You're such a consistent blogger, and it's clear you are paying regular attention to what's happening on YouTube and certain online reporting and blogging spaces. On the other hand, you don't strike me as someone who would be particularly interested in what's happening on platforms like X, Instagram or TikTok.
I'm curious what social media platforms you are part of, and which ones you pay the most attention to. What is your daily social media routine like?
My daily routine is no routine. I have a whole mess o' bookmarks and I just randomly pick ones to visit and often, one site leads me to another. I do post comic book covers daily on Instagram and often do a little following of those who follow me. I was active on Twitter when it was Twitter but when it became X, I became scarce there. I went on TikTok to sign up my name and I don't think I ever went back and…well, you can kinda tell where I've been by what I link you to.
I'm on Facebook and YouTube a lot…and Facebook often leads me to other crevices of the World Wide Web. I also, because of the blog, get a lot of e-mails from folks linking me to things they think I'd find of interest.
A few years ago, I opened an e-mail account under a bogus name and I subscribed (or somehow got on the mailing lists) for dozens of websites covering a wide range of viewpoints. They range from loathers of Donald Trump and his kind to folks who I think are up on Mount Rushmore, clearing brush to make room for his puss to go right next to Lincoln's. Once or twice a week, I will wade into the mailbox for that account and read whatever snags my interest.
I also have Google Alerts set up to show me, in that account, headlines that pertain to about two dozen names and keywords.
But like I said, I don't have a real routine. I just kinda jump around, hyperlinking my way from here to there and being very skeptical about most of what I encounter. And I don't really use the "social" part of social media to meet people because I already know enough people. Some days, I feel like it's way more than enough.
I just read your update about your ankle and it occurred to me that you have not posted about your backyard cats in a while. I imagine you are in no position to feed them. How are they doing? Hope they are OK.
Sorry to say, Glen, they're not OK. They're probably all deceased…though it's not as sad as that probably sounds. I'm fairly sure that all the feral cats that ever found their way to the AYCE buffet that used to be in my backyard lived much longer lives than most strays do. Of the four in the photo below, three passed away on the premises and Max just stopped coming around a few years ago and I think it's safe to assume he's gone too. Max is the large grey one on the right and he ate so much, I was thinking we might have to get him a gastric bypass.
I fed a succession of ferals in my backyard for years and every time one disappeared or died, there were still others showing up for food so I kept putting food out for them and that attracted more cats…and possums…and raccoons…and some neighbors told me they spotted the occasional coyote. Finally in 2021, there was an extended period with only one cat and when that one died, I decided it was the right time to stop putting out chow. It would only attract raccoons and raccoons tended to relieve themselves a lot in my backyard and pee in the pool. It smells so much better out there now.
And that decision had the added value of relieving me of the responsibility. They would get fed if I still had that hungry menagerie out there. I do get around and I have lots of folks visiting me — and two cleaning ladies — but I don't have to worry about feeding felines if there's a moment when it's not possible. And yes, I do miss them…but I think it's better to not attract them here if I can't be as consistent as I used to be. I'd sometimes feel guilty when I was away from home for a while and when I returned, they were sitting on the porch with that "We've been here an awful lot time waiting for dinner" look.
Hey, it's the latest installment of Everything You Need to Know About Saturday Night Live, bringing us up to Season 20, which led to another one of those "Is this the last season?" crisis points. Since they're now celebrating fifty years of SNL, the show obviously survived but this was one of several periods in its history when it felt like it wouldn't…
I've occasionally mentioned my longtime friend Dan Gheno on the blog. I've known Dan a lonnnnng time and have been delighted to watch him become one of the most respected painters of portraits in the field today. I'm also amazed that his career survived the days when he would pencil covers for fanzines and I would ink them. Here's a recent interview with my pal.
Almost simultaneously, two separate followers of this site sent me this graphic with a quote attributed to Stan Lee and asked me if he'd really said it. Apparently, this quote and the graphic have been going around the Internet for some time but escaped my gaze until the other day…
Here's my answer: I don't know if he ever said it but I know someone who did…me. In fact, with the word "tits" in place of "boobs" and in reference to the question of whether Marvel Comics on TV would ever replace Marvel Comics on paper, I said it to Stan over lunch one day.
