Monthly Archives: November 2004

That's right: Another damn obit. The very funny comedian and voice actor Dayton Allen died last Thursday at age 85. Born Dayton Allen Bolke, he was a native of New York and he got into show business, more or less following the path of his boyhood friend, Art Carney. Both broke into radio in their teens as disc jockeys and specialists in funny voices. Dayton parlayed his skills into work on early children's TV shows, dubbing in voices for puppets and often appearing on camera. He did both for years on the Howdy Doody program, originating the voice of Flub-a-Dub and many other denizens of Doodyville and playing a wide array of non-puppet characters.

Steve Allen "discovered" Dayton and added him to his stock company of comic players. Often, when Steverino did his "Man on the Street" routines, the funniest interview would be with Dayton Allen playing some scatterminded "expert." Audiences howled at him and loved repeating his catch-phrase, "Whyyyyy not?"

Throughout all of this, Dayton Allen established himself as one of the top voiceover performers in the New York talent pool. He was heard in many of the Terrytoons animated shows, voicing both Heckle and Jeckle, and almost all the characters on the Deputy Dawg series, including the star of the show. He was also heard on many of the cartoons produced by Hal Seeger, such as Milton the Monster and Stuffy Durma. He occasionally worked with his brother, Bradley Bolke, who was also active in doing animation voices. (Bradley was the voice of Chumley the Walrus on Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales.)

Dayton more or less retired from performing in the early eighties. Around then, I had occasion to offer him a role in a TV show I was writing and it led to what is easily the most hilarious hour or so I ever spent on the phone. Our casting director was unable to track down an agent for Mr. Allen so I called a friend who furnished me with what turned out to be Dayton's home number. I made the call to him and he politely declined the job, saying that thanks to wise real estate investments, he had plenty of money…and he didn't feel like flying to Los Angeles to be funny. He could be funny in his own toilet, he said. He was sure funny on the phone, and he seemed to enjoy the audience. He kept coming up with anecdotes and jokes, and he kept me on the line for so long that I felt like I should have paid a cover charge. Weak with laughter, I finally begged off…but only when he announced he had to go to the toilet and be funny in there. I'm sure he was…just as I'm sure it was our loss that he decided to retire when he did.

Just amended the Harry Lampert obit. I wrote that he died on his 88th birthday because the source I consulted said he was born November 13, 1916. Mike Catron, who diligently preserves convention panels and interviews for posterity on videotape, informs me Harry said at one he was born November 3, 1916. I'm assuming Harry was right. Thanks, Mike…for that and many other contributions.

Harry Lampert, the artistic co-creator of The Flash, died this morning at age 88. The cause was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage, but he had been in failing health for the past few months, battling cancer and undergoing treatments at a hospital near his home in Florida. A native of New York, Harry showed early artistic talent and by age sixteen was working at the Max Fleischer animation studio, primarily as an inker and clean-up artist for Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons. One day, he heard about a way to pick up extra money…drawing for these new things called "comic books." Harry begin moonlighting, and eventually working full-time for some of the earliest "shop" enterprises, thereby becoming one of the true pioneers of the field. He mostly drew "funny" comics but as the industry turned towards superheroes, he did a few of them, too. The most notable came in 1940 when editor Sheldon Mayer at the All-American company (later absorbed by DC) was assembling a new book called Flash Comics.

Mayer needed someone to draw the title character, a super-speedster devised by writer Gardner Fox. Lampert got the job but was not happy drawing in that style. Little suspecting it was the feature with which his name would be forever linked, he asked off after two stories and Mayer, who knew he had miscast Harry, happily replaced him. Lampert moved on to funnier features (including filler gag pages for many of the company's books) and later out of comic books and into magazine gag cartoons for, among many others, Saturday Review and The Saturday Evening Post. In the late forties, he segued into advertising work, where he enjoyed great success and eventually formed his own agency.

Cartooning was only one of his passions. Another was bridge, a game at which he became so expert that after retiring from cartooning in the mid-seventies, he wrote several books and a syndicated column on the topic. In the eighties, comic book fans tracked him down and he began appearing at conventions, selling newly-created sketches of The Flash. The last few years of his life, he bounced back and forth between bridge tournaments and comic-cons, happily signing autographs and marketing his wares at both. I enjoyed talking with the man and interviewing him on panels, and I'm sure glad we all got the chance to meet and know him.

