So my beloved cable modem connection is out and I'm reduced to accessing the Internet via a primitive, Paleolithic-era dial-up connection.  Technology continues to spoil us.  Once we have a cell phone, it's a major inconvenience of life to be without one…and just how did people manage to function without super-fast computers, FedEx, fax machines, TiVo, DSS satellite, etc.?

The fellow at A.T.&T. Tech Support says they'll have to dispatch a technician to heal my high-speed Internet connection.  Unfortunately, it's not a high-speed technician.  He won't be here 'til Friday afternoon.

Until then, we all suffer…you, because this site won't be updated much this week; me, because I won't have the patience to read most of my favorite websites over a tortoise-speed telephone line hook-up.  My e-mail responses will seem lethargic, as well.

So sad.  So very sad.

Attention Jerry Beck!  You and I are quoted on the subject of Scooby-Doo in an article about the TV series in The Chicago Sun-Times.  My mother will be so proud to learn that her son's an authority on something.  Here's the link.  And since I'm an authority, let me assure everyone that there is no truth to the oft-circulated rumor that the four kids in the show were configured to each represent the character of some college.  The four kids were based — in the same way The Flintstones was inspired by The Honeymooners — on the old TV show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

Fred was based on Dobie, Velma on Zelda, Daphne on Thalia and Shaggy on Maynard.  It is also probably not true that the name "Scooby-Doo" was inspired by the part of the record "Strangers in the Night" where Frank Sinatra sang, "Scooby-Dooby-Doo…"  It was actually another hit record, "Denise," a doo-wop classic by Randy and the Rainbows that still turns up incessantly on oldies stations.  Randy and his Rainbows sang, "Scooby-Doo" over and over, whereas ol' Blue Eyes kept putting that "Dooby" in there.  Isn't it wonderful, the things you can learn on this website?

In 1987, I wrote, Sergio Aragonés drew and Marvel published a graphic novel entitled The Death of Groo.  It was one of my favorite Groo projects…or, at least, would have been, had we not had so much trouble with the printing.  Tom Luth did his usual terrific coloring job but when it went to press, it went to a low-quality color separator who did a poor job.  No, let's be honest here: They did a rotten job.  There were folks at Marvel who, upon seeing the proofs, wanted to reject the separations and have them done over but they were overruled.

I suspect — no, we're being honest here.  I don't "suspect."  I was told that if this kind of work had been done on a Spider-Man or X-Men project — or even by something written by someone on Marvel's editorial staff — there was no way the separations would have been used.  But at the time, Marvel was getting a certain amount of grief from dealers because some of their higher-priced items were shipping late.  Because of those complaints and because it was Groo, they went ahead and did the First Printing off the bad separations.

After the book came out, they called and said, "Gee, sorry, this came out even worse than we'd anticipated.  If the book sells well enough to warrant a Second Printing, we'll redo the color separations and fix everything."  At the time they made this promise, I think they assumed the book would not sell well enough to require a Second Printing but, as it turned out, it did.  One day a year or two later, Sergio was in New York and he visited the Marvel offices where several folks told him the Second Printing would take place in a few months and they assured him that the separations would be redone.  He was pleased by this.

About a half hour after he left that day, I got an embarrassed phone call from a Marvel exec.  It seems that, following Sergio's departure, they'd reminded the Manufacturing Division that the color seps on The Death of Groo had to be redone before the book was reprinted.  The folks in that division had said, "Oh, didn't you know?  One of our other graphic novels is running late and we had to send something to press last week in its place.  So we went ahead and did the Second Printing of The Death of Groo!"  In other words, even as they were assuring Sergio that things would be fixed before the Second Printing, the Second Printing had already been done…from the old separations that they'd promised wouldn't be used.

Apologies were made.  We were told — I don't know if this part's true — that Marvel was going to fill the immediate orders for the Second Printing but toss the rest of the press run away.  Someone shipped me a few hundred copies, just to get them out of the warehouse and whittle down the stockpile, the better to justify Pressing #3.  Indeed, after a suitable interval, the separations were redone and the Third Printing took place.  This version still didn't look as good as the thing should have looked in the first place but it was leagues ahead of the first and second runs.

