Monthly Archives: September 2005

Less than 17 hours remain in the eBay auction of the motorcycle stars have been signing on Jay Leno's show and it's only at $125,100. The first time they did this, the chopper went for $360,000 and the second grossed $800,100. Jay keeps saying they're hoping for a million so the bidding's going to have to be hot and heavy between now and 5 PM, Pacific Time for that to happen. It'll probably go a lot higher on its own but if I were NBC and looking to avoid embarrassment to my late night franchise, I'd be arranging for someone to swoop in and bid big if necessary.

Okay, let's imagine you're staging a horror movie convention this weekend out in Northridge, California. Let's imagine that you line up as guests, the usual array of fright film actors who'll sell and sign photos of themselves. Let's also imagine that this kind of convention hasn't been doing so well lately and some are anticipating a very low attendance. What can you do to really boost attendance?

Hmm…let me think for a second…

I know! Bring in a real, live murderer to sell autographs for $100 each!

Why is it so hard to get food in a restaurant the way you want it?

A little while ago, while walking around my neighborhood on some errands, I decided to stop in a Sizzler for a meal…which I guess was my main mistake right there.

What I wanted was a grilled or broiled chicken sandwich that consisted of the chicken, a bun, some onion and nothing else. You wouldn't think this would be a tough order, would you? But it's not on their menu. What you have to do is order the Chicken Club Sandwich, which is chicken plus cheese, lettuce, tomato, bacon and mayo…and then, trying to not to sound too much like Jack Nicholson, have them hold the cheese, lettuce, tomato, bacon and mayo. You're supposed to get your choice of one side dish with it and I asked for rice and told the lady at the counter to have them leave off the cole slaw that they often slap onto your plate. Have I mentioned lately that I think cole slaw is an unspeakable evil and that if forced at gunpoint to put either it or a live grenade in my mouth, I'd opt for the grenade? When a waitress says to me, "So you're saying you don't want any cole slaw on your plate?" I respond, "I don't want any cole slaw in the restaurant. Leave it off my plate. Leave it off everyone's plate. If you can keep it out of this entire area code, I'd be most appreciative and might even consider tipping."

Anyway, I told the lady at Sizzler what I wanted and emphasized, as I've learned to do, "I want to get a bun with a piece of grilled chicken on it and some onion and nothing else." My friends rarely hear me order in an eating establishment without itemizing what is to be on my plate and concluding with "…and nothing else."

The lady promptly entered on her cash register that I wanted the usual chicken sandwich with all the stuff on it with a side of fries as my one choice, plus an extra side of rice and an order of grilled onions, both as extra items (for which I'd be charged)…and nothing about not putting slaw on the plate. It took quite a while to straighten that out, and there was apparently no way I could get a piece of onion on my sandwich without paying $1.29 for grilled onions, even though I was saving them the bacon, cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayo. If you order a hamburger, a slice of onion is free. But not with a chicken sandwich. k.d. lang needs to write a song about this.

It then took quite a while for my sandwich to arrive. When it did, it was just what she'd entered into the little computer screen the first time: Sandwich with everything, fries, rice as an extra side, cole slaw, etc. The server took it back and I waited maybe another ten minutes. Finally, she brought me what was pretty much the exact same plate except that someone had peeled the cheese off the chicken, scraped off most of the mayo, removed all but one of the fries and so on. She asked, "Can I get you anything else?" and I said, "Yeah, I'd like a side order of The Manager."

The Manager came over and I went through the whole thing with him. I showed him how there were remnants of cheese clinging to the chicken breast (which was now cold) and tomato seeds on the bun. He gave the whole platter back to the server and told her to have the kitchen completely remake my order. Then he told me, "Next time you come in here, place your order with me personally and I'll make sure they make it right."

I asked him, "Exactly what makes you think I'm coming in here again?" He chuckled and said they'd make it up to me…and I didn't know what he meant because he'd offered no discount or anything else. Apparently, getting you what you should have gotten in the first place is now coinsidered "making it up to you."

Ten or so minutes later, the sandwich came again: This time, it had no cheese, two strips of bacon, no lettuce and no tomato but also no onion. I had rice but I also had cole slaw. I took it up to him at the counter and he said, "Hmm…maybe you weren't clear on what you wanted." I told him, "You placed the order for this one." I also quoted to him the way I'd placed my order in the first place and the lady who'd taken it down confirmed that that's what I'd said, including the part about a bun with a piece of grilled chicken on it and some onion and nothing else. "I defy you to tell me a clearer way to say it than that," I told him. He quickly had it all fixed and then, as I was finally eating what I should have been eating thirty minutes earlier, he came by and gave me a $2.00 discount coupon for my next visit…which I guess is what he meant by "making it up to me."