E-mails are reminding me of another duo that went by the name of Tom and Jerry…the singing pair who later reverted to their real names of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. They were "Tom and Jerry" for a couple years…and apparently, they even wrote most of their songs together then, whereas the later Simon & Garfunkel hits (the important ones, at least) were written wholly by Paul. Art was Tom and Paul was Jerry, in keeping with the obvious sense that, in any Tom and Jerry team, Tom has to be the taller of the two. They had ten or so modestly-received records, then broke up, in part because Paul decided he didn't want to be half of the new Everly Brothers. He wanted to be all of the new Elvis Presley, so he went off and recorded a song on his own. Thereafter, they recorded with others under an array of phony names before finally getting together again. Interesting that they didn't do anything all that memorable until they started being, more or less, themselves.

My pal Buzz Dixon informs me that the original, 19th century meaning of "Tom and Jerry" was to go drinking, brawling and carousing, and he directs my attention to this dictionary page on the subject.

It's hard to get on a political website this week without confronting the question of whether our recent presidential election was fixed. This is a shame because it largely overwhelms what is probably a more valid, fixable issue, which is whether our recent presidential election was run with all possible competence. It may well be that no one tried to rig the vote in any way but that there were still a lot of errors committed and undependable machines employed, and that the people responsible need to be slapped around a little and forced to correct things.

Unfortunately, Americans don't seem to get mad about the possibility that votes were lost or miscounted unless they think it caused their side to lose an election. After the mess of 2000, I can't recall a single prominent Republican expressing outrage that the machines yielded such arguable results, that voters were wrongly purged from the voting rolls, that ballots were confusing, etc. Some quietly urged a reform of the system, if only so that their side wouldn't get accused of cheating the next time…but there was no public outrage from the winners, and the losers were too busy charging fraud to deal with what may have been simple ineptness.

If principle trumped partisanship, both sides would have been equally incensed…and probably about errors, not rigging. Most of the improvements that were put in place seem to have been a matter of local officials knowing they could not defend their voting machines and procedures and not wishing to become "the next Florida." In some cases, it would seem they replaced old, unreliable systems with newer, unreliable systems…and that the appeal of paperless voting machines is not that they're easier to rig but that it's more difficult to prove if they're just plain wrong.

My hunch is that the recent election was not stolen but that there were an awful lot of irregularities that should not have occurred. My further hunch is that if angry Democrats were to shut up about the vote now, there would be a lot less impetus to fix those irregularities.

I know this was not likely but I kinda wish John Kerry's concession speech had instead said something like this…

It now appears that when all the ballots are counted, we will not have enough electoral votes to win the presidency…however, Senator Edwards and I have decided that it is not in the best interest of this country that we concede at this time. We have dozens of reports of questionable vote counts, of precincts that logged more votes than they have registered voters, and of provisional and absentee ballots that have not even been opened. Many of these are in states where they cannot possibly affect whether the state's electoral votes go to us or to the President…but that doesn't matter. Most of these are probably innocent, explainable errors…but that doesn't matter, either. Every American has the right to have his or her vote counted, and to have it counted accurately and given the same respect as any other vote.

We do not expect the result of this election to change but in the hope of changing how votes are recorded and counted in the future, we have decided not to concede until we are satisfied that every vote — whether it is for us, the President, Ralph Nader, Michael Badnarik or Daffy Duck — has been counted, and counted properly. If you are upset that this delays the resolution of this election, I'm sorry. Please direct your outrage to the people who are paid to count the votes accurately and, in some cases, have not done this.

There would have been howls of anger and charges of "sore loser," I'm sure. But I think most of America would have respected it, and it might have done some good. In this day and time, there's no excuse for a vote count the losers can't accept just as readily as the winners.

You all know Tom and Jerry, the cat and mouse from M.G.M. cartoons. If you are a true animation buff, you also know Tom and Jerry, the tall-and-short pair that appeared in Van Beuren cartoons before them. This new website tells you all about the human duo, whose cartoons I remember well from my early television viewing. Sheriff John ran them, over and over, on his Lunch Brigade cartoon show on KTTV, Channel 11 here in Los Angeles. After the feline/rodent characters named Tom and Jerry became famous, the old Van Beuren shorts were retitled "Dick and Larry"…but I am certain that the ones Sheriff John ran were still named "Tom and Jerry."

