Monthly Archives: November 2003

Over in The Village Voice, R. C. Baker reports on several books about comics, and even quotes me while he's at it.

What does the staff of a humor magazine do when they get laid off? Why, they offer themselves for sale on eBay, of course! (Thanks to Tom Galloway for noticing this.)

I signed up some time ago to have Special Weather Statements from the National Weather Service e-mailed to me as they are issued. Just moments ago, I received a long one which began as follows…

Special Weather Statement
400 PM PST Mon Feb 24 2003

…Rain and mountain snow for southwestern California tonight and Tuesday…Winter Storm Warning in effect above 5500 feet for the mountains of Santa Barbara…Ventura and Los Angeles counties…

A winter storm approaching the coast has already brought showers to the central coast of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. The showers will increase in coverage with rain expected to quickly spread south to Ventura and Los Angeles counties this evening. Rain…heavy at times…can be expected overnight across southwestern California. An isolated thunderstorm will be possible as well. The heaviest rain is expected along south facing slopes and foothills. The rain should gradually diminish from north to south on Tuesday.

And then it went on for many paragraphs to warn of floods and road-closings. Because I knew no rain was forecast for today and I hadn't noticed the message date, I made a loud Scooby Doo sound…"Ruh?" Eleven minutes later, another Special Weather Statement arrived in my e-mailbox. Here it is, in full…

Special Weather Statement
1100 AM PST Tue Nov 18 2003

Please disregard previous special weather statement dated Feb 24 2003.

This is kinda like all the reports about Iraq/Al-Qaeda links and Weapons of Mass Destruction and leaked memos, except that it got corrected on its own and by the folks who were wrong in the first place.

Do you like the comic strip, Fox Trot? Of course you do…so here's a link to the web page of its cartoonist, Bill Amend. And there's a link on there that will let you read lots of Fox Trot strips.

Molly Ivins on why some people, herself included, don't like George W. Bush.

…to the Hawaii Five-O question. Thanks to all of you who wrote in with answers and suggestions.

Local commitments are keeping me away from Mid-Ohio Con this year. But I wanted to say that if I could get away, I'd get away to Columbus, Ohio next weekend for Roger Price's annual gathering of comics, TV and film fans. Having attended comic book and s-f conventions across the continent since '70, I've gotten jaded and bored by a lot of them, but Roger hosts one of the friendliest gatherings I've ever attended. The spirit reminds me a lot of the late-seventies San Diego Cons which were just big enough that there was always something to do but not so big that they felt unconquerable. Go here to see the guest list and how to get there. And Roger…sorry I won't be there but I'll try to make it next year.

If you're even vaguely in the Los Angeles area, I highly recommend Totally Looped. This is a terrific show of improvisational comedy that occurs not nearly often enough. (I didn't phrase that properly but you know what I mean.) The next edition is this coming Friday, November 21, and you can find out all about it at this website. If I can get away, I'll be there. Read my report on an earlier performance and you'll understand why.

A friend has a question and it's beyond my expertise to answer. We're trying to identify an episode of Hawaii Five-O and all he remembers about it is that it involves a serial killer murdering women all over The Island. There's no explanation as to how he gains entrance to their homes and no seeming connection between his victims until McGarrett (or someone) figures out that all but one had their cars washed at a certain car wash. The killer worked there, picked his targets and secretly duplicated their house keys while their autos (with the keys in them) were going through the car wash.

The reason my friend needs to know about this episode is boring and would be of no interest to anyone. But he needs to, and we're hoping someone reading this is enough of a Five-O buff to tell us which one it was.

I'm experimenting with font sizes to see what will be most readable on this weblog. If you can read this page okay, do nothing. If you find this difficult to read, please drop me a note and tell me what's wrong with it. Thanks.

