All six episodes of Comic-Con Begins were on the Sirius XM website yesterday. I know because I listened to four of the six. At the moment, none are…and the other sites all seem to only have Episode 1 now. Maybe that's how they're supposed to be released….one this week, another one next week and so on. So some of you may not get to Part Four for a while.
So far, I've heard a lot more about Dr. Timothy Leary and George Clayton Johnson than I have about anyone who ever wrote or drew a comic book except maybe for Scott Shaw! and Jack Kirby. I assume the last two parts will make up for that.
So I'm working my way through the six-episode podcast on the Secret Origins of Comic-Con International on Sirius XM. It's titled Comic-Con Begins. As I listened to the first two parts, I was thinking a better title would be something about the history of all science-fiction and comic-related fandom. I heard an awful lot of stories being told that I don't think most listeners will understand happened at other conventions, often before there even was a Comic-Con.
I'm also hearing an awful lot of anecdotes and comments from voices I recognize but I'm not certain who they are. Most of you will probably recognize almost no one. And yes, I understand it's audio-only. I understand that if you build a montage of testimony from 100+ people, you can't identify more than a few by name. I'm just saying I wish I knew for sure who'd said some of those things if only so I can say, "Well, if that person said it, it must be true."
I hope people who listen to this series will understand what is to me a key point about Comic-Con: It's huge. And it's huge because it embraces all different interests. If you're interested in adventure-themed videogames, you can wallow for four days in programming and a section of the exhibit hall devoted wholly to adventure-themed videogames. If you're into cosplay, you can have an all-cosplay convention experience. Or it's all about Marvel-themed movies or all about The Walking Dead.
In one part of the podcast, someone — and I have no idea who — was talking about how when the original Star Trek TV show was on, everybody watched it and everybody loved it. I was in high school at the time and there were kids I knew who said that…to which I'd say, "If that were true, it wouldn't be forty-ninth in the Nielsen Ratings and NBC wouldn't keep trying to cancel it."
I'm not knocking anyone's passions; merely the belief that if my friends and I love something, that means everyone else must love it. Well, maybe not. It's like those people who said, "I can't understand how Donald Trump won the presidency. I don't know anyone who voted for him!"
More than a few times, people have said to me something like, "Mark, everyone at Comic-Con goes to that Quick Draw! panel you do each year!" And I thank them but point out that Comic-Con, when they actually have Comic-Con, attracts 150,000 people a year and we do Quick Draw! once during it in a room that seats a little over 3000. You don't have to be Buckminster Fuller to figure out that not everyone who goes to Comic-Con goes to Quick Draw! 120,000+ of 'em probably have never heard of it.
So though I've been to as many Comic-Cons in San Diego as anyone, I've never experienced a lot of things that some folks in this series experienced. Never saw as much drug use as some said was prevalent. Never saw much political activism there, even during the height of the Vietnam protests. (I saw plenty of it elsewhere and even participated in some of it…but Comic-Con seemed to me a place where people went to escape from that for a few days.)
Shel Dorf. Photo by me.
I've made it as far into the six-part series as the chapter on Shel Dorf. In it, someone says…
I don't think there's any wrong way to portray Shel because everybody's view of him is probably valid in some way. But I hope at some point, whether it's me or somebody else, someone just says "I felt sorry for the guy." Because he did start this convention by many definitions and yeah, he got a lot of credit he didn't deserve. But I kept finding myself feeling sad about what happened to him.
That was my voice saying that. I should have added — or maybe I did and they didn't include it — that he was the root cause of just about all the bad stuff that happened to him; that he had a wonderful sweet side at times but an occasional hateful/bitter side that caused him to do some very self-destructive things. There was no one involved with running that convention that tried to harm him or ostracize him. He did it all to himself. On this planet, as you may have observed, there are people who do that. And when you try to help them, they just plain refuse to be helped.
And the only other two things I have to say about the series so far are (a) Brinke Stevens is an enchanting narrator and (b) I still wince when someone, purporting to speak for a group of which I feel a part, announces that we're all geeks or dweebs or nerds or misfits. I've never felt that way and I don't see why anyone wants to self-describe that way.
My longtime pal Scott Shaw! and I have had a friendly discussion that has resulted in a long Facebook thread. Scott and others say that it was the norm, back in the sixties or maybe even seventies to get bullied or beaten-up for reading comics. Again, I'm not questioning that that was what happened to them. I just have this to say: I'm 69 years old. All my life, it has been no secret at all that I loved comic books. And all my life, I have never been bullied or beaten-up for reading comics. (Actually, I've never been beaten-up at all, though I can certainly recall times I probably deserved it.)
