One of my regular correspondents, Ray Arthur, sends the following note…
Actress June Allyson will be celebrating her 88th birthday on Friday. June is not in the best health and I'm sure she would enjoy any birthday greetings from fans. If you feel so inclined, please e-mail them through me at, and I will forward them to her.
Here are some articles you might want to peruse today…
I've heard from three different folks who went to the NecroComicon yesterday — one as a guest, two as attendees — that the thing kind of turned into The O.J. Simpson Convention. Simultaneously this weekend, there's a Hollywood Collectors Show in progress at the Burbank Hilton and at least two guests advertised for the NecroComicon (Kevin McCarthy and Priscilla Barnes) are now listed for the H.C.S. As one of the attendees wrote me…
I guess if he was supposed to bring in crowds, he accomplished that. But I'm not sure how many of those people were paying attendees and how many were reporters. I don't think very many of them were interested in horror movies and memorabilia, which is what the convention was supposed to be all about. I guess the fires kept some people away, too. A lot of the guests seemed pretty uncomfortable with the whole situation and some either left early or never showed up at all.
Incidentally, a gent named Michael Kilgore who reads this site pointed out something that I hadn't realized even though I read just about everything one could read about the various Simpson trials. In the civil trial, O.J. was not found liable in the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. That's how it was generally reported and even folks who should have known better said that. Technically, he was found liable in the battery of Nicole Brown Simpson and in the death and battery of Ronald Goldman. This very old section of the CNN website details the precise verdicts.
The distinction is, of course, minor and I still have no problem with referring to the guy as a murderer of two human beings. And let's note that it has now been ten years since the first verdict and not only has O.J. not found (or even conspicuously tried to find) "the real killers" as he once vowed…but not a single piece of credible evidence has popped up to point to anyone else as the culprit. I would have thought that one of those guys on his Dream Team — Cochran, Bailey or even an associate — would have written a major book purporting to prove that those Colombian Drug Lords did it or that Mark Fuhrman was the mastermind..but nope. Lots of other damning evidence, including the infamous photos of O.J. in the Bruno Magli shoes, turned up after the trial…but not one bit of exculpatory (to Simpson) data.
A week ago, a panel discussion at the Juilliard School of Music featured, among its participants, the odd match-up of Stephen Sondheim and Antonin Scalia debating government funding of the arts. What I find even odder is that I think I agree with Scalia. Here's a quote — I think this constitutes "fair use" — of an article that may have now disappeared into the "pay" section of The New York Times…
"The First Amendment has not repealed the basic rule of life, that he who pays the piper calls the tune," Justice Scalia said. "When you place the government in charge of funding art, just as when you place the government in charge of providing education, somebody has to pick the content of what art is going to be funded, what subjects are going to be taught. The only way to eliminate any government choice on what art is worthwhile, what art isn't worthwhile, is to get the government totally out of the business of funding," he said.
I disagree with the implied message there that the government ought to get out of providing education…and actually, I don't think Scalia is against government paying for education, just with controlling its content. But I do think the government has no business deciding what art is worthwhile. (Before you write me the same angry e-mails I got the last time I said this: I am not in favor of yanking all PBS funding tomorrow. I think there might even be ways that tax incentives could encourage private individuals and corporations to donate more to the arts. But I don't think Senators and Congresspeople should be deciding to spend our tax money on some works of art and not others, and of course they can't fund any of it without making those decisions.)
I also disagree with one other thing Scalia is quoted as saying in the Times coverage, and this is a good day to disagree with it…
They [Scalia and Sondheim] even parted ways in a discussion of the definition of art. Mr. Sondheim said one element was a work's ability to endure. Justice Scalia said that the Abbott and Costello routine "Who's on First?" would certainly last a long time. But "it will never be art!" he said. The composer took issue with the example, saying it was not that old and that half the people in the theater probably did not even know it. Justice Scalia called for a show of hands, and many shot up. "Ask anybody under 30," Mr. Sondheim said. "They won't know."
I'm not sure Sondheim is correct that no one under thirty knows the routine or that, if they don't, funding for the arts would do anything to change that. But I'm sure Scalia is wrong that it will never be art. It already is…plus, it makes a lot more sense than George W. Bush, et al., Petitioners v. Albert Gore, Jr., et al.
October 2 may also have been the birthdate of the greatest "straight man" of them all, William Alexander "Bud" Abbott. His official bio always gave October 2, 1895 as the date but a website operated by his family (and Lou Costello's) says on its opening page that it was October 2, 1897 and on their biography page that it was October 6, 1897. If you don't like any of those dates, browse some other sources and you'll find more choices.
