Somewhere below in this post, you'll find a photo of me with my friend, the late Lorenzo Music. I don't know why I have such an unhappy look on my face because I always had a good time when I was with Lorenzo. The last few times I saw him, it was in a hospital room and if you could somehow overlook the fact that he was dying, it was still kinda fun to be around him.

In his career, Lorenzo went from being a writer to being a writer-producer to being one of the top voiceover performers in the business. He began the unlikely segue into his final career while he was working on the TV sitcom Rhoda, which he developed with this then-partner, David Davis. For it, they created the role of a hapless, hopeless doorman named Carlton, who would be heard (usually over an intercom) but never seen. Carlton was not the swiftest exemplar of his profession or the soberest…and his voice was provided by Lorenzo.

The show became popular and so did its tipsy doorman. Lorenzo began looking for ways to expand the character's fame and his own fortune. At one point, he recorded a record which someone has made into a little music video.  Here it is if you care to stop for a brief musical interlude…

Rhoda went off the air in 1978. One day in 1979, the phone rang in my old apartment and the following exchange occurred. I swear to you, this is exactly how it went…

ME: Hello!

CALLER: Yes, I'd like to speak to Mark Evanier.

ME: Hello, Lorenzo Music.

CALLER: (after a long pause) Wow. That's the fastest anyone's ever recognized my voice.

That was my introduction to Lorenzo. He explained to me why he was calling. He was working on a pilot for an animated, prime-time TV show called Carlton, Your Doorman for the MTM company. In '79, way after The Flintstones and way before The Simpsons, that was a pretty daring/different thing to attempt.

He and his new partner Barton Dean were writing it and Lorenzo, of course, was voicing the lead role. He explained he was looking for a writer with prime-time credentials (which I had) and also some understanding of animation (ditto, I'd like to think) to write a back-up script for the show and to become part of its staff if and when the show went to series. He was then pretty confident that it would.

I should explain what a back-up script is. Often, when a network commissions a pilot for a series, they will also have scripts written for two or three more episodes. This is so that when they judge the worthiness of buying that pilot as a series, they will also have those scripts to consider…some idea of where the show will go after the first week. Also, if they suddenly want to rush the series into production, A.S.A.P., they have the first few episodes already written.

Lorenzo mentioned another producer he knew who had recommended he talk to me. I did not recognize the name of this other producer at the time and do not recall it now. What I do recall is that this person (a) had read and liked a sample Maude script I'd written when I was up for a job on that show and (b) knew that I was writing cartoon shows for Hanna-Barbera and other studios. Lorenzo asked if I would come in and meet with him and Barton — and, oh yes, bring him a copy of that Maude script to read.

A few days later, I went in, gave them the script and they put me in a little room to watch a very rough cut of the Carlton pilot. It was missing music (not to be confused with Music), sound effects and some video but I thought it was pretty good.  There was a sense in which the character was diminished by being seen.  Before this, one of the most interesting things about him was that we, like Rhoda Morgenstern and other characters in the Rhoda show, had to guess what he looked like.

Now, we no longer had the intrigue of guessing.  He looked like Zonker in the Doonesbury strip, which is not what I imagined.  Still, if that's what his creator and voice said he looked like, who was I to argue?  After the viewing, I joined them and we discussed the show for a while.  Then I went home. and a few days later, this phone exchange occurred.  Again, this is exactly how it went…

ME: Hello!

CALLER WHO SOUNDED NOTHING LIKE LORENZO MUSIC: Is this Mark Evanier?

ME: Hello, Lorenzo Music trying to fool me with a phony voice.

SAME CALLER WHO NOW SOUNDED LIKE LORENZO MUSIC: Shit.

He told me my Maude script went over well with him and whoever else had read it there and they wanted me to write one of the two back-up scripts they were preparing. They also wanted me to help with some revisions on the pilot. I was fine with all that.  My agent made the appropriate deal and we went to work.

[IMPORTANT SIDEBAR: In 1979, all animation writing was either totally non-union or it was covered by the Animation Union, Local 839. Almost all cartoon writers felt that 839 did a miserable job of representing our interests and I was part of several legal attempts to get us out of that union and into the Writers Guild of America. Those attempts all failed but in later years, some progress was made. Many cartoon writing jobs (but not all) are now done under the aegis of the WGA. The Carlton, Your Doorman scripts were done under a WGA contract and no one noticed at the time.]

I worked a little with Lorenzo and Barton on funnying-up the pilot but I don't think any of my input ever made it into the finished product. I also wrote a script called "A Kiss is Just a Kiss." It revolved around a tenant in Carlton's building — an elderly Italian gent who talks and acts like a former Mafia Don. Carlton believes the man very much is one.  In his bumbling way, the doorman accidentally destroys much of the man's apartment and the man, weeping over the damages, grabs Carlton and gives him a kiss.

Carlton, horrified, believes he has been given a "kiss of death" — a signal that he has been marked for a mob hit and will soon be seen no longer. He grabs up his cat and flees for his life, hiding out for weeks in flophouses and wearing disguises, super-paranoid that everyone he sees is the assassin sent to wipe him out.

