Monthly Archives: May 2005

The L.A. Times website features a short editorial piece by Robert Crumb. [Subscription probably required.] I think the online piece is missing an illustration that presumably appears in the old-fashioned, paper Los Angeles Times.

Thanks to all who've written with concern about my mother and myself. She's better now but we spent another long night in the U.C.L.A. Medical Center Emergency Room…and by the way, the doctor part of the place is super-efficient but I've never seen unhealthier food than they have in their vending machines. Talk about drumming up business. You'd think a hospital would have trail mix and fruit and maybe a hard-boiled egg or two but no. It was all Ho-Hos and Ding-Dongs and a kind of cinnamon bun so noxious that at 4:30 in the A.M., I watched a famished lady buy a package, take one bite and then shot-put the rest into a dumpster across the room. The vending machines did have microwave popcorn and microwave oatmeal-in-a-cup but as the waiting room had no microwave oven, those didn't seem too healthy, either.

I'm way too far behind on work to write about all we've been through here. When I do, I'll expand on what I think I said earlier about how the doctors and nurses and paramedics have all been terrific but that the non-medical folks and the red tape in the system are insane. They keep making mistakes and then no one seems to have the power or responsibility to fix those mistakes. I'll tell you all about some of them once I finish a script that should have been done long ago. If I can just manage to get a couple more days without having to go to some medical facility and argue with people, it will be.

Here are a few dangling topics and follow-ups…

• Yes, I did receive a copy of Rowan Atkinson Live, thank you. Thirty of you offered copies and two just sent them, and I am grateful to you all. By the way, several said, "I bought this and I've never watched it." You should. It's hilarious.
• Another thirty or so of you sent suggestions of good dial-up Internet Service Providers. I'm trying AllVantage on a month-to-month basis and so far, all seems to be well. I'll let you know if it ever stops being well.
• The release date on the fourth volume of Garfield and Friends on DVD has been moved up to August 30. To answer an oft-emailed query, this is the one that includes the first episode with the Singing Ants ("Picnic Panic") and there are plenty of great guest star voices including Victoria Jackson, James Earl Jones, John Moschitta, Don Knotts, Don Messick, Stan Freberg, Buddy Hackett, Bill Kirchenbauer, Jewel Shepard, Dick Gautier, Paul Winchell, June Foray and Charles Aidman. There will be one more volume of DVDs after this and I have no idea when it'll be out…but it does look like we'll make it through all five volumes without any special features or commentary tracks or anything of the sort. Sorry…but it wasn't up to me.
• Yes, I know I still owe you the story about Marty Feldman I promised long ago.
• In this posting, I asked for someone to suggest an article that presented a different view of the Iraq War than the one to which I linked. Russ Maheras suggested this one and Buzz Dixon nominated this article. I'd like to suggest that everyone also read The Downing Street Memo, which would probably be Exhibit A in impeachment proceedings if a Democrat had taken us to war on these terms.

Lastly, I owe an awful lot of e-mails to an awful lot of people. If you're one of them, please be patient. I'm back on deadline for now so there won't be a lot of messages getting answered and there won't be a lot of stuff on this page for a while. All this will pass.

And here we see a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, which is an Internet tradition dating back to the fourth century. It means that the guy who runs the weblog is too swamped with personal matters (say, a not-well mother and a pressing script assignment) to update his website for a little while. But he wants those who visit his site to know that he's thinking of them and that he's not not posting because he's off hammocking and lounging about. He's just too busy to post for a little while. And you're supposed to understand.

The "suspect" in the police chase I mentioned earlier has died in the hospital. KABC (and I would guess, other local stations) are replaying the footage up to the moment when the officers opened fire on the guy. In a way, this is a disservice to viewers because the full video clearly showed that the man had a gun, and it would erase any suggestion that the police shot an unarmed man. I also don't think it is a bad thing to advertise the fact that if you have a run-in with police and you're holding a gun, you're quite likely to be shot. That's a lesson more people oughta learn.

We'll probably never know but I'd be fascinated to know what, if anything, a man is thinking in a situation like that. He has dozens of armed policemen after him and helicopters overhead. Does he actually think he can shoot his way out of that and get away? Or hold the police off with one handgun? Some people apparently provoke police shoot-outs as a form of suicide, and perhaps they have a hate on for the police and figure to take a few with them…but this fellow looked like he was really trying to get away. What, if anything, could have been on his mind?

Nice little piece on Buster Keaton by Kenneth Turan over in the L.A. Times Calendar section.

You'll need to register and I'm going to suggest you do. They used to charge for this section so I never linked to articles over there, but it's now free and even if you don't live in Los Angeles, it's a pretty good site for entertainment-oriented articles.

Whenever I suggest registering for some free Internet site, a couple of people write me and say they won't do that because it will result in Spam and their mailbox will get clogged. I've never noticed that to result from signing up with the most prominent newspaper sites but if it worries you, get an alternate e-mail address for sign-ups. Get an account on Hotmail or Gmail or My Way or any of a hundred other sites that will let you sign up for an online mailbox. Use that address to sign-up and only check it when you have to.

Just happened on a high-speed pursuit on a local TV station — a "suspect" fleeing from cops through the streets of Wilmington and Long Beach. I'm not sure why he's a "suspect" when we're watching the guy driving at 100 MPH through city streets, endangering people and refusing to stop. What are the chances of this person not being guilty of something?

