Monthly Archives: November 2004

Above, we see two versions of the cover of Daredevil #37 — and don't worry if they're too small. They enlarge if you'll only click on them.

At left is the cover as it appeared on the comic book I purchased off the stands, lo these many years ago. It was expertly drawn by Gene Colan and Frank Giacoia, two fine craftsmen.

At right is the cover as reinterpreted by Fred Hembeck, who has been filling comic books and comic book fanzines with his wonderful, enthusiastic cartooning for a few decades. I can't decide if I prefer when he takes a serious cover and makes it silly, or when he takes a silly cover like this one and makes it even sillier.

You probably cannot afford to purchase the original to a piece of art as fine as the Colan/Giacoia version. But if you scurry over to Fred's website and especially to this page, you can perhaps afford to buy the original to one of his wonderful re-creations…and for a lot less money than you'll pay if you wait a few years. Don't say I didn't warn you.

As delineated in this article [Los Angeles Times, registration required], the TiVo folks have come up with yet another way to swap the privacy of their users for a few dollars. I am of two minds about these little plans for the gathering of user data and the implementation of targeted advertising. On the one side, they don't seem all that invasive to me, and I do want to see the TiVo company stay in business. On the other, they're slowly chipping away at my right to watch what I want the way I want and at my right to not be spied upon when I do. The "privacy" part bothers me more as a matter of principle than actual damage. I can't see any harm in TiVo compiling data that includes a list of what I watch and it could conceivably do some good in boosting the ratings for shows I like…but at some point, I suppose there will be a downside. It's like when I fill out a form somewhere and I'm asked for seemingly irrelevant but unimportant data. I think, "I can't imagine any harm in them knowing this about me but — somewhere, sometime — someone will figure out a way to use it against me."

Here's the big problem with this new incursion on our viewing sovereignty, and it's a small possible drawback. The new policy involves TiVo bombarding us with pop-up ads as we fast-forward through commercials. One of the worst-kept secrets on the Internet is that TiVo has an undocumented capability. By punching a few buttons, you can program your remote to have a 30-second skip feature…so when they start a 2-minute commercial break, you just grab the remote, hit a certain button four times…and you're completely past the ads without having to see more than a fraction of a second of each. Does this new policy mean that some future TiVo software upgrade will take this away? I'm hoping it doesn't but it probably does.

Here's an article [Washington Post, registration required] about a confrontation in an Oklahoma town. On one side, you had a Bible-belting group that is admittedly filled with hate for homosexuals. On the other, you had the local citizenry that rallied around a young gay man. The result gives one a certain amount of hope.

Is Abe Vigoda alive? Let's find out over at www.abevigoda.com.

Conan O'Brien has made a star out of a graphic designer on his staff, a serious gent named Pierre Bernard. Fred Hembeck, who also remembers when Pierre used to be a comic book letterer, sends me this link to an article on the guy. [CAUTION: This is a link to a site that may ask you for your zip code and age.]

Here's an Amazon link to order George Carlin's latest book, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? It's a funny book by a funny man. Much of it has to do with euphemisms — fancy or inefficient words we use when there's a simple and more direct one. I think he belabors these at times but he's darned amusing, and there's more than enough genuine insight in his work to satisfy me. There was a period not long ago when we were treated (that's not the right word) to a lot of very poor books by stand-up comedians, often putting their acts on paper and taking an author's credit for recycling material that they purchased from comedy writers. Carlin's books are mostly new stuff and all by him.