In the end, he finds out that he has not been marked to be killed; that the old Italian gent actually likes him and gave him the kiss because he thinks Carlton is cute and would like to date him. We had a discussion if in the end, Carlton could say something about how the old guy was a Fairy Godfather but since the script was never produced, we never got around to deciding if it was a good thing to say.  A very gay Production Assistant in the office thought it was hysterical and we had to keep it in.

We also, of course, never cast the role of the elderly Italian gent but Lorenzo knew just who he'd get to play the part. "Marlon Brando's a friend of mine," he remarked.  "I'll get him to come in and do it." I was ready to bet serious money that that would not happen but again, since the script was never produced, we never found out. In later years as I got to know Lorenzo better, I was not quite as willing to wager money on him being unable to bag Mr. Brando. If anyone could have, he could have.

The Carlton, Your Doorman pilot was finished and I was invited to a screening of it for the MTM brass. This led to the never-live-it-down moment when I stepped on the feet on Mary Tyler Moore. I wrote about that here.

Everyone at the screening loved the finished pilot or at least they laughed a lot and seemed fairly positive it would be picked up as a series in a matter of moments. It was not but it did air as a special the following year and it won the Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour), beating out a Dr. Seuss special, a Pink Panther special and She's A Good Skate, Charlie Brown.

In the meantime, Lorenzo's experiences dealing with the animation studio (Murakami-Wolf) on Carlton had led him to start drawing up plans a live-action situation comedy set in a place that made cartoons. This was also for the MTM company. He wanted me involved in that and we had several meetings about it, plus I took him on a tour of Hanna-Barbera and while there, introduced him to Gordon Hunt, who was then the voice director. This led to him auditioning for several of their shows and eventually being cast in a role on the Pac-Man series. He also briefly worked there as a writer helping develop a Saturday morning series called The Snorks. I don't think anything he did wound up in the eventual series.

I also don't think he did anything for The Duck Factory, an MTM sitcom set in a place that made cartoons, which debuted in 1984. That show was created by Allan Burns, a top comedy writer-producer who had once-upon-a-time written cartoons for Jay Ward. Lorenzo's take on the arena never went very far and I have no idea if or how one project led to the other, though I was asked to come in and write one. Before that could happen, the show was canceled as is often the case with shows where someone thinks of hiring Evanier.

By that point, Lorenzo's writing/producing career had been largely displaced by a busy voiceover career. He signed with a good agent, assembled a great "demo" tape and suddenly (and surprisingly) wound up doing hundreds, if not thousands of commercials as well as a number of other cartoons. The biggie, of course, was that in 1984 he was cast in the role of Garfield the Cat. His unique sound was heard in a dozen or so prime-time specials and beginning in 1988, in the Saturday morning Garfield and Friends show, which I wrote and voice-directed.

Contrary to what others have assumed, I had nothing to do with him getting his Garfield job and he had nothing to do with me getting mine. Just a coincidence.  It was great working with him again and getting to know him well. He really was a smart, talented and funny man…and if you think I know everyone in the world, I'm a veritable hermit compared to Lorenzo.

Okay, so that's the story and it's run so long that I think I'd better put up one of those warning signs that it's a long post. If you've got another 23 minutes to spend on this topic, someone has uploaded the entire Carlton, Your Doorman pilot to the 'net and here it is. I really liked it and I can say that because I don't think anything I suggested made it into the show.

I don't know why it didn't sell. I asked Lorenzo once and he said, "I think the network just plain wasn't interested in doing an animated series then. MTM had the clout to get them to fund the pilot but I don't think MTM had the clout to get them to make it a series." That's as good an explanation as any. In Hollywood, projects go forward or get killed for far stupider reasons than that. See what you think…

I've long thought that one of the many mistakes Richard Nixon made during the Watergate mess was this: He had supporters who for their own reasons, including but not limited to stubbornness and raw emotional response, wanted to continue to support him. But he failed to supply them with sufficient rebuttal information for when their friends said, "Well, it looks like your boy Nixon is guilty." The guy was guilty but he could have given his fans something — anything! — to say when they were put on the spot to defend their fealty to him. I had one Nixon-loving friend who could only mutter, "Well, I'm sure in the end he'll explain it all in a way that makes sense and vindicates him." He said that over and over for months until even he couldn't believe it any longer.

Want another example of much the same thing? One of the reasons so many people came to believe that O.J. Simpson was guilty-as-hell for that double murder was that his fans had no answer for the question, "Well, if he didn't do it, who did?" It's possible of course that an accused party could be innocent but we simply don't have an alternative scenario…but that doesn't fly so well in The Court of Public Opinion. Simpson loyalists could only fumble out an incomplete theory that the murders had been committed by Colombian Drug Lords even though there was zero evidence any Colombian Drug Lords had been within a thousand miles of the murder scene.

This memo that's been released — the one Trump says "completely vindicates" him even though it does no such thing is an attempt to give his supporters something to say. Last night on Bill Maher's show, David Frum said its main purpose was to give Sean Hannity a piece of paper to wave on camera saying there's proof of a conspiracy to railroad Trump. Those who want to believe will believe that. They now have something to say at parties. A secret memo said so, never mind who wrote it or what it says. It's a secret memo. Secret memos are never wrong except when we don't want to believe what they say.