KABC, Channel 7, covered it all live with two helicopters, one of which was equipped with what they're calling "Air7HD," which is high definition television broadcast from a helicopter. I haven't gotten around to upgrading to high-def yet but when I do, it will not be because I'm eager to see police chases in clearer detail.

When I happen on one of these, I am alternately repulsed by the Gawking Onlooker mentality of watching the spectacle…and unable to turn away. I'm also amused by the usual inability of the local TV newsfolks to ad-lib anything of substance, especially as a chase goes on and on and on, and no one's quite sure where they are or when it all might end. This one seems to have been televised for around forty minutes…and I guess it's nice to know that for that period of time, there wasn't anything more important in the world to report on than one nutjob driving wildly down Pacific Coast Highway.

I also wonder what's on the driver's mind. Has anyone ever debriefed enough of these "suspects" to make a survey? How many of them really think they're going to get away? How many realize they're on television with umpteen choppers tracking them? Are any of them thinking that's it just a big, colorful last moment for them in the spotlight before prison so they might as well put on a little show? Or are they just so incapable of coherent thought that they don't realize how little chance they have of not getting away and how high a chance there is of getting killed? Most importantly, where can I buy a set of spike-strips? I think it would be great to lay them down at the exits to my panels at the San Diego Con. That would sure stop a lot of people from leaving.

At the end of this particular chase, the "suspect" pulled into a fast food store parking lot, bolted from the car with a gun in hand and got shot. An airborne reporter acted like this possibility had never entered anyone's mind and he began telling his cameraguy to "Pull out, pull out"…which the camera operator eventually did. But he sure took his sweet time about it, and it felt deliberate — like the idea here was to show the violence but to act like they were trying not to. Moments after every viewer had seen a man shot on live television, the reporter was apologizing that it had been broadcast and he actually said, with the man lying motionless on the ground, "If you have small children, this might be a good time to have them leave the room." Uh, yeah…so they could miss when the camera finally pulled back enough to not show the body. (When I turned it off, it appeared the shots were not fatal.)

People, we're told, like these televised incidents because they're so "real." I guess that's why it jarred me that it ended on such a phony note. We're watching a man fleeing from the police. They're describing him over and over — because they don't have a whole lot to say — as "desperate" and "armed" and "dangerous." Why is anyone then surprised that there is live gunfire? If it broke out in the middle of the Santa Claus Lane Parade, fine. But if the TV station really doesn't want to show someone getting shot, they can put the thing on a seven-second delay. They can get all the stations in town to agree to it so if viewers channel-hop, no one's outta sync or has any advantage. Personally, I think it's more honest to just show the thing, gunplay and all, and not to pretend it was unintentional. If people complain, remind them: It's a police chase. There are armed police officers and armed criminals. If you watch it, don't be shocked at the ending. That's how these things sometimes turn out, remember?

Journalist Molly Bingham discusses what other journalists do not understand (or understand and do not tell us) about Iraq.

If you're interested in a career in voiceover, do yourself a favor. Spend a half hour listening to my buddy Paul Harris interviewing two of the best promo announcers in the business, Don LaFontaine and Joe Cipriano. Paul had them on his radio show the other day and got a lot of good tips out of them. Listen over here.

The Nostalgia Zone is a new online magazine of articles about old comic books. I call your attention to an article there by my old buddy Mike Tiefenbacher, who was once responsible for The Comic Reader, back when it was maybe the most important fanzine being published.

It's still May 10, at least where I am, so I can wish a Happy Birthday to one of the world's great voices, Gary Owens. Folks who lived in Los Angeles in the sixties probably knew him first as the witty radio personality on KFWB and then on KMPC. Folks outside L.A. probably knew him first as a cartoon voice (Space Ghost and Roger Ramjet, to name two) or as the on-air announcer for Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. He's also had an astounding career as an off-camera announcer, an actor, a TV host, a straight man for folks like Jonathan Winters, an Avon lady, a grilled cheese sandwich, a small carry-on bag, etc. The guy does everything and he does it so well that a prolonged period of unemployment for him is when he finishes one job at 11 AM and doesn't have anything else until after lunch.

I've known Gary since I wrote gags for him in 1970 and in a business full of jealousy and backstabbing, I've yet to hear an unkind word about him from anyone. He's a true gentleman, and I'll be interviewing him and reviewing his past on a spotlight panel at this year's Comic-Con International. For now, I'll just say Happy Birthday, Gary…and may your drelbs all be friendly.

It's amazing…but we're still learning jaw-dropping things about Richard Nixon.

Robert Dreyfuss on how Iraq is turning into a Vietnam-style quagmire. If someone can point me to a good article of the opposite stance, I'd like to link to it, too.

Shelly Goldstein (chanteuse extraordinaire) is looking for MP3 files of old commercial jingles from the sixties that were recorded by pop stars of the era. Petula Clark did some. Dusty Springfield did some. Who else did some? More important, do you have MP3 files of them? If so, drop me a line and I'll pass the info on to her. She's also looking for the audio of the commercial with the tag line: "My wife — I think I'll keep her!" Shelly has an actual need for this material.

Arianna Huffington has set up a new website called The Huffington Post which features a number of somewhat Liberal celebrity bloggers, including Larry David, Walter Cronkite, Harry Shearer, Ellen DeGeneres and David Mamet. Lots of fun stuff to read over there, though I have a feeling a lot of those folks won't keep up with any kind of regular posting schedule.

Here's an article in the L.A. Times [you may have to register] that says the employment situation in the animation biz is improving. Case in point: My pal, Bob Foster.