I said to him — between bites of a pretty mediocre, not-worth-the-hassle sandwich — "You keep laboring under this delusion that I'm coming back here."

I see on the newswires that the Sizzler chain recently became a private (as opposed to public) company and now has a new management team. According to the new CEO, Ken Cole, "We've come a long way in rebuilding the chain, and we still have work to do, but we now have more resources to help us return Sizzler to the great American brand it was and that we believe it will be again." I think they may have a little more to do than they imagine. Somebody is going to have to let me know if they make a difference because I sure ain't going back.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been indicted in what is being described as his participation in a campaign finance scheme. I have no idea how strong or weak the evidence is against him. Lots of folks get indicted and then the case has a way of evaporating. And of course, lots of people get indicted and then cop a plea or go to prison.

However, it's kind of amusing to scan the political weblogs and discussion groups right now. To the folks who want to see him convicted, DeLay is as good as in the slammer and this is just the start of a domino effect that will bring down many more Republicans and attendant cronies. And to the folks who want to see Republicans prosper in Congress, it's obvious this is just a partisan prosecutor ginning up a case against a political enemy, and of course DeLay will be vindicated. Wishful thinking from both factions.

I always liked the suggestion of a friend of mine who thought all elected officials (without exception) were crooks. He felt we should only elect convicted criminals. He said, "It'll save time if they come to us, pre-indicted."

This will only interest you if you're really into the real minutiae of comic book history. It's a P.S. on that Get Smart sample I posted a few hours ago that I said was by Steve Ditko and Sal Trapani.

The weblog of someone who calls himself "Sleestak" has reproduced more of it over here. And now that I see the other panels, I see that it's not pencilled just by Steve Ditko. There's at least as much work on that page by Eric Stanton, who was then sharing a studio at 8th Street and 48th in Manhattan with Ditko and occasionally another artist or two. While Ditko was drawing Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, Stanton was drawing comics of women with huge breasts who had a tendency to wrestle and tie each other up. Stanton, in interviews shortly before his death in '99, claimed that he helped Ditko with his sixties' Marvel work and even suggested the idea of Spider-Man's web-shooters, and that Ditko helped him with the fetish comics. Ditko has denied both counts.

The timeline here is interesting to consider. Get Smart went on the air in September 18, 1965. The first issue of the comic book was cover-dated June, 1966. That meant it went on sale around March of '66. Generally speaking, a comic of that period would have a four month production period — one month for script, two months for art, one month for production and printing. This is all educated guesswork but what's likely here is that after the TV show went on and became a hit, Dell made the deal to do the comic. So it was probably written in late October or November and then it went to an artist to draw. And you know why that's interesting? Because Ditko quit Marvel the week of Thanksgiving, 1965.

Before around 1963, Ditko had freelanced for both Charlton Comics and Marvel. As Spider-Man and the other Marvel super-hero books grew in popularity, and as Marvel raised pay rates a bit, Ditko cut back on his Charlton work. Then in his last year at Marvel, he began drawing again for Charlton, primarily on a revival of Captain Atom, a super-hero he'd done for them from 1960 to '61. He must have been drawing at an incredible clip in '65 because he was plotting, pencilling and inking 20 pages of Amazing Spider-Man a month for Marvel, plus covers, plus the story he did for that year's Spider-Man Annual. He was also plotting, pencilling and inking 10 pages a month of the Dr. Strange strip in Strange Tales. That would be a pretty full workload for any artist, but he was also making time to pencil Captain Atom. One might assume he figured he might not be at Marvel much longer so he was re-establishing his relationship with Charlton.

Then he quit Marvel and right after that, his work for Charlton increased and he also began drawing for the two Warren magazines, Creepy and Eerie, and for Tower's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Suddenly also, he was ghosting a lot of Sal Trapani's work. There were two stories for DC's Strange Adventures (in the May, 1966 and June, 1966 issues), a number of jobs for ACG comics like Adventures Into the Unknown and Unknown Worlds (credited to both) and the work with Trapani for Dell on Get Smart and a superhero book called Nukla.

Anyway, that Get Smart page was probably one of the first things Ditko worked on after he left Spider-Man. It also may have been one of the last things done in the Stanton-Ditko studio. The two men moved to separate workspaces some time in 1966 and yes, I know this is real trivial stuff. But some of us can't get enough of this kind of thing.

As you may recall, the New York Times is now charging half a c-note per year for special web access that incudes their opinion columnists. As you may also recall, I was curious to see how "available" they'd be to folks who hadn't subscribed, and I was using Frank Rich's weekend column as a test case.