To read a copy of the memo that's been annotated to explain everything, go here. To read an overview of the whole thing, go here.

• This just in: Ghost of Al Capone releases secret memo alleging that his prosecution was unfair because F.B.I. agents were biased against him. Some, it would seem, thought he was a criminal.

Eighteen thousand dominoes. If you don't believe me, count 'em!

I got a lot of mail concerning the long, long post about The Amazing Owen. First up is this from Disney Legend Floyd Norman…

Absolutely loved the Owen Fitzgerald story. He saved my ass more than once during my seven year stint at Hanna-Barbera.

Finally, Mr. Fitzgerald has to be the most amazing artist I've worked with in my career, and I've worked with a lot including the "Disney greats." Owen was beyond amazing, and naturally he was one of the most gentle and humble individuals I've ever met.

A story well told. Thanks.

There you have it: Independent verification of what I said. And I should have mentioned something else about Owen, which was that he couldn't draw with a model sheet in front of him. Animation artists, as we all know, are always being handed pages with front, side and back views of characters that they have to draw. Owen would study the model sheet, put it away and then draw the characters in every possible position from memory.

That was the way he had to work. The Laff-a-Lympics comics he drew for me featured about 35 different characters and Owen, who had worked earlier on the TV series, didn't need any reference on them. He remembered exactly what they all looked like.

The next topic for discussion is whether he really and truly, as I believed, never got credit on a comic book job until his last few jobs which he did for me. Steven Rowe writes…

Back when I wrote an article on Owen Fitzgerald, I mentioned that most of his work was unsigned and unaccredited — except for his first and his last. If his last three were credited, then that makes my comment less funny, if it was funny at all. However, three early works were signed, so thus his early and his last work…Check Coo Coo Comics #24-25, and 29 (and ignore 23) to see "Fitz"'s very early signed work.

Well, there's a nice symmetry: Credits on his first three comic book jobs in 1946 and credits on his last three in 1978…but nothing (apparently) in-between. The thing that was interesting was that Owen did not expect or particularly want a credit line on what he considered someone else's strip. When he did the Dennis the Menace comic books, it was like, "Why should my name be on them? That was Hank Ketcham's comic!" I kinda talked him into letting me put his name on the jobs he did for me and he was pleased…but he wouldn't have cared one bit if I hadn't done that. Hanna-Barbera occasionally left him off the end credits of shows he worked on and it didn't bother him a bit.

Lastly, Brian Stanley wants to know…

Regarding your post on Owen Fitzgerald, I assume you won't name names but I think we'd be interested to hear if the artist who only produced two pages kept his reputation as "someone just as fast and just as reliable" or thereafter had difficulty getting hired.

Good question and I should have covered this. The artist in question later apologized profusely to me, admitting he'd erred by accepting too much from different editors at the same time. He was otherwise so reliable and good that I not only forgave him, I gave him other work…which he delivered precisely on time. If he had screwed up that way often, he would soon have had trouble getting hired…but since this one incident seemed atypical, it didn't hurt him.

A panda eating a carrot. Thank you, Peter Cunningham…

The days we go without a Trump Dump on this site are generally days when I stay off political and news sites.  Something needs to be written that day for what I jokingly call my writing career and I decide that thinking too much about Donald Trump will distract me and maybe put a dent in my sense of humor…so I avert my eyes.  Today is not one of those days…

• As we all expected, Trump is congratulating himself on the fabulous, record-setting ratings for his State of the Union address.  He was going to do that no matter what the numbers were and, of course, they weren't that great.  You get the feeling that after Trump eats a bowl of Froot Loops, he tells everyone, "No one has ever eaten a bowl of Froot Loops better than I just did"?
• There are certain lines of political hyperbole that I never believe…like when someone vows to pass a Constitutional Amendment to right what they see as some egregious wrong.  That almost certainly means they are not going to raise a finger to do anything about passing a Constitutional Amendment.  By the same token, saying something is "Worse than Watergate" pretty much guarantees that it isn't.  But Lucian K. Truscott IV (not to be confused with all the other Lucian K. Truscotts out there) says that's what's going on with Trump and Obstruction of Justice is "Worse than Watergate" and he makes a good case that it is.
• Sean Illing on why the effort to discredit the F.B.I. is so unprecedented and dangerous.  It makes you think that Trump and his mob are terrified of what may come out about their self-dealing and double-dealing.
• Matt Yglesias explains what we know of Trump's proposals on Infrastructure. We don't know much because apparently Trump doesn't know much except that it sounds good in a speech to say he has some.  And he must figure there's some way to shovel a lot of government money to him and the people with whom he does business.
• Jonathan Chait on the empty promises and fibs that filled Trump's State o' the Union speech.  Note what Trump says about "clean coal."  Contrary to what some people think, there actually is something called "clean coal" and it's very expensive and difficult to produce.  When Trump talks about "clean coal," he's not talking about that stuff.  To him, all coal is "clean coal."
• Daniel Larison explains why it would not be a good idea to launch a military strike against North Korea.  And isn't it horrifying that such a piece even needs to be written these days?
• And finally, you can find a lot of fact-checks of the State of the Union speech online.  Here's Politifact's.

