Monthly Archives: July 2003

Here's a long but interesting piece by Congressman Ron Paul, who believes the current "conservative" movement is uncommitted to shrinking the size of government and protecting personal liberties. I don't agree with everything the Congressman says but I agree with a lot of it, even if I don't think he's ever going to get his way. (Thanks for calling my attention to this piece, Fred Rupnow.)

Herb Trimpe is a lovely man who drew for Marvel for years, primarily on The Hulk. I would like to direct you to four pieces relating to him. This link goes to Herb's own website, which doesn't have all that much up yet but is worth a visit. This link goes to a recent interview, which is very interesting once it gets going, especially his comments on the Hulk movie. This link goes to an article that Herb wrote for The New York Times about how his career in comics ended due to apparent ageism…

And this link is the real find, though it has nothing to do with the Hulk. Proving himself a greater super-hero than any he drew, Herb pitched in after the 9/11 tragedies and worked at Ground Zero for the Red Cross. I heard him speak of this over dinner last year and was fascinated and moved, and you'll understand why when you read this piece. Even the non-comics folks who come here should check it out.

Our long national nightmare is over. Jerry Beck has the details.

In the time it took me to post the preceding message, the information became false again. Time for a new slogan…

"CBS…if you don't like the news, just wait a minute. It will change."

What a difference twelve hours makes. Yesterday on the CBS News Website, the headline was "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False."  Today, it's "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was Dubious." Check over there a little later and see if it's undeniably true yet.

This afternoon, as they often do, all three local Los Angeles TV stations preempted their regular newscasts to cover a high-to-medium-speed chase that wove its way through Southland highways and byways. The situation in Iraq and Africa, the hurricane about to destroy Yucatan, the Congressional battle over funding for AIDS research…none of that was as important as a bunch of cop cars following a guy around for more than two hours. And like a jerk, I got caught. Started watching and just couldn't turn it off until it reached its conclusion.

I'm not sure what fascinates us about these things. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that our television is usually so plotted and predictable, and even the so-called "reality" shows are scripted in certain ways, pre-taped and edited. Watching a chase, we're actually watching reality. It's also interesting to wonder about the guy in the fleeing vehicle: What's going through his mind? He has eight police cars following him and a half-dozen helicopters overhead. Does he really think he's going to get away? I suppose a lot of people watch because they think they might see a bloody crash.

I have one other reason for watching these things: I'm fascinated by coverage, and by how badly a lot of professional, highly-paid newsfolks are at ad-libbing. Admittedly, they sometimes have to fill a lot of air time — around two hours, today — without much to say about it. But you'd think that with one of these chases occurring in town every month or two, someone would have figured out more than about five things to say about them. (Today, the biggie was to explain that the Highway Patrol often stops fugitives with spike-strips, but that this chase was under the jurisdiction of the L.A.P.D., and they don't use spike-strips. I think I heard that about four hundred times.) All during it, you can almost hear the folks in the control booth squirming over the fact that they thought they were cutting to ten minutes of exciting live footage and now it's going on two hours without commercials. But of course, they can't ignore it or go back to the normal broadcast because the competing stations are covering it, and everyone will just switch over to them to see the conclusion.

I also love the fact that we're watching someone fleeing from the police (which is a crime), running stop signs and traffic lights (ditto), driving recklessly (ditto) and sometimes causing accidents and endangering lives (big crime). And all this time they're referring to him as a "suspect." We once had one of these guys firing a gun at the cops and the newsguy actually said, "The suspect is shooting at the policemen." It reminds me of that great cartoon Charlie Rodriguez once drew for the National Lampoon. It had one man shooting another on live TV from about three inches away…and superimposed over the gunman was the label, "Alleged assassin."

Jack Shafer proposes an important journalistic reform.

This is about the time every year I start to fantasize that they'll announce the Comic-Con in San Diego is being postponed for two weeks. Everything and everyone in my life revolves around getting this or that done "before the con" and you start to look at everything on your To Do List in terms of, "Can this wait until after the con?" My list is pretty long, they're not likely to delay the con, and yesterday's power outage made things worse…so posting here will be light for the next week or so. Forgive me. If you have nothing better to do, just poke around. There's gotta be stuff here you haven't read.

The full schedule of events for the convention is up, by the way. You might think you don't need to consult it since you'll be going to all my panels. But there are a few moments when I'm not running some great, fascinating event…so take a look over there and figure out what you want to do with that time.

I'm not putting up the Campbell's Cream of Mushroom right now because I will be posting for the next week. Just not as often as I like. Normal content should resume after I get back from S.D.

Back on! Yay!

And while I'm at it, I thought I'd see if I could post via an even less sophisticated connection. I am currently typing on a Targus collapsible keyboard which has been uncollapsed and connected to my little Jornada 540 handheld palmtop into which I have inserted a Targus flashcard modem which is then connected to the telephone line and a very slow dial-up connection. This is probably how they connected to the Internet in Ben Franklin's day. Which reminds me: The way things are going here, I may have to get a kite and wait for a thunderstorm to see electricity around here again.

This message is kind of a test. The electricity is out for about ten blocks around me, rendering my desktop computer and cable modem about as useful as Nigerian yellowcake uranium. So I'm on the laptop and a dial-up connection and I thought I'd see what it felt like to post to my weblog this way. It feels rather prehistoric — about on a par with pounding laundry on a rock by the river to wash it. But if you're reading this, it works.

Richard Roeper debunks the claim that celebrities always die in threes. Seems to me the belief has always been pretty silly. Several people die each week who could arguably be called famous. When a real biggie goes, some folks suddenly look around, pick two others and say, "Well, they always go in threes." But you could make it work for twos, fours, fives, even higher groupings depending on how you defined the rules.

Once upon a time, most comic book inkers were guys who inked others' drawings because they weren't good enough to draw it on their own. Over the years, a few outstanding talents elevated inking to a genuinely creative job — none more so than Joe Sinnott. Joe was always more than competent to do it all by himself but when he was assigned to ink Jack Kirby or John Buscema or any other artist, the sum of the parts actually seemed greater than the individual contributions. He still has that wonderful eye that allows him to interpret another artist's work, bringing out all that the penciller intended and maximizing its impact. Put simply, he's improved everything he's ever touched in comics, and he's one of the nicest men in our business. And now, he even has his own website!

I just took another look at that window card for Springtime for Hitler and my respect for Max Bialystock plunged: No author credit!

The same auction I mentioned a moment ago is also selling this copy of the class photo taken when Marilyn Monroe graduated (as Norma Jean Baker) from Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School in West Los Angeles. I didn't know she went to Emerson. Guess this makes me the second-most famous graduate of the place…