So if you decide to scare up a copy of The Death of Groo, you have a number of choices, all with downsides.  You can try to find a First Printing, but these are all blurry and out-of-register with washed-out colors.  You can search for a Second Printing, which looks just as bad.  The fact that it's not a First Printing is perhaps balanced by the fact that Second Printings are very rare…or, at least, they will be until some day when I clean out my storage locker and unload a few crates on eBay.  Third Printings have decent reproduction but they are, after all, Third Printings.

And you have one other option.  Bob Chapman runs a wonderful "boutique" operation called Graphitti Designs that issues fancy, limited-edition books and t-shirts and toys.  Often, the limited-edition books are designer editions of cheaper versions published by others.  He'll arrange to have the publisher run a thousand or more extra copies of the guts of a book, which will be delivered to Bob unbound.  Then Bob will add in more pages, end papers, signed bookplates and other extra features, bind it all in fancy and hard covers, slap on a dust jacket, etc., and you'll have a real snazzy, deluxe permanent edition of the book.  They're all beautiful and highly collectible.

This month, he is bringing out a snazzy hardcover that collects The Death of Groo and its sequel/prequel, The Life of Groo.  They're bound back-to-back with "flip book" covers and each has a special, signed bookplate prepared for this edition only.  (One is signed by Sergio; the other is signed by me and initialed by Sergio.)  The printing on The Life of Groo is the same as an earlier edition that Bob himself did, and it looks great.  The printing on The Death of Groo is from the run of the Third Printing from Marvel but if you get it in this format, it's not really a Third Printing or even a Fourth.  It's the First Printing of the combination package.

This is not really a sales pitch since these books sell out rather quickly and Bob only has a thousand of this one to move, most of which are already spoken for.  However, if you wanna grab one, they're selling them at Bob's website, Graphitti Designs.  It's around $59 plus shipping but it'll probably cost you more than that to visit Bob's site.  It's full of other neat stuff you'll want to buy.  (He's bringing out a new Groo t-shirt, soon…)

I've always been a big fan of Charles Grodin as an actor, an author and especially as a participant in talk shows, including the one he hosted for a few years on MSNBC and CNBC.  He tends to be very sarcastic, very candid and confrontational in a funny, as opposed to hostile, way.  When he's been on with Leno and Letterman — and before that, with Carson — it has usually resulted in the all-too-rare interview that doesn't sound like both parties are reading it all off TelePrompters.  He's also written several books, the best of which was his first — a basic but fun autobiography entitled, It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here.

Subsequent books have suggested that Mr. Grodin said almost everything he had to say in It Would Be So Nice…, but there are moments in each that make them worth a read.  His third — We're Ready For You, Mr. Grodin — contained several points of interest, not the least of which was a section in which he said he'd been too modest in the autobiography.  He wrote…

I get the impression that most of the people in show business who read it take it as an inspiration to continue.  The rationale is, "Look how much rejection Charles Grodin dealt with."  While I'm pleased the book inspires people, I meant it just as much as a warning.  I do say in there that you don't want to spend ten years in this profession and end up nowhere but ten years older.  I say that even if you're not publicly recognized, there must be plenty of signs along the way that you're really good to encourage you to keep going.  I did have a lot of praise in my unrecognized years, but I found it awkward putting all my compliments down on paper.

I found that refreshingly honest.  As I wrote in an article posted here entitled The Speech, I think too much false hope is sometimes given to neophytes; that it does them a disservice to tell them that if they keep at it and don't give up, they will eventually get everything they want.  Well, no.  Very few people who enter show biz ever get the kind of career they seek and most do not support themselves at all.  Dreams should not be dashed but people should be reminded that there are no guarantees; that it isn't the dumbest thing in the world to have a Plan B for your life.

While I'm quoting lines from We're Ready For You, Mr. Grodin, I'd like to quote a paragraph that made me laugh out loud.  It has to do with a production of Charley's Aunt in which Grodin appeared…

Charley's Aunt is almost a hundred years old, and although we had a good cast, the first ten minutes or so of the play can be a little deadly — three Oxford undergraduates running around trying to figure out what to do about getting a chaperone as the girls are coming to tea.  The idea is hatched that one of us — me — dresses up like my aunt Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez.  Here's the moment I love and it's not onstage, but backstage.  I come off to change into the woman's dress, but before I do I'd always look at the stagehands or whomever was standing back there and say, "God, we're dying out there.  We need someone to dress up like a woman or something!"  Then I'd spot the dress and as though I'd just gotten the idea, I'd say, "Hand me that dress!"