I thought Stephen Colbert's post-speech live broadcast was pretty good…and kudos to his writers for assembling that monologue on a tight deadline.  Once upon a time, major speeches were followed by much better "instant analysis" than we now get from our newspeople.  Maybe the networks should turn than job over to their late night comedians.

Over at the Cartoon Research website, there's an article by Devon Baxter about the comic book work of Owen Fitzgerald. Owen's name is barely known in the comics community, in large part because it almost never appeared on any of the hundreds of comic books he drew. As far as I know, he only got credit on about three comics he ever worked on, all of which were written and edited by me…and I had to talk him into letting me do that.

It's a good article but Baxter couldn't fit in all the impressive things about Owen. The one I would have tried to find room for is that when he worked for DC, his work was occasionally inked or assisted by a kid in the DC Production Department — a kid who went on to become one of the world's great cartoonists himself. The kid, who told me he considered Owen a mentor and a teacher, was Mort Drucker.

Owen passed away in 1994. Quiet guy that he was, we didn't hear about it for a while and it wasn't until the 2/9/96 issue of The Comic Buyer's Guide that I was able to devote a column to telling folks about him. This is a slightly abridged (but still quite long) version of that column. I will meet you on the other side of it with some additional information…

It has been called to my attention by absolutely no one so far that I occasionally tell stories in which the editor of a comic book is the bad guy. And I'll admit: Though I have occasionally had the title of Editor hung on myself, my heart is ever that of a freelancer. And I don't even like to think of myself as a writer-editor…I prefer to be called a writer who occasionally edits. In the interest of Equal Time though, this column is about editors and how they can sometimes be victimized…how the freelancer (writer or artist) can sometimes be the villain.

A new editor had just been hired by the company and given a book to write and edit. It was a comic with a large cast and therefore quite the challenge to any artist. The editor got lucky when he managed to secure his first choice for the art assignment. The end-result was on-time and rather well-drawn.

But the editor was new at this and didn't realize that he should have had #2 well in the works as the art for #1 was being completed. At first, he didn't worry for the artist he'd picked was super-fast and reliable.

But then, the super-fast and reliable artist announced that he was leaving for a lengthy cruise on an ocean liner. He was willing to take work along — and he certainly would have gotten it done swiftly — but he wouldn't be anywhere he could mail pages in for at least six weeks. This clearly would not do and the editor began looking for a new artist.

He needed someone just as fast and just as reliable so he studied all the likely candidates and settled on one who was known for having both these qualities. The editor called the artist, quoted top dollar, warned him about the tight schedule and offered him the job. The artist thought it over for maybe ten seconds, then agreed. He also said he'd have no trouble making the deadline.

A cause for celebration! The editor finished his script quickly and sent it winging to the artist, along with reference on the characters.

A few days later, he called the artist to see that the package had arrived safely. "Got it," the illustrator announced. "Great script! I've already got it all broken-down and I've even got a few pages done. As for meeting your deadline…no problemo."

The editor exhaled, thanked various deities and relaxed for the first time since he found out Artist #1 was signing aboard the Love Boat.

Over the next week or ten days, the editor periodically called the artist. He liked the reassurance that the work was proceeding on schedule and, each call, the artist told him what he wanted to hear. If you've ever worked in comics, you've no doubt already guessed where this is leading.

The artist was to deliver a finished book — penciled — by the 15th. That was the day it had to go to the letterer and the inker and, from there, to a colorist, then through production and on to the engravers. As a general rule, a good editor would never cut it that close; he'd have a little "pad" in the schedule so that if someone got sick or slow, it would all still get to the printers on time. But the editor had gotten lucky on #1 and, well, he was young. He would, however, soon be growing older at an alarming rate.

On the tenth, he phoned the artist and was told, "I just have a few pages to go…you'll have it on the fifteenth, no problemo."

"Could you send me the first half of the book?" he asked. "I can get the inker started."

The artist hemmed and hawwed. "Uh, I don't actually have too many finished pages…see, when I work, I like to jump around and finish panels randomly 'til it's all done. But you'll have it on the fifteenth. No problemo."

The editor grudgingly agreed to wait…and he didn't worry a lot when he got off the phone. The artist was a pro and a pro delivers when he says he's going to deliver. At least, some do.

Came the fifteenth and there were no pages on his desk. He called the artist. "Just need another day," he was told. "I had to redo the first page…you would have hated it."

"I wouldn't have hated it if it were here," the editor responded. This was a Friday and the artist promised to have it in on Monday. "No problemo," he said seven or eight times.

Monday morn, there was a problemo: Not a page in sight. The editor called. No answer. No answer at the artist's number all day.

No answer on Tuesday.

By Wednesday, the letterer was coming by, asking the editor when that book would be in. The inker, who was holding himself available for the job's imminent arrival, also was inquiring. "Any day now," the editor told them…for indeed, that is what he believed.

Thursday arrived. The pages didn't.

Nor were there any on Friday, at least in the morning. He dialed the artist's number every ten minutes all day. Finally, long after quitting time, someone picked up.

"I'm coming over for the pages," he told the artist.

"No, don't," said the artist, who had only answered his phone, thinking it couldn't be the office calling at this hour. "I don't have them all done yet."