That's my joke…or at least, I think it's my joke. Every so often, you make one up and later discover that someone else made it up first…and maybe it's a coincidence or maybe you even heard it without recalling that you did. Even if Stan got it from me, he may not have realized it. But of course, I'm not sure he ever said it. Does anyone have proof he did?
Keeping on the topic of Broadway musical numbers performed on the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, here from the 1980 telethon is Sandy Duncan performing a number from Peter Pan. I saw her do this show with Christopher Hewett as her Captain Hook and she was pretty good…
And now here from the 2009 telethon, we have Cathy Rigby — with more cast members plus flying — performing part of the same number and part of another from Peter Pan. I saw her version of the show a couple of times and she was even better than pretty good…
In the previous post, I said that I didn't think Burke Moses was the gent playing Gaston in the excerpt of Beauty and the Beast performed on the Jerry Lewis Telethon. Well, Galen Fott — who seems to know a lot about such things — wrote me and seems sure that it was Burke Moses. I've decided he's almost certainly right. (By the way, Mr. Moses was not only great as Gaston but I saw him play the title role in Li'l Abner in a limited-run revival of that show in New York and he was real good as a hero, too.)
The fires in Southern California are still awful and still far, far from where I live. The National Weather Service is forecasting somewhere between a quarter and a half-inch of rain this weekend which will be wonderful if it happens. It would be enough to dampen things down but not so much as to create major mudslides. Mudslides are always a problem after big fires.
I'm not watching the news much and have nothing to say about the first days of Trump II that others aren't saying more eloquently and with more outrage than I can muster at the moment. Kevin Drum posted a good scorecard of where this country stood, statistic-wise, on the last day of Joe Biden's presidency. This might be handy to keep around. Inflation, for instance, is at 2.7%. A former friend of mine who loves everything Trump does even if it's illegal, was insisting inflation was at something like 20% under Biden and will be celebrating if Donald gets it down to 5%.
Posting here may be sluggish for a few days but we'll get it back up to speed.
From the 1995 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, here's the "Gaston" number from the Broadway/Disney musical of Beauty and the Beast. IMDB says this is Burke Moses, who originated the role of Gaston in New York but I don't think it is. [UPDATE, ADDED LATER: It is. See here.]
This is probably the national touring company and they were probably parked at the time in Los Angeles, which is where that year's Jerrython was produced…
One year ago this evening, I was in an upstairs bathroom here in my home, getting tidied-up because a lady friend was coming over to spend time with me. Suddenly — for no reason that has ever been determined — I was lying on the tile bathroom floor with a broken left ankle. I did not hit my head or hurt any other part of me but my ankle was screaming like Sam Kinison with his finger in a light socket.
Obviously, I needed help. My cell phone was in the adjoining bedroom and despite the pain, I managed to drag myself across the floor to the phone and dial 911. They said help was on the way. Shortly, the lady friend arrived. Moments later, two firemen arrived. A few minutes later, two more firemen arrived. It took all four firemen to carry me down the stairs and out to an ambulance.
I was very fortunate that I could reach my cell phone. I was also very fortunate that my cell phone has an app on it that allows me to unlock my front door remotely. Things could have been a lot worse for me if those two things had not been true…or if the firemen had not been so prompt and efficient. Or had the folks at the hospital to which I was transported not been so good at their jobs.
I spent four days in that hospital. I was then moved to a rehab facility where I spent 33 days rehabbing. Fortunately, I had a couple of real good nurses who took wonderful care of me. During that time, I had my personal assistant and a terrific plumber-handyman make some adjustments to my home so that when I returned to it, I could live upstairs. That's where I am right now — in my office and up here, I also have my bedroom, two bathrooms and a couple other rooms. Since I returned home, that's where I've lived. I only go downstairs to go to (a) doctor appointments or (b) Comic-Con.
So what happens when I need something from downstairs…from, for instance, the kitchen? I have my wonderful cleaning lady Dora here several days a week. I have my super-efficient assistant Jane here several days a week. I have folks who visit me all the time. If I plan a little, I can have someone here when delivery folks deliver or when I need something brought upstairs or taken downstairs. I can get upstairs or downstairs when I have to but it takes a while and I need both hands on the railings so I can't carry anything up or down.
