Monthly Archives: February 2004

That's what's on the license plate from my 1957 Thunderbird…which, by the way, I'm still thinking of selling. (That is, I'm thinking of selling the car. Whether or not you'll want the plate too may depend on whether your name is Mark.) In any case, that's not a photo of the actual plate. It's a computer generated image courtesy of this website. You pick your state and one of its past license plate formats, enter what you want on your plate and — POOF! — it creates an image of that license plate for you. I made one and pasted it into the photo of a T-Bird. Sure beats the way they make 'em in prison.

As mentioned before here, a DVD collection of Marx Brothers movies will be available in May. Based on the announced rundown of its contents, we like this package a lot…even if it does include A Night in Casablanca. We're going to advance-order it by clicking on this Amazon link and you might like to do likewise. The selection of films was pretty obvious: It's every Marx Brothers movie currently controlled by the Time-Warner empire. But whoever assembled this thing also picked some wonderful shorts and supplementary material, including Warner Brothers cartoons and shorts keyed to the same years as the Marx films they accompany.

One thing I'd love to see some company do is to assemble a couple of DVDs that replicate the entirety of actual film programs seen in theaters…in other words, "Here's a DVD set that shows you exactly what you would have seen if you'd gone to the Bronx Bijou on such-and-such a date." They would include the features, shorts, cartoons, newsreels, trailers, etc. that went with one another. I don't think a similar DVD series would be a huge seller but it might be a way for companies to market some of the items from their vaults that otherwise would never make it to home video.

Stuttering John (of Howard Stern fame) as Leno's new announcer? Oh, great. It's not enough to do remote segments where the point is to laugh at how awkward and non-professional some people are on camera. Now we're going to have one of them in the studio every night.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to get on late night TV, the key was to be witty and professional. Today, only the host is allowed to be that and he surrounds himself with inarticulate stagehands, delicatessen owners and others who are guaranteed to never come up with an intentional funny remark. It's amazing how most of the comedians I know have gone from being not good enough to be on with Jay or Dave to being overqualified.

Yesterday, three separate people said roughly the same thing to me: "I don't know why, but I have the feeling the Democratic nominee is going to be Edwards."

Happy to hear that we're about to see a reissue of my pal Roger Stern's 1993 novel, The Death and Life of Superman. Well actually, I'm happy for you since I still have my original hardcover copy. The new one's a trade paperback that will be out in March, with new introductions by Roger, Mike Carlin and Charlie Kochman. I was not a big fan of the "Death of Superman" storyline that was done back then in the comics. It struck me as a bit loud, a bit exploitive and way overemotional, given that we all knew he was coming back. Still, I recall enjoying Roger's novelization of it, which had more depth than noise, and a really good sense of what it was that made Superman Superman.

I've read a lot of Superman stories over the years where my reaction was, "That wasn't a bad comic but Superman wasn't in it. There was a big muscular guy with an "S" on his chest but it wasn't Superman." That never happened with Roger's stories, so I recommend it even though there's no Amazon link available yet. When there is, I'll post one here, but don't wait for that.

Here's a piece by the Spinsanity crew that strikes me as a fair overview of the "Bush in the National Guard" flap. My interest in this one is low but it does fascinate me that so many folks on both sides are throwing out incomplete, arguable hunks of "evidence" and then saying, "This proves we're right. Case closed."

Here's a good profile of a very fine actor named David Paymer. I worked with David on a series a few years ago and thought he was an absolute joy.

One of the great unsung comic books of the past is Little Archie, as written and drawn by Bob Bolling. At arm's length, it seems like a dumb idea for a comic. To the extent the teenage Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, Reggie and the rest of the gang were entertaining, it was because they dealt with all the travails of their age bracket: Dating, high school, cars, etc. And of course, there was always the fact that the girls, especially as drawn by Dan DeCarlo, were so gosh-durn sexy. So you'd figure the kiddie version, which loses all that, would be a quadruple snooze…and in the hands of anyone other than Bolling, yes, that's what it would have been. But using a few remnants of the teen formula, Bolling managed to craft a very personal little franchise, occasionally generating actual, on-the-page suspense. Through sheer cleverness and dedication, he managed to make his characters very real and avoid the "generic" feel that so many Archie comics had in script and art. It's really a body of work deserving of more attention.