"You were almost done a week ago."

"Yes, well, I had some problems…personal things. I'd rather not go into them. But I can have it all in on Monday."

"Fine," said the editor. "Get me the last pages on Monday but I'm coming over now for whatever's done." It was a two-hour drive to the artist's house — four hours, both ways — but things had gotten desperate.

"No," the artist barked. "I don't have enough to make it worth your while."

"I'll take whatever you've got," the editor said. "How many have you got?" The book was twenty-four pages.

"Well, let me see…" The artist went through the sounds of apparently counting out a number of pages. "I only have ten finished," he said.

"Okay…I'll drive out and get the ten."

The artist gulped. "Well, they're kind of rough…"

"I'll live with it. The inker can tighten them up."

"Oh no, I wouldn't want an inker to do that."

"I'll pay him extra," the editor said.

The artist's voice grew firmer. "I'll tighten them up and have the whole job to you by Monday. No prob-"

"I know, I know — no problemo! Well, I have a problemo. The inker has been sitting around with no work for a week. He turned down another job because you assured me the pages would be here for him last week. So he's already lost a week's pay. And the production department is ready to burn me in effigy. I have to have those ten pages. I'll be there in about two hours."

"Well, I don't really have ten pages," the artist said.

"A minute ago, you had ten pages."

"I just counted again and I guess I miscounted."

The editor raised his voice, ever so slightly: "How many do you have?"

The artist paused and answered, "Two."

"Two?"

"Two."

The editor queried how "almost finished" had turned into ten pages and how ten pages had now turned into two. "I think you're using the wrong end of the pencil."

"I have it all drawn…but only in my mind. I can put it on paper real fast. If you'll give me until Monday…"

"I'll be there in two hours," the editor said. "I hope the two pages haven't turned into one panel by then."

The editor jumped in his car and started driving, pondering en route just what he was going to do. After a while, he stopped thinking about what he was going to do to the artist and began wondering what he was going to do about getting a book to press. He decided that trusting this artist to have anything in on Monday would establish new high scores on the Stupidity Meter.

Eventually, he found his way to the artist's house. It was dark and there was no answer when he rang the bell. A manila envelope was on the porch. It contained the script, which meant that the artist was not going to attempt to draw any more of it. There were also two penciled pages — not good but not bad. The editor got the distinct impression that all or most of them had been drawn in the past two hours while he'd been on the freeway.

There are few feelings more awful than sitting there with a deadline long past and no way to meet it. The editor felt more than a little helpless that night as he returned home late and paced the floor of his home, alternately fuming at the fibbing artist and pondering how to get twenty-two pages drawn in record time. He momentarily considered publishing a reprint instead but didn't figure that the readers would be too thrilled to have the second issue of this comic be a reprint of the first issue of this comic.

The next morning — a Saturday — he began phoning artists, looking for someone fast who could do some or all of the pages of this book with the huge cast. One after another proved unavailable…but then one of them said that he'd heard somewhere that Owen was looking for work.

Suddenly, there was sunlight…

"Owen" was Owen Fitzgerald. When I started this tale, I intended to keep everyone unnamed but, as I wrote, I recalled the feeling of helplessness that overwhelmed me that night — yes, I was the naive editor of our tale — and I remembered the way Owen saved my hind quarters, as he saved so many in his long, incredible career. For most of that career, he was utterly anonymous and, in gratitude, I decided I shouldn't keep him anonymous here…even if it means admitting to you that I was the guy who was so stupid as to get himself into this predicament.

Owen Fitzgerald was the fastest artist I've ever known.

And I know about fast artists: I've worked with Jack Kirby, Dan Spiegle, Pat Boyette, Alex Toth and others who have been hailed as the fastest ever. Many say that my best buddy Sergio Aragonés is the fastest artist alive and in a recent column here, I suggested that the late Mike Sekowsky might be due that honor. I forgot about Owen when I wrote that.

It was easy to forget about Owen. He was quiet and unassuming…and he talked with a slow, Arkansas drawl that didn't suggest he could do anything quickly. Still, put a pencil in his hand, blink, and you totally missed the creation of the picture.

Owen worked mostly in animation. He'd worked at Disney, worked at DePatie-Freleng, worked everywhere. In director Chuck Jones' autobiography, Chuck Amuck, there's a group shot photo of all the artists working with Chuck at Warner's at the time. Even Chuck forgot about Owen and had to identify him in the photo caption as an unnamed "Talented layout artist."

When I met Owen, he was the all-purpose trouble-shooter at Hanna-Barbera. Whenever a show was in deadline trouble, they'd put him on it and the show would suddenly be on or ahead of schedule. His work was so good, he'd have been hired anywhere, had he been one-tenth the speed. His velocity was an extra bonus as was his versatility. Some guys can draw humor but not adventure, some can draw adventure but not humor. Owen could do it all.

He was a layout artist and in animation, the work of a layout artist is measured in scenes: "How many scenes did you do today?" A good, competent layout artist ought to be able to do forty scenes in one week. A fast one does fifty or maybe even sixty. There were tales of Owen doing well over a hundred without breaking a sweat and that's with extra-long lunch breaks. All he needed was a pencil, paper, his cigarettes and an unlimited supply of Coca-Cola.