We call your attention to a new 3-DVD set of episodes of You Bet Your Life starring Groucho Marx that is now available. If you need a reminder of how funny this show was, go to this page of the website for the company bringing them out and click on the video preview links at the bottom of the page. They have a few choice moments from one show, plus the original opening which you may not have ever seen. Most of you who remember the show at all probably remember the opening put on them when a block of episodes were placed into syndication. The 18 programs on this set are not from that block. They're episodes that haven't been available since their original airings, and they've been mastered from quality prints and augmented with loads of special features, including racy outtakes. Sounds like a must-have for us Marx mavens. I'll give you a full report once I get my copy but if you don't want to wait for that, here's a link to order yours today. And tell 'em Groucho sent you.

Frank Rich offers an interesting view on the controversial Reagans mini-series, especially as compared to the upcoming HBO mini-series based on Tony Kushner's Angels in America. [New York Times registration required.]

For those of you interested in cartoon voices, we have here a good interview with Rob Paulsen, one of the best of the current crop. I worked with Rob once on a series and couldn't have been more impressed with his talent and professionalism.

TV Land just finished running, as a tribute to Art Carney, a "marathon" of all 39 filmed episodes of The Honeymooners. I caught a few of the less-familiar ones and again marvelled at how good he was on that show. A year or three ago, I got a few folks all hot and bothered in an Internet discussion of Jackie Gleason by saying that I felt his rep as "The Great One" was overrated; that the best thing Mr. Gleason ever did for television was to hire Art Carney and not completely blast him off the screen. A star can do that…cutting down the other actors' roles, telling them not to do this or that. Berle was famous for that and so was Gleason, though Jackie never fully mastered the art of keeping Art in a strait-jacket. A Gleason show was woefully under-rehearsed: They did it until Jackie felt he had his part down, and then it was every man for himself. To my knowledge, Carney never went public with his belief that he was being deliberately handicapped but it was common knowledge within the business.

You can almost sense it in some episodes. The dullest ones keep Norton in the corners and out of the spotlight. The best ones give him something to do, preferably something physical and/or exasperating to Ralph: Norton poaching in the Kramden apartment to watch TV, Norton teaching Ralph how to play golf, Norton and Ralph rehearsing to do a TV commercial, Norton and Ralph handcuffed together, Norton and Ralph deciding to get drunk together, Norton prepping Ralph to go on a TV game show, Norton competing with Ralph in a costume competition, Norton sleepwalking, etc. Gleason used to say that The Honeymooners was the story of a couple that lived in near-poverty but kept going because of their love for each other. He was wrong. The Honeymooners was the story of friendship between a bus driver and a sewer worker, and it was the sewer worker who made it a classic.

Having recently done a big "Bah, Humbug!" to Halloween, we now turn our attention to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is no great deal to me, and really hasn't been since about the time I got out of school and it no longer yielded a four-day weekend. When you're self-employed, you're like the atheist who is dismayed at the lack of holidays in his life. We work when we have to work and taking four days off just puts us four days behind. Then there is this matter of parades. Once upon a time, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was a joy carried on both CBS and NBC.

One year, one channel was almost exactly a half-hour ahead of the other so if I saw a float I liked on NBC at 8:42 AM, I'd make a note and switch over to see it again on CBS at 9:12. The parade was festive and colorful and if it was freezing in New York, as it usually seemed to be on Thanksgiving Day, I could sit in sunny Los Angeles and watch other people shiver and exhale visible breath. But the last few times I tuned in to the Macy's festivities, they were only on one channel, they were truncated down to supposed highlights, and what was there was pretty much a marching infomercial for upcoming movies and TV shows, toy promotions and videogames. I suppose there was always some of that but it had gotten too prevalent and pushy for me to enjoy.

So what's left to love about Thanksgiving? Well, big family gatherings to eat turkey were fun in their way, but most of my family has passed away and when what's left gathers, it only reminds us of lost loved ones. Plus, eating turkey is no big deal. Since I cut way back on red meat, I dine on turkey two or three times a week, and I'm not the only one. Year-round turkey consumption in America is way up. Lately in the market, you find it in all sorts of forms — burgers and filets and ground turkey and turkey meatballs. Someone has even brought out a turkey-and-gravy soda. If they could figure out a way to get a potato and some carrots in there, they'd have almost everything I eat in one bottle. And everything I like about Thanksgiving.