His newest book is called I Like It Better When You're Funny, and it deals mainly with his CNBC/MSNBC talk show and the various TV executives who put it on, took it off and — at other networks — danced him around about a replacement show before he wound up doing short commentaries for 60 Minutes II on CBS.  If you need testimony that folks who run TV companies sometimes show bad judgment and aren't completely honest, this book might come in handy.  There are, of course, segments I enjoyed but, over-all, fewer than in Grodin's earlier books.  If, however, this one gets him out, making the talk show rounds to promote it, I'm all for it.  I'm all for anything that gets Charles Grodin in front of a camera, especially when he's playing that most interesting of all his characters, Charles Grodin.

Good article on the cancellation of Politically Incorrect over at The American Prospect.  Here's that link.  I am hearing that Bill Maher is in serious talks elsewhere for a new show with an expanded format — kind of half P.I., half Leno/Letterman.

I finally got around to finishing David Brock's book, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative.  Brock is — do I have to tell you? — the former Conservative journalist/"hitman" who has renounced his past reporting on, among other newsmaking topics, the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill skirmish and the claim that Bill Clinton had a quick tryst with a woman named Paula.  Whether or not you believe The New David Brock will probably depend on whether or not you want to.  Clearly, most pundits and participants are out to spin this to their advantage but if I had to vote, not so much on what happened but on how history will record it, I think I'd side with this article by Jane Mayer that appeared in The New York Review of Books.

Interesting to learn that the forthcoming DVD release of 1776 will not be the 3-hour restored version that has only been released on Laserdisc.  Nor will it be the truncated 141 minute version that has been available on VHS or cable TV.  As you may recall, the Laserdisc material was reassembled from prints of varying quality and, at the time, folks though it was a miracle that even those scratchy prints still existed.  Well, it turns out that someone — bless 'em — found the original negative of the whole thing.  This has prompted director Peter Hunt to do a new cut, which he considers definitive and final.  It's 166 minutes and includes all the musical numbers.  I'm told the video and audio are stunning and that Hunt's commentary on the audio track tells the amazing story of how this movie was made whole.  Click here to order it from Amazon.Com.

We've lost another funny man.  Most folks first knew of Avery Schreiber either as (a) half the comedy team of Burns and Schreiber or (b) the gregarious Captain Mancini in the legendary sitcom, My Mother, The Car.  (The good Captain was an automotive fanatic always trying to wrest Jerry Van Dyke's 1928 Porter — i.e., his mother — away from him.  It was ironic casting since Avery hated cars and driving.)  And he was great in both those roles, and the hundreds of others he portrayed in a rich, full career.

But those who came near him also knew him as one of the best acting teachers — especially in the area of improvisational comedy, the specialty of his alma mater, Second City.  One of the many routines he developed there was a Samurai Landlord that a later student, John Belushi, seized upon and made his own.

It was at Second City that Avery met Jack Burns and they developed the cab driver routine that soon made them famous.  A lot of us fondly remember their TV appearances, including Our Place — a wonderful, short-lived variety series in which they starred in 1967 — and the 1973 Burns and Schreiber Comedy Hour.  They remained teamed until the mid-seventies when Burns turned more to writing, Schreiber to acting and teaching.  Within the community of actors who specialize in comedy, voiceover and improvisation, Avery was a much-loved, universally-respected presence.  He passed away this morning and tonight, a lot of very fine improv actors, trained by him to think on their feet, don't know what to say.

Several folks — first and foremost, ace writer Joe Adamson — have e-mailed me about this paragraph in the obit for MCA mogul Lew Wasserman that appeared in The New York Times.  (Here's a link to the entire obituary.)

