Monthly Archives: February 2005

I've heard a lot of folks say that the day is drawing near when our soldiers can turn over the job of policing Iraq to the Iraqi army. But according to this piece by Fred Kaplan, that force is about as much an army as you and I are.

You see that thing the Penguin is holding? That's called an umbrella, also sometimes known as a parasol or bumbershoot. In addition to the usual things the Penguin does with his — shooting bullets, spraying lethal gas, slowing his descent when he leaps off a tall building, etc. — it is possible to use one to keep the rain off one's person. If you are journeying to San Francisco this weekend to attend the WonderCon and see all the splendid panels I'm conducting, you might want to bring one along…and not just to shoot bullets, spray lethal gas or slow your descent when you leap off a tall building.

Again, it's a list with which we could all argue…but you might enjoy reading what someone thinks are the 100 Funniest Jokes of All Time. [CAUTION: Occasional naughty language. And thanks to Bruce Reznick for the pointer.]

My pal Gerard Jones writes in the Los Angeles Times about the Stan Lee lawsuit and the way the comic book industry has treated some of its greatest creative talents. And no, I still haven't gotten a copy of Gerry's new book…but I will.

Pat O'Neill reminds me that on the Jonny Quest TV show, "sim sala bim" were the magic words employed by Jonny's pal, Hadji, whenever he exercised his mystic powers.

I have a new way to tell when I've been working too late. My computer's virus software is set to scan the system each morn at 4:00. I was sitting here, working on a script when it kicked in and I went, "Jeez! It's four o'clock in the morning. Last I looked, it was quarter to one."

Odd how time disappears sometimes when I get deep into a project. When I was 17, one of my first professional assignments was to rapidly ghost-write a cheap paperback novel…and it was one of those jobs where anything I produced would be good enough. If it was more-or-less in English and had punctuation marks sprinkled throughout, the publisher would have been happy, just so long as it was finished in the next five days. The deadline was way more important than any literary content…which was good because given my experience, my manual typewriter, and the limited amount of time I had to pound script, the literary content stood to be a notch below the instruction label on a package of suppositories.

My parents were in Vegas so I had the place to myself. Instead of bringing my girl friend over when the neighbors weren't watching — which is what I usually did when Mom and Dad went off to gamble — I sat down around Noon and began writing. The next thing I knew, it was 3:00 in the morning and I had about half the book piled up next to me. I'd stopped for a couple of snacks and bathroom breaks, but I'd pretty much worked straight through, losing all track of the hour. It was the first time I ever experienced that as a writer, and it was both exciting and chilling in different ways, maybe even better than sneaking in the girl friend. As I recall, I slept about six hours, got up and finished the book in two shorter spurts of maybe six hours each. I do remember handing it in a day early, which stunned the publisher…absolutely stunned him. He'd promised me a bonus if I was finished in five days, and I'd delivered in three.

Naturally, as rush jobs so often go, it turned out not to be the crisis he'd thought it was. The publication date was then delayed, and as far as I know, the book never did get printed. In a way, that was probably just as well, except I'd been in too big a rush to deliver so I skipped making myself a copy. At the time, the payment I got meant everything in the world to me. Today, I'd give it back with interest, just to have a copy of that manuscript. If something I now wrote evoked the comment, "This is the worst thing ever written," I could haul out the novel I wrote in 2.5 days, shove it in the critic's face and say, "Oh, yeah? Read this!"

The virus-checker isn't detecting anything and I'm going to bed. Good night.

George W. Bush says he wants to get rid of government programs that don't work. How about if we start with the National Ballistic Missile Defense Project?

A lot of Californians were happy to get rid of Governor Gray Davis because he was taking so much money from special interest groups that seemed to be buying his support of beneficial legislation. If this article in Salon is correct, his replacement is doing twice as much of that. [Paid membership or the viewing of advertising may be required.]

I am always way behind on e-mail but at the moment, I'm farther behind than usual. This will only get worse until after I return from WonderCon in San Francisco. So please bear with me. And here's another plug for the best events up there…

Okay, I don't think he reads this weblog but maybe somebody does who could call this to his attention…

Bill…I'm watching you on Larry King Live, and you just said some very nice things about Johnny Carson. But then you said to Larry, "Sim holla bim," and explained that you use that phrase often because it was what Johnny always said when he was playing Carnac the Magnificent. Not quite.

The phrase is "sim sala bim." These were the magic words coined and made famous by the late, great magician, Dante. It's sometimes spelled as one word — "simsalabim" — but the middle part starts with an "S," not an "H." This became a very famous phrase/word in the world of professional magicians, and many a rabbit-producer utilized them. Carson probably used it when he was in that line of work. (You can see Dante in action in a Laurel and Hardy feature, A-Haunting We Will Go. He says "sim sala bim" about eight thousand times in it.)

I agree with some of what you said on the show about the environment and the War in Iraq and Social Security and the deficit, and disagree with other things…but that's trivia. Misquoting Carson and Dante is monumental.

Over on Slate, Timothy Noah explains why William Rehnquist could not have been Deep Throat. But more interesting is the assertion that the "Deep Throat is dying" rumor may be bunk. This would not surprise me.

Like me, Noah thinks D.T. was Mark Felt or Fred Fielding. Like me, he thinks there was a Deep Throat, and he explained why some time ago in this article.