In fact, I recall wondering how the cat and mouse in my Tom and Jerry comic books and in the cartoons over on Channel 13 could have the same names as the two guys on Sheriff John's show. Around this time at a restaurant, I heard an adult order a "Tom and Jerry" from the bar and I wondered if the drink was named after the human Tom and Jerry or the animal Tom and Jerry. When you're a kid, the world can be so mysterious.

The Washington Post has set up a searchable web page with info and, where available, photos of all the soldiers who've died in the Iraq conflict. A sad reminder of just some of what this is costing us.

As we all know, NBC runs an old episode of Saturday Night Live very early Sunday morning each week…and they run the full 90-minute versions of them, not the 60-minute cutdowns that are more often available. Lately, they've been jumping around the Eddie Murphy years, running some shows that haven't been seen — at least in their entirety — for a very long time. This coming weekend, the schedule says they're airing the episode from December 11, 1982. Once in a while, they inexplicably don't air what they've announced but if they do, you'll get to see a show from Season 8 hosted by Mr. Murphy and featuring musical guest Lionel Richie and a comedy-magic routine by Harry Anderson.

Season #8 was one of those years where they might as well have called the show, Eddie Murphy and Friends. He was easily the most popular cast member and the rest often didn't have a lot to do. On the episode allegedly airing this weekend, he became the first (and to date, only) member of the cast to host while still a member of the cast. Nick Nolte was supposed to do it that week but a few days before the broadcast, he cancelled, claiming illness. So Murphy got to function as host. It is said that most of the other cast members resented one of their own being singled out that way, and they especially objected when Murphy referred to the program, on-air, as The Eddie Murphy Show. It was…but that was kind of rubbing it in. Some folks think that, in the goodnights, you can see the other cast members registering their annoyance over the whole thing.

By the way: If they air this particular show and if you watch, stay 'til the end. Just before the goodnights, there's a pretty funny surprise guest cameo.

I didn't follow the Scott Peterson case. I didn't see what there was about it that warranted more attention than your average homicide. The O.J. Simpson matter involved a movie and sports star, some other peripheral celebrities, racial tensions, a couple of well-publicized public spectacles, colorful lawyers, some pretty serious charges of incompetence and/or treachery by the L.A. Police Department, and a murder case scenario that was chock full of fun stuff to study and discuss. The Peterson case seems to have had nothing of the sort. As far as I can tell, there wasn't even a good, solid controversy as to his guilt or innocence.

A crowd outside the courtroom cheered when the verdict was read. I'm wondering just what they were cheering for. One presumes they were all pretty certain that Peterson was guilty…so were they cheering because a guilty man was found guilty? I hate to think it's come to that in this country; that it's a cause for celebration when the system works the way it's supposed to work.

On CNN, I just saw a "legal analyst" say that the next task for the Defense is to convince the court that Peterson isn't so terrible that he warrants the death penalty. In other words: Yes, he plotted and committed the murder of his wife and unborn child…but it could have been worse. I don't think I'm going to follow that phase of the trial, either.

Drop by The Oh-Fishul Pogo Possum Website today for a special Veteran's Day Pogo strip from the past. And while you're visiting, there's still time to enjoy The Pogo Election Special, a whole buncha strips that Pogomaster Walt Kelly writ 'n' drew in election years past. It's amazing how many of the things he said in that strip, beyond the inevitable "We have met the enemy" quote are timeless and eminently relevant today. Amazing and sad, in some cases…but amazing, nonetheless. And keep your eye on that Pogo site for more of Mr. Kelly's timeless wit, wisdom and peachy brushwork. He was really ahead of our time, to say nothing of his time.

Those of you who own TiVos need to read this.

Malcolm Gladwell explains the hows and whys of prescription drug costs in America. Read this one now. The link may expire in a few days.

