here's a connection to the entire Bill Bennett interview on The Daily Show. I don't like Bennett very much. He's always struck me as a guy who can gin up moral outrage over anything sexual and/or done by minorities or poor people…but apart from the occasional token reference, he seems incapable of seeing anything wrong in anything upper class people do to make money. When the Enron scandal broke, I saw him cornered into talking about it and he seemed to have to force himself through clenched teeth to say there was anything immoral about swindling employees out of their pensions.

I happen to think legal gay marriage is inevitable in this country. It may take quite a while to go nationwide and it may be called something other than "marriage" here and there for a while. But I think Jon Stewart is right in his comments that this kind of thing only evolves in one direction. What's more, I think men like Bennett and Jerry Falwell know that it's inevitable. They just want to see what they can get for themselves in terms of cash and power by manipulating one segment of the population before this particular "hot button" goes cold.

It's another nugget from Your Show of Shows. This one features Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner and Howie Morris as The Haircuts, a musical group they occasionally played on the series. The Haircuts were pretty popular for about an hour there and actually released a record or two. The clip's a little under six minutes and it demonstrates how the three of them could not only do dialect and talk funny but also move funny. Their songs were written primarily by Head Writer Mel Tolkin, who later claimed he penned most of them in under three minutes. Their moves were perfected by watching kinescopes of "real" groups, especially The Crewcuts, from whence they got their name. Enjoy.

A funny online chat with my favorite standup comedian, Lewis Black. It's on the Washington Post site so you may have to register. Thanks to Bruce Reznick for letting me know about it.

Funniest thing I've seen in days: The last half of Stephen Colbert's interview with Stone Phillips. Here's a link and I'll warn you it's a link to Comedy Central's website where such things don't always work. But if it does, you'll enjoy it.

Jerry Beck is very happy — and I know Jerry so I know how happy — to announce that the hurdles have been cleared: Popeye is coming to home video. Eventually, just about everything will be on DVD but it's always nice when something really good gets there. Here's the full press release.

Okay, I rewatched the Daily Show segment with Jon Stewart hammering Bill Bennett and I see that I misunderstood: Stewart did not say Bennett would be on the following broadcast, as well. What he did was tell Bennett, "We're going to split this into segments…and you'll be the whole back end of the show." He did not mean the interview was being divided over two programs. He meant it would be edited so it could run two segments in that night's show.

What I think happened was this: The show has three acts. I believe they taped comedy spots for the first two acts and then the Bennett interview was supposed to just be Act Three. During it, Stewart and/or his producers apparently made the decision that it deserved more time so they let it run long enough to fill two acts. Then they went back afterwards and taped Stewart welcoming us back from commercial. Afterwards, they dropped out whatever they'd taped for Act Two and positioned the Bennett interview as Acts Two and Three, using that "welcome back" to get us back into the interview at the top of Act Three. That caused the awkward edit right after the "welcome back," and I think there was another jump cut in there, probably also because they were reconfiguring one segment to span two.

It was an interesting interview, in part because Bennett's a smart man and he knew he was losing badly. You can see portions of it over here.

This one will take a little more than seven minutes of your life but it's worth it. It's a sketch from the old Your Show of Shows starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howie Morris. They don't make 'em like this anymore…

A lot of folks — friends and total strangers alike — seem to want periodic reports on how I'm doing since Gastric Bypass surgery. I'm doing great…that's how I'm doing. It's been eleven days and I've lost two pounds a day with amazingly little discomfort. I really don't want to become a walking commercial for this procedure so let me state that my comments apply only to my experiences and may not be typical. I'm still on liquids, ingesting a calorie count that would starve a supermodel…but I'm not hungry. In fact, tonight I had dinner in my favorite Chinese restaurant with a friend of mine and while he gorged on an entree that I would have loved twelve days ago, I was quite content to sit there and sip broth. I'll be segueing to semi-solid foods around the end of this week but I'm in no great hurry to get there.

Twenty-two pounds is not a huge deal. I've lost these pounds before…several times, in fact. But somehow, it never felt this good before to be rid of them. Aches that I had accepted as permanent parts of my life have gone away and I can feel others starting to fade. At the moment, I'm wearing a pair of pants I haven't been in for at least two years. (Fortunately, I saved a lot of the clothes I outgrew on the way up. I expect to be working my way back through my wardrobe for a few months.) My primary physician gave me the once-over on Monday and said things could not be going better.

I may set up a separate page here for those who are interested in the topic but for now, I just wanted to answer lots of e-mails at once and say I'm doing fine. It's all very new and yet it feels a lot more normal that I would have expected. I'll write more about the experience as I gain a bit more perspective on it.