…for "Jaws," Mr. Wasserman took out prime-time television commercials for weeks before the movie was screened, and then had it released simultaneously in nearly 1,000 theaters nationwide.  The same type of sweeping national publicity campaign was used with equal success for other MCA blockbusters, like "Star Wars," "Indiana Jones" and "E.T."  Rival studios took notice and began marketing their big films the same way.

Yes, MCA (Universal) put out E.T.  But Star Wars was a Twentieth-Century Fox release…and the Indiana Jones movies (none of which has yet been named Indiana Jones) have been from Paramount.  Y'know, there once was a day when The New York Times didn't make this kind of mistake…

Another paragraph in the obit is, alas, correct.  It has to do with how Wasserman went from representing actors as an agent to being a producer whose company was soon able to purchase Universal Studios…

In time, he decided to involve his agency directly in film and television production. "I felt our organization was capable of earning more than 10 percent, and that we could do better on the other side of the table," he said of his strategy to The New York Times.  This represented an obvious conflict of interest because MCA would be hiring actors and directors whom it was supposed to be representing.  But in 1952, Mr. Wasserman obtained from the Screen Actors Guild a blanket exemption from union rules that forbade talent agencies from involving themselves in production. It helped that Ronald Reagan was president of the guild at the time: he was an MCA client grateful to Mr. Wasserman for having recently negotiated a long-term million-dollar contract for him with a studio.

In 1959, MCA/Universal purchased a number of film libraries, including Paramount's, to put on television.  In 1960, the Screen Actors Guild went on strike over residuals and wound up making one of the worst deals in Hollywood history — one that meant billions to MCA and nothing to actors whose pre-1960 films were run on television.  The head of the actors' negotiating team who rammed the deal through SAG was Ronald Reagan.  (And Reagan performed other services for Wasserman: In 1962, when MCA was the subject of a government anti-trust probe, Reagan was called as a witness and developed total amnesia.  Shortly after, MCA got involved in a number of real estate transactions with Reagan that made him a multi-millionaire.)

This is why we have dishonest government in this country: Because guys like Reagan not only get away with such deals but wind up claiming that they stand for honor and integrity.  This also applies to various deals by presidents named Bush, our current vice-president and many others including — to be fair — a hefty number of Democrats, as well.  I think I would have been more willing to believe that Bill Clinton was morally unfit to be president if any of the folks claiming this had any problem with the way some of our other elected officials have become very, very wealthy.

Tomorrow (Friday) evening, The Learning Channel is running Penn & Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour — 6 PM in most time zones.  It's a series of under-publicized specials in which The Bad Boys of Magic — lo, how they must hate that nickname — tour the world and swap tricks with the locals.  The one in China a month or two ago was terrific.  I believe this one is India and I haven't seen it yet but have already set the machine to grab it.  You might want to do likewise.  They have an amazing capacity to bridge the language barrier via their shared skills.  (Not that it inhibits Teller's part of the act…)

The Orange County Register recently ran an article on Neal Kirby, son of Jack Kirby, which used as its hook the notion that Jack was the first artist on Spider-Man.  Neal is a helluva good guy and very bright, so I don't know why the article contains about eleven inaccuracies per square inch.  (Jack did not draw the first eight Spider-Man stories, he did not sue Marvel, he did not create or even claim to have created Skull the Slayer, etc.)  This is not at all uncommon when the mainstream press writes about comics…and not even all that unusual when people in comics write or talk about comics.  As I've mentioned elsewhere on this site, Jack Kirby was a brilliant, talented and very honest man who was just not very good at organizing his thoughts when he was being interviewed.  His memory was not so much bad as it was disconnected: The truth was usually in there but you sometimes had to assemble it like a jigsaw puzzle and recognize when Jack got his nouns confused.

And once in a while, he just plain said the wrong thing, as witness one oft-quoted interview wherein Jack said he'd designed Spider-Man's costume.  Jack did not — Steve Ditko did — and Jack was embarrassed that such a thing had emanated from his own mouth.  (In another interview once, Jack said that I'd created Captain America — a stunning pre-natal accomplishment, if true.)

In truth, Jack did not believe he'd designed Spider-Man's famous costume.  He did believe that he'd suggested to Marvel the notion of doing a character named Spiderman (no hyphen) who walked on walls and had spider-like senses and lived with his aunt, although the particular hero that Jack developed or helped Stan Lee develop as per that premise was quite different from the final version.