And this week, it's getting some over at Scott Shaw!'s beloved Oddball Comics page at Comic Book Resources. All week, Scott spotlights Little Archie in all his glory. Good stuff.

Two things distress me about these rumors that John Kerry had an affair with an intern, and neither makes me more or less likely to vote for him. One is that it's only February. Kerry doesn't even have the nomination and the attacks have already reached this level. I hate to think what we're going to be hearing about him and his running mate by October, especially if they're ahead, and I'm no more thrilled about the quantity of mud that will be lobbed back at Bush-Cheney or Bush-Whoever. (I'm guessing we haven't heard a lot of Democratic attacks on Cheney lately because they want to wait until it's too late to dump him from the ticket before they launch the TV spots that say, "Our men and women are dying in Iraq because of inadequate equipment while Cheney and Halliburton line their pockets with money from the Defense Budget." Anyone think we won't be subjected to that sales pitch?)

The other thing that bothers me is that the rumors about Kerry and this lady seem to have come out of absolutely nowhere. There are no secret tapes, no stained dress, no appointment logs that show Kerry and this woman in the same location at the same time. I'm not even sure there are any witnesses who ever saw them together. Someone somewhere said Kerry was involved with an intern and that was enough for some folks to run with it. On some of the Conservative sites, it's now an accepted truth…and if it's denied by everyone involved or can't be proven, well, that just shows what Kerry's money and power can accomplish.

I'm always suspicious of any charge that (a) serves the cause of the parties doing the charging and (b) is configured such that it can never really be disproven. How does Kerry prove the charge is bogus? Come up with a photo of them not having sex?

The charges that George W. Bush was AWOL in the National Guard have occasionally dipped to the same level. Yeah, there's some paperwork (and therefore, potential proof) there but the people pursuing the story seem unwilling to consider, for example, that government files and paperwork could be legitimately missing. Or that some of the data on the records that do exist might just be wrong. Certainly, some of the witnesses who are coming forth to confirm or deny Bush's version of things are exhibiting a shaky, though perhaps earnestly-believed grasp of dates. I wish politics could mature beyond the level where if someone says something that hurts your guy, he's obviously lying…and if someone says something that hurts the other side, it's an established, incontrovertible fact.

Some ambitious folks are attempting to catalog every TV and film appearance of every DC comic book character with what they call The DC Live Action List, even though it includes cartoon voices. Whatever, it's a valuable resource.

Here are Eric Alterman and Michael Tomasky discussing how reporters ought to actually be doing some reporting instead of taking dictation from those in power.

One of the things Bill Clinton did that I didn't like was his embrace of the "V-Chip." Nice to see that now that they're required on all TV sets, almost no one's using them.

Some time ago, I recommended you waste a few hours of your too, too-short life on an online game. Over at the Garfield website, you can play Garfield's Scary Scavenger Hunt. And then, after you agonize your way through that puzzle, you can throw good time after bad and play Garfield's Scary Scavenger Hunt II. I enjoyed both enough to write up little walkthrough solutions. If you need one, drop me an e-mail. But try to solve it yourself before you do. Neither is that difficult and you'll be happier if you figure them out for yourself.

Tuesday night, TV Land is running four hours of shows produced by my occasional employers, Sid and Marty Krofft…segments of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, H.R. Pufnstuf, ElectraWoman and DynaGirl and others. I wrote none of these so like you, I can enjoy them as they regress me to an earlier age. You can get the schedule over at this page and they have interviews with Sid and Marty, and with the wonderful Billie "Witchiepoo" Hayes on this page, though I wasn't able to get them to play. There's an article about these shows over on the New York Times but it's written by a lady who doesn't know what she's talking about so I'm not going to link to it.