Which brings me to how I spent last evening. I went to hear Harry Shearer interview George Carlin before a sold-out audience of Carlin fans. Shearer's a pretty funny guy, too, but the spotlight was on Mr. Carlin who discussed many of the topics from his book plus the recent presidential election, getting fired in Las Vegas, serving in the Air Force, smoking marijuana, becoming disillusioned with Christianity and the human race (in that order), why he doesn't consider himself a cynic, why there aren't more great stand-up comics these days, Michael Jackson, the futility of protest movements, his general working procedure and a host of other topics. Naturally, I don't agree with the man on everything. No one would…and that made for an interesting kind of nervous energy in the room. The place was, of course, filled with people who generally love Carlin and what he says, and for most of the evening, they (we) laughed and applauded. But every so often, like when he said he thought Michael Jackson was the greatest entertainer in the world and should be left alone to perform, even with children, you could sense the audience withdraw slightly. No one booed but the energy waves in the room were a little unsettled, and you could practically hear people rolling what he'd said over in their minds, wondering if they were wrong and this usually-so-perceptive gent was right. Before they came to any decision, he'd be on to another, less arguable topic and the sense of the hall would swing back his way.

One of Carlin's great strengths as a comic is his willingness to say what audiences don't want to hear, or think they don't want to hear. He has great perception when he talks of everyday, harmless occurrences…but he also has the guts to go against popular and/or polite opinion. He'll venture into areas like "cripples" and 9/11 and aspects of religion that a lesser comedian would sidestep. Too sensitive. Too many potential landmines.

Carlin ventures in and as often as not, hits on something that causes you to say, "Hey…he's right about that." At times, I find myself laughing at the fact that I'm laughing at something that was right in front of me but concealed by a bogus air of propriety or — to use a term I dislike — political correctness. Occasionally, I even find myself chuckling at an observation where I disagree with his viewpoint. I guess when you're funny enough, you can do that…and it probably explains why the man's been so successful for so long. He doesn't play it safe. He just plays it for laughs.

There's a wealth of info now posted about the 2005 WonderCon in San Francisco. Don't let the fact that I'm on the Guest List dissuade you. There will be people there you actually want to see.

If you ever lost money at the Desert Inn hotel in Las Vegas, you may enjoy seeing the final remnant of that venerable institution destroyed. Early this morning, the last remaining tower of one of the town's oldest casinos was imploded to make way for Steve Wynn's new hotel, which is supposed to open in 2005 at a cost of somewhere between two and three billion smackers. It will include 2,700 rooms, an 18-hole golf course, a performance theater that is costing $100 million just by itself, an art gallery full of Picassos and Van Goghs, eighteen restaurants and — correcting what has long been to me one of the great omissions of the hotels at which I've stayed — a Ferrari and Maserati dealership. I sure hope they have nickel slots and a $4.95 late night steak-and-eggs special.

Many intriguing nuggets of Vegas history were destroyed along with the rest of the place in this morning's razing. The Desert Inn was owned for a time by famed wacky billionaire Howard Hughes. In 1966, Hughes booked the top two floors of the place for ten days…and when the ten days were up, he declined to leave. The proprietors of the hotel wanted him out. Even though he was paying for his lodging, they were in the business of renting to gamblers who'd lose money in the casino, not to rich folks who stayed holed-up in their rooms. Hughes eventually solved the impasse by buying the whole Desert Inn for $14 million, which at the time was around double what the place seemed to be worth. (Next year, there will be individual paintings on the property that cost that much.) Eventually, Hughes purchased other Vegas hotels, including the Frontier — aka The New Frontier — right across the street.

At one point, Mr. Hughes decided he wanted to be able to go back and forth between the Desert Inn and the Frontier but — of course — he was not about to go out and cross Las Vegas Boulevard like any normal human being. So…at considerable expense, he had a tunnel built under the Strip, connecting his two establishments. It cost a couple million and apparently, Hughes never got around to using it himself. In fact, some say he never got around to setting foot in the Frontier or several of the other hotels he owned, like the Sands, the Landmark, the Silver Slipper and Castaways, all of which have since been levelled. But the Desert Inn-Frontier tunnel was used for a few years by employees of both establishments. Wayne Newton tells stories of how he would do his show at the Desert Inn and then, because the headliner at the Frontier was out sick, he'd dash over via the tunnel and fill in across the street.