At one point when H-B was producing Jana of the Jungle, two episodes had to be done quickly and simultaneously. The supervisor put seven artists on one of the shows; on the other, he put Owen along with Jack Manning. (Jack was another fast artist; in fact, he was the guy who drew #1 of my comic and then got on the cruise ship.) Owen and Jack finished first. And they were both in their sixties, whereas the seven guys on the other crew were all in their twenties or thirties.

Owen worked occasionally in comics, mostly in the fifties. He was the first artist on DC's Bob Hope comic book. He also drew Ozzie and Harriet and a few issues of The Fox and the Crow. For a time, he assisted Hank Ketcham on the Dennis the Menace Sunday page and ghosted those wonderful, unsung Dennis the Menace comic books. Shortly before his death, he drew the Bugs Bunny newspaper strip for a while.

That Saturday morn, when I heard Owen might be available, I did figurative cartwheels. I got his number, called him and explained my predicament. "Can you draw this book and can you jump on it right away?"

In his slow, measured way, he asked, "Would Monday morning be okay?"

I gasped. "You can't start until Monday?"

"Hell, no," he chuckled. "I'll finish by Monday." I would never have thought that humanly-possible…but this was Owen.

I drove out and met him at noon in a parking lot midway between his home and mine. I ran some errands afterwards and when I got home at three, there was a message from Owen on my answering machine: "Hey, this is easier than I thought…already have three pages done. I'll have it finished by tomorrow afternoon, easy." Darned if he didn't.

For the issue to be done at all in that time was amazing but as it happens, he also did excellent work — no short-cuts, no cheating. It didn't look at all like a rush job.

By now, I'd learned my lesson. I quickly wrote #3 and gave it to Owen to draw. He took his time on this one. He took three days. I could have gotten the whole first year of the comic done in a month if Owen hadn't gotten another animation job and declined further comic book assignments. In the year or two following, he occasionally had a few days free and I'd rush out a script for him. I am said to be a very fast writer but Owen could draw 'em faster than I could write 'em.

I was sad to hear he'd passed away recently…and not just because I might someday need his services again. I was sad because he was a very nice man and he came to my rescue in a desperate hour of need. Wherever he is today, I'll bet their comics are all on schedule.

Okay, that's the story and by now you've figured out that the comic book all this panic was about was Hanna-Barbera's Laff-a-Lympics. The inker, letterer and colorist were — in that order — Scott Shaw!, Carol Lay and Carl Gafford. They were also all heroes in getting #2 and #3 done and off to press in a hurry.

Still, through no one's fault but mine, #2 got in two weeks late. When I published this article originally, I left out part of the tale because I thought it might be in bad taste just then. Enough time has passed that I think it's okay to share it here…

This, of course, is a story about me screwing up and engaging in much panic and worry about the consequences. The main consequence I was worried about was not me getting fired. It was me getting yelled at by John Verpoorten. My job as an editor in the Hanna-Barbera Comic Book Division in Hollywood was to deliver a publishable, ready-to-print comic book to Mr. Verpoorten, who was the Production Manager for Marvel Comics back in New York.

Mr. Verpoorten was a much-beloved gentleman who was very good in the thankless job of getting freelancers to hand in their work on time.  He handled so many comics that probably every day of his life for years, he dealt with much the same problem I had.

I suspect that part of the reason he was hired for that position was that he could look very menacing. He was large — taller than me and I'm 6'3" and he was even wider than me. When he was perturbed or it was necessary to get tough with a tardy writer or artist, he could sport a really chilling scowl and be a very effective Bad Cop.

I was really afraid of him. I'm not sure specifically what I was afraid he would do. He was 3,000 miles away from me so I didn't think it would be physical but…well, let's just say I was dreading the phone call demanding to know where the hell the issue was. Really dreading it.

Okay, so let's scroll back to the point in the story where Owen has drawn the comic over the weekend. I have Carol and Scott working madly on finishing it with Carl standing by but it's still going to be late…perhaps two weeks late. I decide that instead of waiting for that call, it will be more professional and less painful if I call John and tell him the book's going to be late. "Might as well get it over with," I muttered to myself. And also, I didn't want to do to him a version of what Mr. "No Problemo" had done to me.

I put it off until Wednesday I think but that morn, I steeled up all the meager courage I ever possess (about a gerbil's worth) and dialed Marvel's number in New York. An operator answered and I told her, "Mr. Verpoorten's office, please." She said she'd connect me. It rang and another woman answered, "Production Department." I asked for John Verpoorten. She asked who was calling. I told her and then she said…

"Oh, Mark, I guess you haven't heard. John died over the weekend."

In my life, I have never celebrated or even grinned at the death of another human being; not even folks who have seriously wronged me…not even serial killers or torturers or people who call you up and tell you they're with Microsoft and you have a virus on your computer which they can remove if you give them remote access.  I have never been happy when anyone dies…

…but for just one moment there after I heard what the lady on the phone told me, I did a little mental fist bump and went, "Yessssss!"