A couple of folks have written me with their concern or belief that one of these days, when one of the suspects dies, Bernstein and Woodward will just say, "It was him," and we'll be expected to take their word for it. One reader wrote that he doesn't believe there was a Deep Throat and won't believe a posthumous revelation without a hell of a lot of proof. At the same time, I received this from my pal, Mike Catron…

Some years back (probably 2002, which was the 30th anniversary year of the Watergate break-in), Woodward was live on a C-Span call-in show discussing Watergate. As you know, I do a lot of videotaping at conventions, but I've also done sit-down recollections with comics pros and relatives and done a bit of cinema verité on the little town in which I live. Anyway, I faxed or e-mailed C-Span during the program and, by golly, the host (it was probably Brian Lamb, but I don't remember for sure anymore) read my question to Woodward.

I suggested that, come the day Throat's identity is finally revealed, it's conceivable that certain folks might decide to cry "foul" and claim that the recently-departed figure, not able to defend himself any longer, was not Deep Throat at all, that Woodward had just chosen someone and smeared their memory, their service to their country, etc. And that there never really was a Deep Throat. I suggested that Woodward might want to head off such criticism by videotaping a discussion with Deep Throat to get the man's story in his own words. (I was ready to jokingly offer my services to record such a conversation, but I think I dropped that at the last minute).

Woodward's response? "Interesting."

So, did such a tape already exist by then? Or might my "conversation" with Woodward have prompted him to arrange such a taping? Either way, I hope so, on a number of levels. As much as you hope there's a manuscript in a lawyer's safe somewhere (I also think it likely that Woodward and Bernstein have already written the final book in their trilogy), I hope there'll be a DVD to accompany it.

Yeah. It's certainly conceivable that they said to Throat, "Look, we'll keep your secret 'til the day you die, like you want. We'll even let you deny it and call us liars and everything…but you have to give us a way of getting our good names back later. So sit for an interview that will let us prove it then, and we'll keep the secret." And whoever Throat was, it's certainly possible that he'd want some sort of statement out there to explain why he did what he did. So…yeah, there could be a tape. And a book. And a CD. And you've got to figure in the movie rights and a video game and the Deep Throat theme park where you get to meet Hal Holbrook in a garage…

We're about to get the first CD release of the score for the 1966 revue based on guess-what-magazine. Longtime MAD scribes Larry Siegel and Stan Hart did the book, with music by Mary Rodgers and lyrics by a couple of folks, one of whom turned out to be Stephen Sondheim. You can read more about it here and order the new CD here. I've never seen a production of the show, which had an amazingly sparse afterlife. You'd think a small musical with such name recognition would be snapped up by little theater groups and college troupes…but nope.

Rumor has it that it only ran as long as it did in New York because MAD publisher Bill Gaines had made a bet with a friend that the show would play for two years…so when it seemed primed to close before that, he waived royalties and even kicked in cash to keep it open at a loss. I do have the album, which I enjoyed, but it's always nice to have these things on CD.

My pal Kim "Howard" Johnson is the world's foremost authority on Monty Python and the author of several books on the subject. I hope he knows about something else because he's a contestant this week on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? His run, however long it lasts, starts on Tuesday and concludes on Wednesday. I have a feeling it's going to go like this…

"Is that your final answer?"

"I told you once."

"No, you didn't."

"I most certainly did…"

…and so on. His segments were taped some time ago but he hasn't told me how he did, so I'll be tuning in to see if he's buying, next time we have dinner.

This is a solid recommendation of a new DVD that's due out in late March. There are many people in this world who imitate Groucho Marx and usually, it doesn't go much beyond walking like their tie's caught in their fly, plus they mime a cigar and wiggle eyebrows that look like they have friction tape on them. An amazing exception is Frank Ferrante, who's been criss-crossing America for many years now, usually with one of two Groucho shows. Groucho: A Life in Revue is a small play written by Arthur Marx (Groucho's son) and Bob Fisher. It's quite funny, though sad near the end, and you may have seen it years ago, in person or on Showtime, with Gabe Kaplan. Marx and Fisher have revamped it a few times, and the version taped for PBS, starring Ferrante, is even better.

This is what's finally coming out on DVD and you can pre-order it here. I suggest you do.

At other times, Ferrante appears in An Evening With Groucho, which is an even smaller play (just him and a piano player) which has yet to be recorded for PBS or DVD or any kind of commercial release, as far as I know. If you want to see it, you'll have to go see him live — as I did, a few years ago. Over on his website, he has a list of where he'll be Grouchoing, and it really is a must-see performance. I've never seen an impersonator climb so totally inside the guy he's doing. He even ad-libs up to Groucho standards.

This post was inspired by this one over on Gary Sassaman's weblog. As you'll see, he raves about Frank the way I rave about Frank. And if you can't trust two Marx Brothers freaks, who can you trust?

There are now a number of different formats but years ago, most Sunday comic strips could be printed two ways — two-tier or full. Charles Schulz, for example, would draw Peanuts as a three-tier strip, meaning three rows of panels…but he'd write it so that the top row could be discarded, and the strip would still make sense. This gave a newspaper the flexibility to run it in a smaller space if that's all they had.

We are all buying the new Complete Peanuts series from Fantagraphics that reprints Mr. Schulz's magnum opus from Day One. They strive to print all the Sunday pages in complete form but as we all noted, one strip in Volume Two was incomplete. The editors could only locate a truncated, two-tier copy of it, which they ran with a promise to keep searching. If, they said, they managed to locate the complete strip — it's the one for 5/3/53 — they would print it in some future volume.

Well, a copy has been found…not a great one but a fuzzy image off microfilm is better than nothing. It will be cleaned up and included, probably not in the next release but in the one after.