Monthly Archives: October 2003

A couple of folks have written to remind me that the U.S. Postal Service made an exception to their rule that a non-president had to be dead ten years to be on a stamp. The exception they all mention was Walter Elias Disney, who passed away in 1966 and had his mug on a 6-cent stamp just two years later. But actually, Disney hasn't been the only one. In 1948, the U.S. Post Office issued a stamp to honor the "Four Chaplains" who perished in 1943 aboard the ship, The Dorchester. Here's a link to a website that will tell you the story of this stamp. And here, we have a page on the procedures involved in deciding on a stamp, including the "ten year" rule.

Harry McCracken, whose website should be of interest to anyone interested in this one, also informs me…

Then there's the only person (as far as I know) who appeared on a stamp while he was still alive — legendary circus clown Lou Jacobs, whose clown face graced a circus-themed stamp in 1966. Apparently, the fact it was in makeup justified an exception. And no, I'm not a stamp collector — I'm just fascinated by this sort of thing.

So, obviously, am I. I wonder what the thinking was behind waiving the rule for Disney. They waited ten years for Robert Kennedy. They waited eleven for Dr. Martin Luther King. But Walt had to be right away?

In the matter of Terry Schiavo, the lady in Florida who may or may not be in a "persistent vegetative state" depending on who you believe, I earlier linked to a page that made the case for keeping her alive. This other website doesn't attempt to take the opposite view, but it was compiled by a Florida attorney who lays out what seems to be the situation. And that presentation seems to make the opposing case. So I don't know what to think.

I haven't seen the new Looney Tunes DVD yet but a reader named "Booksteve" informs me that the documentary narrated by Stan Freberg and included on the DVD has an error in it. There's a photo of voice actress Bea Benaderet, he says, that is identified as June Foray.

Booksteve writes, "Stan should be incensed!" He's right. A few years ago, the Rhino Records people put out a boxed set of comedy CDs that included one of the records that Stan did with his sometimes-sidekick, Daws Butler. In the accompanying booklet, there was a photo of Daws identified as Stan. Mr. Freberg says he called Rhino and told them about it and the response was, "Are you sure?"

A lot of folks on message boards seem to be confused or concerned about where all the big fires in Southern California are located. This map may be of help.

Over at the L.A. Times site, Charles Solomon has an article and an online video all about the way the relationship between humans and wildlife gets portrayed in animation. Just click on this link.

There already was a U.S. postage stamp with Snoopy on it, and there have been a lot of different ones in other countries. What I meant was that there could be a stamp that more or less celebrated the life of Charles Schulz without actually depicting him. There could be a whole series of Peanuts stamps and there probably will be. Also, back in 1995, there was a run of stamps devoted to great newspaper comic strips. It included The Yellow Kid, The Katzenjammer Kids, Little Nemo in Slumberland, Bringing Up Father, Krazy Kat, Rube Goldberg's inventions, Toonerville Folks, Gasoline Alley, Barney Google, Little Orphan Annie, Popeye, Blondie, Dick Tracy, Alley Oop, Nancy, Flash Gordon, Li'l Abner, Terry and the Pirates, Prince Valiant and Brenda Starr.

Michael Reaves has two new projects out. He was an editor of Shadows Over Baker Street, an anthology of original stories by various authors, including Neil Gaiman. This is the book that asks the musical question: What would happen if Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos crossed paths?

Michael also wrote the screenplay for the new new direct-to-DVD animated movie, Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman. I haven't seen it yet but Michael's a good writer and the folks at WB Animation do fine work.

I mistyped when I wrote, "Rumor has it that we will see a Charles Schulz stamp before long." Yes, I know you can't be on a stamp until you've been dead for ten years — U.S. presidents, excepted. What I should have written was, "Rumor has it that we will see a Charles Schulz stamp as soon as enough time has passed." In this case, that would be in the year 2010. As my pal Tom Galloway noted in an e-mail, there could be a Charlie Brown or Snoopy stamp before that time, just as there have been Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck stamps. But such a stamp couldn't have a likeness of Schulz on it.

And someone who signs his name simply "Brian" reminds me that the Andy Warhol stamp was an Andy Warhol self-portrait.

Another pal, Larry Steller, suggests I make it clear to you that there are two new Looney Tunes DVDs out — a four-disc set and a two-disc set. All of the cartoons on the two-disc set are on the four-disc set. So you don't want to buy the two-disc set. You want to buy the four-disc set, which you can do by clicking here.

One day while we were doing Garfield and Friends, I wrote an episode that involved a game show and required an authentic-sounding game show announcer voice. Several actors in our cast could have supplied it but for some reason, I was seized by the idea of getting the genuine article. Our producer, Lee Mendelson, was always very nice about letting me act on such feelings so even though it cost us money he didn't have to spend, he let me hire one — and I knew exactly which one I wanted. I first knew of Rod Roddy as the announcer for the TV sitcom, Soap, and first saw him in action when I dropped by a taping of the game show, Press Your Luck.

He was pretty good at both but he didn't attain "superstar announcer" status until he stepped into some pretty large shoes. After the legendary Johnny Olson died, everyone in town with a voice lower than Emo Phillips tried out for the coveted job on The Price Is Right. Rod got it and he was a terrific choice. He didn't do as great a warm-up as Johnny did…but then again, no one did, and the audience at The Price is Right didn't require much warming. Otherwise, Roddy did the job about as well as you could do it.