Again, we're talking about believing that the common experiences of you and your friends are indicative of everyone's experiences. I had other kids pick on me for being younger than they were, more of a smartass than they were, allegedly brainier than they were, a worse athlete than they were and a few other reasons. Being into comics was never one of them. No one ever made me feel weird about it.
In my school, if someone said, "Hey, you know Evanier reads comic books," the almost-certain reply would have been, "Who gives a shit?" Those who worry too much about what others think of them are probably making the mistake of presuming that others think of them. That's an old saying that I just made up.
I will write more about Comic-Con Begins when I finish it in a day or three. For now, you can hear it on Sirius XM radio (this link might get you to it) or Apple Podcasts (this link might get you to it) or Pandora (this link might get you to it) and I saw it on Spotify as well. Find it and give a listen.
Hello. It may look like I am back after a brief hiatus but I'm only partly back. Don't expect a lot on this blog this week and if something does appear, it'll probably be something already written that I can publish with two clicks.
I had a whole lot of things to deal with, none of which would be of the slightest interest to you. To pare down the "to do" list to a manageable length, I had to be not only alone but to not pay much (almost any) attention to anything but me. I largely stayed off social media, largely did not look at my e-mail or the news, largely did not speak to anyone except as necessary to get a few things off that "to do" list.
I also slept a lot. Every so often, your body needs that. More importantly: Every so often, your brain needs that.
I leave you now to continue hacking away at that "to do" list. I'll post some already-written things later. I apologize for the hiatus but it's one of the reasons I don't charge for access to this blog. It's so I can put me first when I need to.
The improv comedy community is mourning John Paragon today. The news that this clever, funny gent passed away last April from unknown causes is just now being circulated.
You probably know him best as "Jambi" the genie in Pee-wee Herman's playhouse but he did an awful lot of movies and TV shows in other roles. I first knew him from The Groundlings, the L.A.-based improv company, where the Pee-wee character and his show were born. John was a major player there…outrageously versatile, capable of playing a wide range of characters. I later worked with him on a short-lived ABC series in 1983 called The Half-Hour Comedy Hour. No matter what we gave him, he always managed to make it work.
I really don't know what John's been doing for the last twenty-or-so years. And what I really don't know is why we never saw him in the cast of Saturday Night Live like Phil Hartman and Jon Lovitz and others with whom he shared that Groundlings stage. I can only point to about eighty SNL cast members he was better than.
The Hollywood Reporter says that the AMC company is about to take over operation of two of the big movie multiplexes in Los Angeles but the fate of the Arclight in Hollywood — and therefore the Cinerama Dome which I dearly love — remains "murky." To quote a producer I used to work for, "This is the kind of thing that either gets settled with money or it doesn't get settled with money. Nothing else matters."
I got a few e-mails from people who said they'd had bad experiences at the Arclight in Hollywood or at other Arclights. I have no particular opinion about the chain. I just think the Cinerama Dome is a great place to see movies — especially It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. If the place gets acquired and remains in operation, I hope its management has the good sense to show that film every few months.
Today, in what some are claiming is the last legal challenge that the Affordable Care Act may face for some time, the Supreme Court of the U.S. of A. killed a legal challenge by Republicans. Okay, fine, I'm all for that…but I doubt it won't be challenged again. And again and again and again and again…as long as it's a potent issue to rile up Republicans and get them to turn out the vote and donate to G.O.P. candidates. The main issues are the ones that accomplish that.
Of course, the easiest way to get rid of Obamacare would be to come up with a comprehensive health plan proposal that a majority of Americans — or even a majority of health care professionals — would look at and say, "Hey, that would be better." But no one opposed to the A.C.A. has done that and I wonder if anyone has really tried.
When he was running against Hillary, Trump said he had one…or he could put one together in days…or it would be unveiled in two weeks…and of course, he never had one. I'm curious if he ever turned to the kind of people who might be able to design one and said, "Can it be done? Can you guys write one and I'll call it Trumpcare?" Because if he'd actually come up with one that would, as he promised, cover more people more fully for less cost, he'd be a hero to everyone.
Republicans would love him because he got rid of Obamacare — which some of them seem to hate just because it has "Obama" in its nickname. Democrats would love him for, as he promised, covering more people more fully for less cost. Based on absolutely no info that it happened, I can imagine him assembling a secret task force to determine if it would be possible and being told that it wasn't; that it was simply impossible to cover more people more fully for less money. And he sure wouldn't want to admit that.
