Monthly Archives: February 2004

You know who Sid Couchey is? Not surprising. He was one of the anonymous artists who drew comics for Harvey like Richie Rich and Little Dot. He did thousands of pages of some of the most beloved funnybooks of all time and I don't think he ever got his name on any of them. You can hear an interview with him over at the NPR website on this page. Also note there are several other comic-related interviews there. And if you don't feel like listening to Sid, here's a newspaper article on the man. We love it when guys like that get a little recognition.

I didn't see Saturday Night Live last night but a friend who did and who lives in Los Angeles told me that for no visible reason, the last half-hour of the show didn't air and in its place was a half-hour "town meeting" with Joe Lieberman. This is the real Joe Lieberman, not Darrell Hammond in make-up, and a real town meeting, not a sketch. This struck me as so odd that I scanned the Internet and found this article. Here's an excerpt talking about Cassandra Lentchner, a lawyer who works for Lieberman…

In December, Lentchner found out that Al Sharpton would appear on Saturday Night Live. She dove into the federal equal-time rules and found that in states in which both candidates were on the ballot, Lieberman was entitled to exactly what Sharpton got — 28 minutes of free air time on certain NBC affiliates. She cut a deal for reruns of a Lieberman town meeting to air in media markets in California and Missouri.

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else online but that's bizarre…to just dump out of an episode of a network show (even a rerun) and run a half-hour of something like that in a major market like Los Angeles. My friend who saw it reported also that it was poorly shot and didn't make Lieberman look especially good, either.

This of course raises the question of why no other candidate has received the same "equal time." Perhaps some of them still will. Kerry, Clark, Edwards and Dean might feel it would do them more harm than good with public sentiment, but they might not. More to the point, Lyndon LaRouche is on the ballot in California and he always seems to love TV airtime, and it's not like Dennis Kucinich has much to lose. Gephardt and Braun have shut down their campaigns but they're still on the ballot and might be able to claim the airtime. It wouldn't surprise me, by the way, if Gephardt (out of the race) still got more votes in California than Lieberman (still in).

One might also wonder if this will make Saturday Night Live less inclined to let real politicians host the show during an election year. Maybe if it doesn't, that's not a bad thing. Based on the last time I saw the show, the town meeting with Lieberman might have been funnier than the real last half hour of SNL.

Brent Seguine suggests I emphasize that the Marx Brothers Collection I mentioned earlier (the DVD set of seven Marx movies) will not be out until May. It should not be confused with a currently available Marx Brothers Collection which offers five DVDs crammed full of public domain material. This one contains old TV pilots, trailers and oddments but no movies. Some of it is interesting…like the time Edward R. Murrow's Person to Person interview program visited Harpo. Some of the video quality is poor. So I'm not recommending it but if you're interested in it anyway, here's an Amazon link. Just don't confuse it with the one that will be out in May. Thanks, Brent.

I am not watching the Super Bowl. I have the Internet all to myself.

My apologies. I prepared a reminder the other day about this but I just plain forgot to post it. As you doubtlessly know, Fantagraphics Books will soon be issuing Volume 1 of The Complete Peanuts, a year-by-year reprinting of Mr. Schulz's classic newspaper strip. It will take many years and cost mucho money to get them all but I can't imagine it not being more than worth it. Many Peanuts strips have never been republished anywhere, especially from the first few years when Schulz was still doping out his characters and finding his style. We'll all get to watch that style mature and the characters develop, and that alone should be worth the price.

The reason I wish I'd posted this yesterday is that Fantagraphics was offering free shipping on the first book if you ordered (as I did) before February 1. But it's still a bargain. Order here. It ships in one month.