Here's what I think is an important article by Frank Rich. His thesis, with which I agree, is that a lot of the talk about "moral values" in this country is bogus, or at least subordinated to profit. Here's Rich quoting Thomas Frank, the author of What's the Matter With Kansas?, a best-selling consideration of the sensibilities of the so-called blue and red states…

"Values," Mr. Frank writes, "always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won." Under this perennial "trick," as he calls it, Republican politicians promise to stop abortion and force the culture industry "to clean up its act" – until the votes are counted. Then they return to their higher priorities, like cutting capital gains and estate taxes. Mr. Murdoch and his fellow cultural barons – from Sumner Redstone, the Bush-endorsing C.E.O. of Viacom, to Richard Parsons, the Republican C.E.O. of Time Warner, to Jeffrey Immelt, the Bush-contributing C.E.O. of G.E. (NBC Universal) – are about to be rewarded not just with more tax breaks but also with deregulatory goodies increasing their power to market salacious entertainment. It's they, not Susan Sarandon and Bruce Springsteen, who actually set the cultural agenda Gary Bauer and company say they despise.

Anyway, read the whole article. I think I've configured the link so you can read it even if you haven't registered over at The New York Times.

Timothy Noah rebuts an article that argues we should not rid ourselves of the Electoral College. As I mentioned before we knew who won, I think the Electoral College is a terrible idea with no valid arguments in its favor.

I continue to receive 10-20 e-mails a day alerting me to "evidence" that George W. Bush stole the recent election via massive irregularities, primarily in Florida and Ohio. Keith Olbermann has apparently been flogging the issue on his MSNBC show and I caught one segment which, taken on its own, made a semi-convincing case that much was amiss. This article in Salon makes a semi-convincing case, I think, that the kind of anomalies noted by Olbermann and others are just run-of-the-mill, easily-explainable screw-ups…and some of them aren't even that. So far, it all strikes me as a lot of anecdotal, arguable evidence.

Please don't send me any more articles or links about this. I agree that it's very important. I don't agree that I have the energy to study it all and arrive at a serious conclusion, or that it matters if I do. I also don't think it's possible to convince a Republican administration to do anything about possible vote fraud by Republicans, nor do I think you can convince any significant number of Republicans that their guy didn't get in, fair and square. About all it can do is make Democrats madder…which, I dunno, may have some value.

A number of things do interest me about this, one being how "certain" some people are that the election was or was not fair, depending on who they wanted to see win. It makes you wonder how fair any jury trial can be, when so many people seem to lack the capacity to see the facts in any light but for the one that yields the conclusion they wish to reach.

Another is that we now have another one of those "facts" that will never die, no matter what. Back in 1960, there was a quote that made the rounds. It came from Richard Daley, who was then the mayor of Chicago, and it was reported more or less like this. The polls had Kennedy and Nixon running neck-and-neck for the electoral votes of Illinois and supposedly, late on Election Day, Daley phoned J.F.K. and said, "With a little bit of luck, and the help of a few close friends, you're going to carry Illinois." Kennedy did — and the vote totals in that state seemed suspicious, though perhaps not as odd as Nixon partisans later insisted. In any case, the Daley quote was taken as a prima facie admission that he had somehow manipulated the count.

I never thought the quote was as damning as some made it out to be…and I've also wondered about its authenticity. Just how did a private conversation between these two people become public? Do we think either man was dumb enough to allow a reporter to listen in on a discussion of how they'd rigged a presidential election? And if so, was it reported verbatim? Nevertheless, it's a widely-accepted part of history, and a lot of folks take it as proven fact that Daley arranged for Kennedy to steal the presidency. (It's also widely-accepted that Nixon was noble enough to not contest the result — a point raised by pundits when Gore conceded in 2000 and again recently when Kerry gave up. And that seems to be demonstrably untrue.)

In the same category as the Daley quote, we now have the 2003 line from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc., that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Actually, it's about as arguably damning as what Daley supposedly said, but O'Dell wrote it in a fund-raising letter so its veracity and exact wordage are not in doubt. That the head of the company that was making the voting machines should pen such words strikes me as foolish but it's not an admission of rigging. Nevertheless, twenty years from now, you'll be at a party, someone will mention the 2004 presidential election and someone else will say, "Oh, yeah…the one Bush stole. The guy who made the voting machines even admitted it."

The last thing that interests me about all this is that an awful lot of the debunking of the charge that Bush stole the election is coming from so-called "Liberal" sites like Salon, and a series over on Slate. Matter of fact, I read a fair number of Liberal and Conservative political sites and most of the reasoned, substantive debunkings are on Liberal sites. The Conservative sites are kind of addressing the issue with the attitude of, "You lost, stop whining, shut up." That alone convinces me we may all be in for a pretty rocky four years.