It's Peter and Gordon pretending to be singing and playing — and not trying very hard to look like they're not just miming to their record of "Lady Godiva." As you'll see, they're introduced by Milton Berle on his 1966 series on ABC and I half-expected to see him riding a horse naked through the scene at some point. Uncle Miltie never liked it when the camera was on someone else.
This song was a respectable hit back in 1966, which is more than you could say for the 1966 Milton Berle Show. Since Berle's famous variety show on NBC had gone off the air in '56, he'd been lusting and campaigning to bring it back. Alas, he'd signed a "lifetime contract" (sort of) with that network and since they didn't want to bring it back, it didn't come back. He finally negotiated a downgrade of his exclusivity to NBC and did this series for ABC. It lasted one year and thereafter, "Mr. Television" never hosted his own TV show again…
So what's going on with the Pacific Theater chain, the Arclight Cinema business and — of greatest interest to some of us — the Cinerama Dome Theater up on Sunset here in Hollywood? Friends close to that industry keep telling me the Cinerama Dome will reopen and thrive and it will someday show the movie it was built to house — It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — again. But when? How? Who? Why?
Here's an article by Gene Maddaus about why it closed and what's going on with it. It left me more confused than before.
From James Corden's show last night: Corden, Marissa Jaret Winokur and Ariana Grande perform a Hairspray parody to celebrate the end of lockdowns. I don't watch this show very often. I think James Corden is brilliantly talented and able to do just about anything except interview guests without fawning all over them.
But I do love these little musical segments when he does them — though I can't help but wonder if his predecessor Craig Ferguson is watching and thinking, "How come he has twenty times the budget they gave me?"
I love Simone Biles. What she does is just magic and she got where she is the old-fashioned way: By being better at what she does than anyone else is or (maybe) has even been. Most sports bore me but I could watch this lady doing gymnastics forever…and I even like hearing her talk. Here she is debunking a lot of things that people believe about folks in her profession…
So I went to my 4:15 doctor's appointment (a very minor matter) in a medical building in Beverly Hills. Everyone I saw on the street on my way there was wearing a mask. Everyone in the building was wearing a mask. A sign on my doctor's door said masks were mandatory and indeed, everyone inside was wearing a mask.
On my way out, I passed another office in the building and there was a hysterical, furious person outside the door in the hall. She was unmasked and insisting that California was "open" and mask-wearing could no longer be required in any way.
The door to that office had the same sign my doctor had saying that you couldn't come in without one. She went in anyway and was told to get out and not to come back without a mask. She had exited angrily and was now out in the corridor, arguing with two nurses who had come out to explain the rules to her. Either on her way in or out, she had ripped most of the sign off the door.
For emphasis: This was a doctor's office. The doctor to whom she had come for medical care had put the sign up or approved having that sign up. And I don't think it would be a bad idea to wear a mask in any doctor's office, virus or no virus. There could be sick people in that office. That's where they tend to congregate.
The nurses kept saying, "The doctor can set the rules for his office" and the Very Loud Lady kept saying, "No, no! He's not allowed to require that anymore! No one is!" I don't know what medical condition the V.L.L. was there for but it was apparently much less important than winning that argument.
Finally, just after I got in the elevator to go down, she gave up and got in the elevator with me. Whereupon I got out and let it go down without me. Just before it did, I heard her say, "It's safe to ride with me!" I thought of saying, "According to C.D.C. guidelines, Stupid is still contagious." But I couldn't get it out before the doors closed.
California is "fully open" as of today. I'm not sure what that means. People are still catching the evil virus and even dying from it but I guess the rates are slow enough where someone decided that what being "closed" was doing to the economy was the greater menace. I don't see that the "open" sign is going to change my life in any meaningful way, at least for the near future. I have a doctor appointment in Beverly Hills at 4:15 and I'll bet every single person I see on the way there, there and on the way back to my car will be masked. I know I will be for most of that.
Many folks are writing me to say that a Golden Corral or some clone of Hometown Buffet is still open and operating near them. On the 'net, they've found, as I did, conflicting info as to whether the parent company that runs Hometown Buffet (and other brand names) is gone for good or merely hibernating. I wonder if that company knows.
With Broadway shuttered during The Pandemic, we've had a lot of amazing videos of folks who might otherwise be on stages but have to settle for singing show tunes on the web. Here's a great collection of folks including Gavin Creel, Nikki Renée Daniels, Norm Lewis, Amanda Castro, Jenn Gambatese, Jo Lampert, and Heath Saunders performing tunes from recent and classic musicals…