Apart from that, it hasn't been that bad…and that's not sarcasm. It really hasn't been that bad. If you'd told me before I broke my ankle that I was going to break my ankle and spend over a month in a rehab facility and then have very limited walking for much of a year and struggle to get up or down stairs, I would have thought, "Geez, that sounds like the most horrible year I've ever had" but it really and truly hasn't been that bad.
I have a great support team, I spent some money wisely to rearrange my living facilities…and I was going to be spending most of the year at my computer anyway. I would say I'm like 80% of the way back to normal and that I was also lucky to get a great physical trainer. She comes by twice a week and she'll take care of that last 20%.
I am not recommending broken ankles to anyone. But sometimes you have a little catastrophe of which you're able to say, "That wasn't as bad as I would have thought." That's what I'm saying with this update.
I could have picked many, many different books by Jules Feiffer to put next to his photo but I picked the one that meant the most to me. In 1965 when The Great Comic Book Heroes came out, it filled in so much that I didn't know about the history of comics, it was like Information Overload. And along with that information came a ton of inspiration. It showed a respect for the material it covered — in short supply at that time — and this already-successful man was confessing to a love of things that I loved. The book was also, like all his cartoons, written in a witty manner that made instant contact with the reader. I would never claim I ever did it anywhere as well as he did but I sure tried.
Feiffer was a man who did something that then seemed impossible: He moved from lowly-paid work in the lowly-regarded medium of comic books to a prestigious weekly syndicated strip and from there to writing important works for the stage and screen. That became more frequent later on but at the time, it was like golfing on the moon. Obits like this one and this one will explain how he did this.
I only had the privilege of meeting him briefly on a few occasions…never long enough to get to know the man or communicate to him how much I admired his work and how much it meant to me. It meant a lot…and since I have a whole shelf of his works, it will continue to do so.
I'm hearing too much bad news these days. I need to watch this clip and you can watch it along with me. The young lady is Celina Smith and the policeman was played by Ben Davis. I don't know the dog's real name…
Before you read Part 2 of this article, you might want to read Part 1.
If you know anything about comic book history, you know that the business endured a major slump in the fifties. Folks in the industry — some of them, at least — were worried that there would soon be no comic books. If that sounds insanely alarmist, you need to remember that almost all those people had grown up on pulp magazines and many had worked on them…and by the mid-fifties, there was almost no pulp industry left.
Comics had gotten a bad name because of the more violent and sexy ones, and a lot of newsstands were giving up on comics, plus there was the serious worry of government-imposed censorship. A lot of comic book publishers did go outta business and those that remained were not unhappy to see their competition thin out. In fact, some of them were jubilant. When most of the remaining publishers formed the Comics Code to self-censor comics and improve the image of the field, Jack Kirby believed that the primary goal — and if not the primary then certainly the secondary — was to stop new publishers from getting into the marketplace…and indeed, almost none did.
In the mid-to-late seventies, a new form of distribution took over getting comic books to the marketplace. It was called Direct Sales and under it, comic books were no longer returnable. The retailers bought them and sold them and if they didn't sell…well, that was the retailers' problem. Some would tell you that Direct Sales saved the industry. The old system had become dysfunctional and it wasn't working. The new system did…and there was a key difference once Direct Sales caught on: There were suddenly a lot of new publishers.
Between the time most of the major publishers formed the Comics Code and the time Direct Sales started up, it was almost impossible to start a new comic book company. The major publishers controlled distribution and they didn't let newcomers in. The few companies that tried — Tower, Milson, Myron Fass, Skywald, one or two others — didn't last long. Milson (aka Lightning Comics) published three issues of Fatman the Human Flying Saucer and two of Tod Holton, Super Green Beret before folding up shop.
Two-fifths of the entire output of Lightning Comics.
In the early seventies, I was involved peripherally with two attempts to start new companies. The Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate wanted to publish their own comics of Tarzan, Korak, John Carter of Mars and a few other E.R.B. properties. They had popular characters and the necessary funding. What they didn't have and couldn't get was distribution. They finally decided the only way to get their characters on the stands was to let D.C. publish them and that arrangement did not end well for them.