There are other accounts from Stan Lee and Steve Ditko of the character's inception.  Based on my discussions with all three and a few other folks who were lurking on the premises, I take none of them at full value, though I decided all three versions were honestly-remembered and, if one tosses out the more outrageous parts, they sorta fit together into a "here's what probably happened" scenario.  One of these days, for whatever it's worth, I'll publish what I believe transpired…but even if I'm right, it still leaves certain questions of semantics as to which man or men "created" the hero.  Depends a lot on your definition of "creation," which is a concept that has been defined in many ways by many people, some of whom have configured their definitions in odd and inconsistent ways.  Ultimately, I don't think "Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko" is inaccurate but it may not be the entire story.  If this had been a screenplay written under Writers Guild rules instead of a comic book, the credit would probably read, "Story by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Screenplay by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko."  And even that would leave ample room for debate.

Here's something for you to read.  Shelley Berman is, as we all know, one of the great comedians of all time.  A very funny, innovative man.  Many years ago, in a clever book called A Hotel Is A Funny Place…, he set down a series of letters describing his war with the staff of a hotel in which he was residing.

The war was about the distribution of little soaps in his room.  It was very funny in the book and even funnier, later, when he performed it on stage.  For some reason, the text of it became one of those stories that people pass around on the Internet, claiming it actually happened to a friend.  A year or three ago, someone e-mailed it to me claiming it was the actual, no-kidding correspondence of his pal, Harvey…this, despite the fact that the person authoring "Harvey's" half of the letters clearly signs his name, "S. Berman."

Anyway, as many of you know, the site, www.snopes.com, does a fine, fascinating job of debunking, verifying or clarifying popular rumors and urban legends.  They have this one therefore, properly identified, and therefore you have the chance to read the entire text of it by clicking here.  (It was also on Mr. Berman's most recent comedy CD — Shelley Berman Live Again — which is, alas, outta-print and hard to come by.  If you glom onto one and hear the routine on it, one of the audience members you'll hear howling is me.)

By the by: Mr. Berman is still performing and still as funny as ever.  A few years ago, when I was writing/voice-directing Garfield & Friends, we had him in once to play a role and he was terrific.  We also had Stan Freberg and Jonathan Winters on the show.  Once upon a time, my entire collection of comedy records consisted of Stan Freberg, Jonathan Winters, Bob Newhart and Shelley Berman.  And, but for a scheduling conflict, we would have gotten Bob, too…

P.S. (Added at 3:45 AM)  Just noticed that Shelley Berman has it posted on his website.  Much better place for you to read it…and check out his message board.  Here's the preferred link.  Good night.

Don't expect any updates here for a few days.  I had a computer crash last night.  Didn't lose any files but I lost about a day just getting things back to normal.

Also: In what I'm sure is an unrelated event, one of my domains (evanier.com) got "spoofed" by a spammer.  This means that he sent out thousands — probably, hundreds of thousands — of e-mails to people offering some sort of loony investment deal and giving them a link to a website that explains all.  But he set it so that the e-mail appears to come from an address at my domain.  This means that recipients will think they're being spammed by someone from my domain and, if the recipient's address is invalid, the spam e-mail bounces back to me.  Before I arranged to filter them out, I'd received several hundred messages telling me that the e-mail I "sent" was undeliverable.

Between the two problems, I'm thinking of chucking the computer and hauling out my old manual Olivetti-Underwood.  A friend of mine once told me that, after spending three days purging his system of a virus, he was thinking much the same thing.  Said he, "If I could figure out a way to download porn on an IBM Selectric, I'd go back to it."

Another plug for a friend's website: Daniel Will-Harris knows more about computers and page design than anyone else I know, and there's loads of interesting stuff about fonts and layout on his site, which is at www.will-harris.com.  However, what I really want to refer you to is his other site, which is www.schmoozeletter.com, which is full of interesting writings, mostly of a non-computer nature.  And I especially want to call your attention to this installment of his Schmoozeletter, which is the extraordinary story of how he responded one recent evening when he smelled smoke.  Knowing Daniel, I have no doubt his account is totally honest and accurate.