He'd been doing it for about seven years when I called his agent to see if we could book Rod for one short Garfield cartoon. It turned out Rod was taping The Price Is Right the same day we were recording Garfield and he had another job earlier in the day. The agent suggested other clients with game show chops. I said no…I wanted Rod Roddy. Our studio wasn't far from CBS and we were on CBS, so we were like "family" — or so I argued. Was there any way Rod could swing by our studio on his way to the taping and record about twenty lines of game show copy, please, please, please? The agent said he'd check with Rod and get back to me.

An hour later, he did. Rod, he said, loved Garfield and would love to be a part of an episode but he was super-conscientious about not being late to his Price Is Right taping. The only way it could possibly work would be if he could arrive at our recording studio at 11:30 and be out by 11:45 but that probably wasn't workable, right? I said, "I'll take it."

At exactly 11:30 AM one day, Rod Roddy and his entire voice walked into the studio and reminded us he only had fifteen minutes. He was wearing a silver lamé sport coat with brown satin lapels that made him look like an extremely large baked potato. I introduced myself, handed him the copy and told him, "I'd like you to try and sound like that guy on The Price Is Right." He gave me an odd look, realized I was kidding, then marched into the booth and read all twenty lines, precisely the way I wanted them. Without even reading the script first.

I looked at the clock. It was 11:35. I said, "Great, Rod. Can you do it one more time and take it a little more over the top?" He read it again with more energy, verging on self-parody. When he finished, it was 11:39 and I said, "Thank you, Mr. Roddy. You can go to your day job." As he signed out, he apologized for the hurry but I told him, "I have a feeling if we kept you here all afternoon, you couldn't have done a better read than that. I'll probably use the first take." That pleased him.

Five minutes later, a lady who was working in the adjoining studio came running in with paper and pen for an autograph, asking "Is the Price Is Right guy still here?" She was crushed to hear that he was long gone and all I could think of was this: There are hundreds, maybe thousands of men and women who make their living as announcers. Only a select few land some on-camera job where they can do it and become celebrities at the same time. Announcing a game show may seem to some like a really silly, trivial job…but there's a certain beauty to anyone doing something well. And Rod Roddy got one of those jobs and became famous, in a daytime TV kind of way, because he was really, really good at what he did.

One of my favorite political commentary websites is Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo. I like Liberals who are respected by most Conservatives and Conservatives who are respected by most Liberals, and Marshall is in the former category. The other day, he mentioned that he was thinking of covering the New Hampshire primary not for any magazine, as he usually does, but just for his weblog. If he could get enough donations, he said, he'd go to New Hampshire and report his observations, unfettered by the needs and editorial dictates of some employer. Well, before he even announced a dollar goal, he had nearly $5,000 in contributions, which is more than enough. I'm looking forward to this, not only because Marshall is a perceptive reporter and commentator but because it's a fascinating new model for online journalism. If it works, the possibilities are endless…and exciting.

If you get a letter from me in the next year and you aren't the Gas Company, it will probably have one of these on it — the stamp that was unveiled today to honor the late Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel. I think it's terrific that he is being so honored, and also that the U.S. Postal Service didn't hire some other artist to execute an illustration of the Good Doctor and his characters. Unless I miss my guess, that's a slightly retouched photo surrounded by actual Seuss drawings, and I think that's great.

There's an unfortunate tendency sometimes to honor an artist by having another artist preempt their work. But this is all Seuss, all the time, so I've ordered a couple hundred. Rumor has it that we will see a Charles Schulz stamp before long. If so, I hope it's actually Schulz art. After all those years of not letting anyone else draw his strip, it would be a shame if someone else drew his stamp.

Not only have I been meaning to mention Atrios but I wanted to give you all this link to Ron Paul's weekly essays. Paul is a Libertarian Congressguy from Texas but unlike some prominent Libertarians, he seems to have a decent sense of reality. I don't always agree with him but then I don't always agree with anyone, including myself. At times, Paul sounds like what Republicans would sound like if they actually sounded like Republicans.

Atrios is one of the most-read political bloggers who skews Left. And if you think I post often, you should see this guy. Anyway, I've been meaning to mention him here but he just put up an amazing transcript from C-SPAN transcribed by someone else. Here's the link to it. It's a call from a lady who apparently intended to remain anonymous, discussing what she saw at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington. It turns out this woman is…well, you'll see.

A new production of Larry Gelbart's play, Sly Fox, is set to open next April in New York. Richard Dreyfuss stars in a role originated by George C. Scott, but never mind that. The most interesting bit of casting involves a smaller role. "Professor" Irwin Corey is in the company, and some theater buffs think will make him the oldest performer to ever play on Broadway. The professor is 89 (some reports say 91) and he still does occasional stand-up gigs, plus he recently became a great grandfather. Here's an article about him from when he was a much younger man of 87.

The wonderfully silly Eric Idle has embarked on what he's calling his Greedy Bastard Tour. You can find out if and when the greedy bastard is coming your way, and read a weblog/diary he's posting of the experience here.

In the meantime, John Cleese is setting up his own website at www.thejohncleese.com. Why the "the?" Because one of those professional John Cleese impersonators who doesn't look very much like John Cleese (there are several) has already claimed www.johncleese.com. Doesn't seem fair, does it?