In the seventies, someone decided that vibrations from the traffic above had dangerously weakened the tunnel structure so they closed it down. The bringdown of the Desert Inn probably seals off one side of it forever and any day now, when a deal is finally put in place to implode the Frontier, that will close it off from the other side. Before that happens, someone had better check to make sure Shecky Greene isn't down there.

You should be able to view this morning's implosion at this link. If not, go to the website for KLAS-TV and hunt around. [NOTE: The first link is to a pop-up window. So if you have something like a pop-up blocker, you may want to do whatever it takes to allow pop-ups before you click on it. In most programs, you hold down the CTRL key when you click the link and that overrides the blocker. And the video plays fine on my computer via Internet Explorer but doesn't seem to work in Foxfire, even though both are loading it into Windows Media Player. This is not my fault.]

As Robert Scheer points out: In the Bush administration, being wrong about Iraq does not get you fired. Being right does. [Los Angeles Times registration may be required.]

There have been poor copies of it around the Internet for years…but IFilm is now offering a better video clip of perhaps the greatest TV musical moment of the seventies. That's right…William Shatner performing his version of Elton John's "Rocket Man" on a 1978 awards show. This link may bring it up on your screen (it's an ASF file, playable through Windows Media Player). If that link doesn't work, go here and look around for it. This is the number that was so odd that Chris Elliott did a parody of it on David Letterman's show by just coming out and doing it exactly the same way Shatner did it.

I have a little problem I'd like to share with you, not that I expect anyone to be able to solve it…

Recently, I've received an amazing number of e-mails from strangers who are trying to contact someone…usually an individual in the animation business or the field of comics who they think I may know. In some cases, they say they are old friends. In some cases, they say they're looking to discuss some project with the person. Sometimes, they don't say. It's just, "I'm trying to get in contact with So-and-so. Please send me their e-mail address or phone number."

If I don't know the person they seek, it's fine. It takes 20 seconds to write a reply that says, "Sorry, I have no contact info for him (or her)." Unfortunately, I usually do have what they seek. I just feel I shouldn't be giving it out to strangers. I've chosen to put my e-mail address and contact info all over the Internet but most folks don't do that. (I just realized there's another category of these messages. It's when someone writes me something like, "Can you send me Peter David's e-mail address?" If that person went to Google and typed in "Peter David," they could have found it in less time than it takes to write to me. This probably bothers me more than it should.)

Sometimes, I have an e-mail address for the person so I forward the message to them. Most of the time though, the person is writing me because they're trying to reach someone who doesn't have e-mail. Some human beings don't, you know. I don't want to pass on a private phone number or address so I have several options, all of which require more time than I can afford to devote to this. At the moment, I have forty or fifty of these messages in a folder…and I'm not even answering all the mail that people write to me about me, lately.

Like I said, I'm not expecting anyone to tell me how to handle this. Just thought I'd vent and perhaps discourage more of these messages. Please, people. I'd like to help you get in touch with the person you seek but it's just getting to be too big a drain on me.

At above left is the cover to the historic Flash Comics #1 which featured the first Flash story, written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Harry Lampert. Today, many text-only obits are appearing about Harry (like this one and this one). In a day or two, they'll start appearing with pictures. Let's see how many run this cover — which was drawn by Sheldon Moldoff — as if it represents Harry's work. A couple are already forgetting that Harry was not the sole creator of the super-speedster; that it began with a script by Fox. And I just heard from a reporter who's writing about Harry but who apparently doesn't know that the Flash has undergone a few changes (like becoming a couple of totally different people) since 1940.

For the record, Lampert never drew a cover with The Flash on it. The cover to Flash #6, seen above right, is sometimes wrongly identified as his. It was actually by E. E. Hibbard, who took over the Flash strip as of the third issue. Comic book lore may not be as important as some history but it's not that difficult to get it right.

Michael Kinsley writes about judicial activism. [Washington Post registration may be necessary.]

I don't agree with every word of articles to which I link, and sometimes don't agree at all. But this one I think is right on the money: Decrying "judicial activism" is usually just a way of saying you think a judge should interpret a law, which may or may not say what you want it to say, as saying what you want it to say.