A couple of weblogs posted it, and I assume the Times will let them know they shouldn't do that. It was also posted to a few newsgroups. The Times will have a hard time stopping that but it's also not a reliable source. To find a "real" website that makes the Frank Rich column available for free, one has to go all the way to Taiwan.

So I don't know what to do about my trial subscription. If these columns had been wholly unavailable, the choice would be easy. If a number of reliable, established sites had posted them, the choice would also be easy and in the other direction. Instead, it's somewhere in-between. I have until 10/4 to decide.

The passing of Don Adams brings questions about the Get Smart comic book. Here is everything I know about it: It was published by Dell Comics from June of 1966 (cover date) to September of 1967. There were eight issues, although #8 was an exact replica of #1, except that the price had gone up from 12 cents to fifteen by then.

We do not know who wrote all the issues, though Alan Riefe seems to have done the bulk of them. The artwork for the later issues was handled by Henry Scarpelli but the first few were assigned to Sal Trapani. Often, when one hears that Sal Trapani was the artist of some comic, that would mean one would have no idea who'd penciled it. Mr. Trapani was a fine inker and he was credited with penciling a lot of comic books during his career…but his modus operandi was to farm that part of each job out to someone else. Among those who did his work for him at different times were Dick Giordano, Jack Abel, Steve Ditko, Chic Stone, Bill Molno, John Giunta, Charles Nicholas and just about everyone who ever did a lot of pencil work for Charlton. In the case of Get Smart, the first issue was ghost-penciled by Giordano and the next few were obviously done by Mr. Ditko.

(A mystery some comic historians might like to ponder: Trapani liked to hire others to pencil his jobs and then he'd do the inking. But what of those assignments where he was hired to pencil only, like his run on DC's Metamorpho around the same time as these Get Smart comics? I asked Dick Giordano, who was Sal's brother-in-law and frequent ghost penciller, and he said he's pretty certain someone else must have drawn those issues for Sal. He even added, "I may even have done some work on them, although I don't remember for certain." I keep meaning to haul out my copies and see if I can figure out whodunnit, but I probably won't get around to it for a while. So if anyone else would like to take a whack at it, be my guest and let me know what you think.)

Ditko and Trapani did a nice job on the art in their issues of Get Smart, though Don Adams was apparently quite difficult to caricature. Everyone in the world could do his voice but no one could do his face. Mort Drucker and Jack Davis both did promo posters for NBC and — basic rule of thumb — if Drucker can't draw you, you can't be drawn. Davis did an okay job and I'll see if I can find a decent copy of it to post. Anyway, the above piece of unfinished art is by Ditko and Trapani and it's been floating around the original art market for years without explanation. It's apparently some sort of "audition" piece they did but which Trapani never completed. It'll give you an idea of what the insides looked like.

Fred Kaplan explains what's wrong with the proposed Iraqi constitution — or at least, what he thinks is wrong. If anyone can point me to a reasoned "opposing view" of this situation, please do. It sure sounds like Iraq is about to vote in a constitution that will make things over there worse, not better. The only upside may be if it enables our leaders to say "Our mission there is accomplished" and bring our troops home. That might be an upside for us, at least. I don't think it'll stop the every-other-day bus explosions.

Operation USA is the preferred charity of this website. This is in part because I've met some of the folks who run it and seen that they do not use your donations to buy themselves big homes and cars under the guise of "administrative costs." They really put the money to good use. The other reason I like them is because, from tracking news reports, I can see that they do it well.

Today in the L.A. Times, its president, Richard Walden, has an article suggesting that giving to the Red Cross is not as good as giving to organizations like his. It's obviously a self-serving message but I think it's also correct. Or to put it another way: I can't imagine anyone else doing more with donation money than Operation USA does. [Thanks to Vince Waldron for calling my attention to the article.]

Members of the Screen Actors Guild have elected a more "militant" slate of officers and so have the members of the Writers Guild. The new WGA officials have begun by dismissing John McLean, who has functioned as the Guild's Executive Director since 1999. The news reports may not tell you this but Mr. McLean was perceived by many in the Guild leadership as being too reticent to confront Management, too eager to accept mediocre contracts rather than go to war. His ouster is definitely a sign than the new board wants to take a harder line, even at the risk of striking.

We have some time before either SAG or the WGA has to negotiate a new contract. But I'll bet we start to hear the low rumblings of a couple of separate but similar major confrontations…and maybe before that, some small skirmishes over the interpretation and enforcement of the current contracts.

Sony Pictures has refused to release a new feature by Albert Brooks so it's going elsewhere. Patrick Goldstein has all the details.