Then I settled down into proper reverence along with the guilt about the mental fist bump.  I sent in the second issue as soon as it was done and no one said anything.  Not a word.  We got #3 done A.S.A.P. and then…

Well, remember how the artist on the first issue, Jack Manning, drew it and then left on a cruise?  I had a couple days before he left so I wrote two Laff-a-Lympics scripts in two days and gave them to him to take along and to draw on the boat.  Around the time we finished #3, Jack got back from his trip and he turned in the pencil art for the two issues so I had #4 and #5 all drawn…and plenty of time to find a new artist and get him to work on #6. (Jack was too busy to do any more just then.)  I remained well ahead of schedule for the rest of the book's run.  Almost.

Anyway, that's the story of how Owen Fitzgerald saved my hide when I made just about the dumbest mistake a boy comic book editor can make.  If you ever become the editor of a comic book, don't count on anyone bailing you out the same way.  They don't make 'em like Owen anymore.

Hey, it's been a long time since I embedded a cartoon that I wrote. When I was a lad, one of my favorite comedians — and I almost never saw him; only heard him on records — was The Old Philosopher, Eddie Lawrence. I thought he was hilarious.

In 1994 when we were doing the final season of the original Garfield and Friends, the producer let me record a couple of voice tracks in New York so I could use some New York voice actors. My "wish list" was Arnold Stang, Jackson Beck, Imogene Coca…and Eddie Lawrence. As it turned out, Mr. Beck suddenly had to record some commercials for the Little Caesar's pizza chain on the one day I could record there so I never got him…and Imogene overslept. I took her out to dinner and to see a Broadway show but I wound up recording her a few weeks later when she was visiting Los Angeles.

I'm going to quote some things now from earlier posts on this blog, slightly amended…

I called Eddie Lawrence's agent in New York and said I wanted to hire him to do one or two Garfield cartoons. Here was the deal. I told the agent, "What I really would like to do is write for the Old Philosopher. I know Eddie has always written all his own material so I don't want to offend him. If he doesn't want anyone else writing for that character, I absolutely understand. I'll just write a different kind of Garfield cartoon and have him play a role, just so I can meet him and say I worked with him. If, however, he is willing to trust me, I'll do two cartoons with the Old Philosopher character and we'll pay him twice as much."

The agent said, "I don't know…Eddie is really protective of that character."

I said, "Tell him I know his work backwards and forwards. Tell him I will send him the material in advance…which is something I've never done for anyone else in six years of this show. Tell him I will overwrite the monologues. I'll write them 50% longer and he can cut the jokes he doesn't like or reword them or whatever he wants."

She said she'd check with him. The next day, she called me back and said, "Eddie says he'll do the two episodes with the Philosopher….but I'll warn you. He's going to be really fussy about the material." We verbally "shook" on the deal and a week later, I sent the scripts to her to pass on to Eddie.

I was packing for the New York trip when the phone rang. On the other end was the unquestionable voice of Eddie Lawrence and he said, "Mark, you have been listening to my records." I would love to be able to tell you that he did everything I wrote just as I wrote it but in fact, we spent about a half hour then and another half hour after I got to New York fiddling with the jokes. Which was fine with me. I wrote two Old Philosopher routines for Eddie Lawrence and I am a happy man because of it.

The day we recorded, I did one first with Arnold Stang. Happily for me, Arnold was an hour early to the recording session, as many old pros were, so we got to spend an hour talking about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Top Cat and other things he'd done.

We then recorded his Garfield episode. He and I were in the booth in midtown Manhattan. Lorenzo Music, Gregg Berger, Thom Huge and the other actors in the show were in our usual recording studio in Hollywood and we were all linked by telephone and Internet. In the cartoon below and the ones I did with Eddie, you can't tell that L.A. actors were 2,798 miles from their director and guest stars. I just figured that mileage on Google Maps. Back to quoting from an earlier post…

While I was recording with Arnold, Eddie Lawrence arrived. He and Arnold were longtime pals, and when Arnold and I were done with his cartoon and he exited the booth, he and Eddie embraced.

Then Arnold looked him in the eye and sounding as serious as Arnold Stang could possibly sound, he pointed to me and said, "Eddie, don't give this young man any trouble. He's a fine director and you just do everything he says."

Eddie promised he would. That wasn't good enough for Arnold. He added, "If you give him any crap, I'll come back here and kick your ass." Then he handed me his pager number and said, "Remember…if he gets out of line, call me and I'll come back and kick his ass." This wasn't necessary but there was one moment when Eddie was giving me a little problem and I had to threaten, "I'll call Arnold." He immediately apologized and agreed to do it the way I wanted. The power of an Arnold Stang threat.

Here's one of the two cartoons I recorded with Eddie, who passed away in 2014, thirteen years after Lorenzo Music. The voice of Binky the Clown was done by Thom Huge. Binky appeared a lot in the early seasons of Garfield and Friends and then I decided he'd worn out his welcome (and Thom's vocal cords) and he didn't show up for a long time…until this episode, in fact.

By the way: If you stay for the end credits after the cartoon, you'll see Eddie's name…but several of the other names don't belong. For most of its run, Garfield and Friends was an hour-long show and the end credits pertained to both halves. When the shows were chopped into half-hours for syndication, no one redid the end credits so a lot of them have been wrong. The shows were recently remastered for high-def and we took the opportunity to fix all the voice credits. The new versions will be turning up somewhere soon.