Almost the exact same thing happened when Hanna-Barbera decided to try and publish their own comics. They wound up having to let Marvel publish them and that didn't end well for them. You might think those deals didn't end well for DC or Marvel either but I think at both companies, there were at least some folks who were very happy to have effectively blocked potential competitors.
There really were no new companies to speak of until Direct Sales Distribution became a significant way to sell comic books. Direct Sales offered something that regular magazine distribution did not. There were no off-sale dates. Comic books were not returned for credit. Like I said, the ones that didn't sell right away became the retailers' problem.
So now let's go back to the example of Action Comics that we talked about in Part 1 of this article. Under the old distribution method, an issue would go on sale and then it was supposed to remain on the racks until it was purchased or until the next issue arrived, at which point the unsold copies would be returned for credit. But that wasn't the way it usually worked. Usually, as new comics came in, the retailer would replace comics that had been on the rack for a while with newly-arriving comics.
After all, most stores didn't have room for an unlimited display of comic books. Comics didn't make them that much money. So that issue of Action Comics didn't get four weeks of display in most stores. It would be lucky to get two weeks and obviously, that cut deeply into sales. At one of the stores where I bought comics in my teens, display space was so limited that comics stayed on sale for one week. They were delivered every Tuesday and Thursday…and every Tuesday, the store sent back everything that was unsold.
The store was open for fifteen hours a day so a comic that arrived in the Tuesday shipment was purchasable for about 105 hours a week and one that arrived on Thursday got about 75. Which brings us back to the Big Town Market located at the corner of Pico Boulevard and La Cienega located — I just figured this out on Google maps — a 2.8 mile bus ride from my home. Here's that photo of the place again…
There were places closer to me that carried new comics…so why did I from time to time hop on a bus and ride to and from the Big Town Market? Because they sold old new comic books. Big Town was a big store and they had a big space devoted to big comic book racks and they didn't return their unsold comics promptly.
They only sent unsold comics back when they were so wrinkled and shabby from kids pawing through them that no one would buy them. If I missed the latest Action Comics at the stores that were closer to where I lived — and it was easy to do that at the store that sent everything back every Tuesday — I could almost surely find a copy at Big Town.
Those who collect current comics in this century have it easy. They may not have a comic book shop near them but whatever store they do get to probably has all the recently-released issues and in good condition. Back in my day — and yes, I know just using that phrase is showing one's years — we had to go to our newsstands at least once a week and then hunt about for what was sold out before we got there. So perhaps once a month, I had to make that long bus ride to and from Big Town. At least I had something to read on the ride home.
And as I said when I started this, I don't think I ever bought anything to eat at that market — not a candy bar or a bag o' chips or anything Just comic books. I know food is a necessity of life but when I was that age, so were the new comic books.
Here's a musical number from a 1958 episode of The Pat Boone Chevy Showcase featuring Pat, Shirley Jones and Dick Van Dyke. Dick has always said that he never thought of himself as a dancer until he won the lead in the Broadway show, Bye Bye Birdie…and yet here he is, two years before Bye Bye Birdie showing himself to be a pretty good hoofer…
…make sure you're aware of this recently-enacted law…
Assembly Bill 413, or California's "daylighting" law, went into effect in 2024 and prohibits drivers from stopping, standing or parking their car within 20 feet of a crosswalk and 15 feet of a crosswalk with a curb extension. During the first year of the law's implementation, violators were let off with a warning, unless the violation occurred in a properly marked area. But that warning period ends Jan. 1.
So as of nineteen days ago, you're subject to a citation if you park too close to a crosswalk. Take care.
I'm not watching — and I shall continue to not watch — any of the inauguration activities. That's not because this country is installing a man who is a convicted felon and a jury-decreed molester and an incredible liar and you can fill in other things that he is for yourself. No, I've never watched the inauguration or related festivities of any president. What I see of them always looks like we're crowning a king, not installing a public servant. My kind of president would probably say, "Skip the coronation and put the money towards something more important. I just want to be sworn in and then I'll go right to work."
I don't expect to ever see that happen…but there are a lot of things about government that I don't expect to ever see happen. I'll bet you have a list of your own. We probably all have our lists of things we desperately don't want to see happen…but in the coming months, will.