Enough of this! Here's Eddie and it's still a thrill for me that I got to work with this man…

I didn't watch Trump's first State of the Union speech live — it's been a long time since I watched any of these live and in full — but the post-speech analysis isn't screaming out any headlines. When the press all weighs in, those who lean left will say he seemed More Presidential Than Usual and maybe this will mark the start of a new, more dignified Trump. And those who lean right will say he's always been presidential and tonight, he really knocked it out of the park. And then within 48 hours, he'll say or do something outrageous to remind us that there will never be a new, more dignified Trump.

Around the time the speech was concluding I got a call from a pollster with a few topical questions, one being "Do you favor the erection of a wall on the Southern border of the United States to limit illegal entry into this country?" I was going to tell the lady I favor all erections but I figured if I was the twenty-fifth person she'd phoned to ask that question, I'd be the twenty-fifth person to say something like that.

She offered me three choices: Yes, no and I don't know. I said no but I'll bet the answer that would get the biggest vote would be if they offered Yes but only if Mexico really and truly pays for it. That part of the concept seems to have gone away, though.

In other news: A staunch reader of this site, Andy Rose, writes to tell me, "The old ballroom of the Hotel Pennsylvania (inspiration for Glenn Miller's "Pennsylvania 6-5000") was converted into TV studios more than a decade ago" and he sends this link to a page that describes what they have going there. Sounds like a great place to do a show. The last few times I stayed at that hotel, it wasn't a great place to stay and for a time, we were hearing reports that it would be torn down. I guess they wouldn't have built that studio if the hotel was going away.

Matt Yglesias makes an important point.  One of the big reasons that Trump's approval rating is at 38% instead of 22% is that the economy is in pretty good shape.  It was in pretty good shape back when Trump was running for office but he trashed it at every turn, insisting (for example) that the low unemployment rates were phony.  Now, it's pretty much the same economy.  Just about everything that was going up under Obama is still going up at the same rate.  The difference is now, Trump is claiming credit for fixing it and Republicans are agreeing: Yes, yes, this is a great economy!  The only difference is that he's skewing more of its benefits to rich people.  Read what Yglesias has to say.

Each year, Matt Taibbi lays down some rules for a State of the Union Drinking Game.  Here are the rules for tonight.  I have never had even a sip of an alcoholic beverage in my life but this president may make me start.

• The ABC television network is announcing that they've hired Chris Christie. Christie will start by blocking Jeff Bridges.

Here's the first episode of Our Cartoon President, a new animated series on Showtime produced by Stephen Colbert and folks around him…

At least, don't count on a Season Pass getting you what you want tomorrow night.

That's the night of the State of the Union address and several of the late night shows will be broadcasting live after it. This means they may not start and end when your TiVo or DVR thinks they'll start and end. I thought I'd take a look at the pages where one gets tickets to sit in their audiences and see when they're doing each show. Remember, the speech is at 6 PM Pacific Time, 9 PM Eastern…

In New York, the website for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert wants its audience there at 9 PM. They usually "tape" (that is no longer the right word) at 4:30 PM. In the past, most of the shows they've done "live" have only been partially live. They brought in two audiences and pre-recorded some segments of the program with the first, then did only some parts of the show live. Looks like they're doing the whole thing live this time.

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah usually records at 5 PM but according to its ticket website…

PLEASE NOTE: The taping on Tuesday, January 30th, will be a LIVE SHOW starting with a viewing of the State of the Union followed by the taping. Check-in for General Guaranteed reservation holders will open at 6:30pm and close at 7:30pm.

…which I don't understand. To get a good seat, you have to be there at 6:30, wait around to watch Trump speak at 9 PM and then still be there for the live telecast starting at 11 PM or later? I thought for a moment the website was converting to Pacific Time for me but they wouldn't want people to get there at 9:30 to view a speech that starts at 9. So I dunno what's up there.

Meanwhile, the same company's website for The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, which usually wants people there at 5:30 for a 6:30 recording tomorrow wants them there at 10:30 PM for an 11:30 broadcast. Which makes sense.

(By the way: I didn't know this but apparently, Mr. Klepper's show — which further by the way, I like a lot — is done from the Hotel Pennsylvania on 7th Avenue, across from Penn Station. Weird.)

The website for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon doesn't have ticket listings for this week and I don't see anything online about doing his show live tomorrow night. His lead guests however are Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who will undoubtedly talk about Trump. It would seem odd to record that conversation before the speech. Late Night with Seth Meyers is recording at its usual time of 5:30 PM according to its ticket website.

What about the two late night shows from Los Angeles? Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which I don't think has been live in many years, usually gets the audience there at 4:15 PM. According to its website, tomorrow night they convene at 6:45. James Corden is doing his show at its usual time of 4 PM.

Call me crazy but I have this odd feeling that the speech will be an awful lot about how everything is going as great as it possibly could and if it isn't, it's because of those damned Democrats — and did I mention there was no collusion, no collusion, no collusion? I'm hoping someone will take the whole speech and put it on YouTube captioned with fact-checking but of course, that could take a while…like until the next State of the Union speech. We can only wonder who'll be delivering that one.