There was a time, around age 11, when I liked everything Abbott and Costello did. Even then, I knew they weren't quite in the same league as the other old-time comedians I liked — Laurel and Hardy, Keaton, the Marxes, etc. — but I still liked them. As I got older, I found it increasingly difficult to sit through their lesser films and I decided that more and more of what they'd done were lesser films. I still love Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and a half-dozen others, and I especially like the TV series they did from 1952 to 1953. The TV shows were done on a shoestring budget but they're crammed full of vintage Abbott and Costello routines and, happily, nothing else. No contrived storylines, no romantic subplots…just Bud and Lou being Bud and Lou.
Costello was the majority stockholder in the act, demanding more money than his partner, clearly believing the popular line that Bud was expendable. I don't think so. Without Abbott to rein him in and give him something to bounce off of, Lou would have been repetitive and untethered. His screen character, when it worked, was defined by his relationship to Bud. In their live appearances, especially on radio, you can spot the moments when Abbott decides Costello's going on too long, taking a bit too far and chopping him off. Lou was more adorable and endearing but Bud was the one who knew how to work an audience.
Comedy Straight Man is one of those job descriptions that you just don't see much anymore. But it was a vital, if often unnoticed, show business skill and no one did it better than Bud Abbott. So happy birthday, Bud…unless, of course, this isn't your birthday.
Well, at least most scholars of such matters think it was 115 years ago today that a woman named Minnie Marx gave birth to a son named Julius. Julius tended to give out different birthdates from time to time but 10/2/1890 seems like the right one.
It was years later, after Julius and some of his brothers had gotten into the hardscrabble end of show business, that they met a man named Art Fisher. Mr. Fisher was a monologist — what we would now call a stand-up comedian — and he also drew a newspaper strip filled with characters whose names ended in "o," like Knocko the Monk or Sherlocko the Great. During a poker game with the Brothers Marx, he gave them nicknames in his fashion. Adolph Marx became Harpo because he played the harp. Leonard Marx became Chico (pronounced "chicko," not "cheeko") because he liked the chicks. Milton Marx became Gummo because he wore gum-soled shoes. And Julius Marx became Groucho because…
Well, isn't it obvious?
Groucho Marx went on to become one of the world's greatest comedians and I thought it was important to note this day. I couldn't decide whether to put up a picture of the Movie Groucho, the Radio/TV Groucho or the Older Groucho, so I'm giving you all three. And now I'll point you to this article I wrote about Guess Who and then I'll go to bed. I have seen all the Marx Brothers movies so many times I can see them in my sleep and tonight, I'll probably dream one. My luck, it'll be Love Happy.
Tracey Weiss writes…
I love your site and read it daily. However, as much as I dislike O.J. Simpson and am pretty sure he's a murderer, he was found not guilty in a court of law. That means that, as a journalist, it would be more correct for you to refer to him as, well, I'm not sure what the term would be but calling him a murderer is your opinion, not a correct statement. (Frankly, it's my opinion too, but after your long post about Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, I thought this was something that should be brought to your attention.)
I'm not a journalist, Tracey. I write Groo the Wanderer.
Seriously, if this were the Times, you might have a point. But this is a weblog of my views. More to the point, everyone understands the rhetoric and the reference so I don't have to refer to him as "O.J. Simpson, whom I and most Americans believe to be a murderer despite a trial that found him Not Guilty (and who was found to be responsible for two murders in a subsequent civil trial)." By contrast, an awful lot of folks don't know of Steve Ditko or are unaware that he co-created Spider-Man…so we need to clarify and correct that. It's also a matter of respect for Mr. Ditko and making sure that he is not robbed of a credit that has some value to him. I'm not worried about disrespecting O.J. Simpson.
As readers of this weblog know, I don't see much leadership or statesmanship from our elected officials. I'm a bit hesitant to suggest that a recent letter/article by Senator Barack Obama shows both. History has shown that whenever I think that of some politician, it won't be long before he or she does something to make me ashamed that I ever spoke well of him or her. Still, I'm going to suggest you read what Obama wrote. It's a response to some postings on a Liberal blog and you don't have to have read that discussion to understand what he's talking about.
Let's go through a batch of letters. This first one's from my longtime pal, Gary Brown, who works as a journalist in Florida…
Not that we need to stretch this out any further, as you said it pretty well today, but as a journalist and copy editor with a few years of experience under my belt, let me say you're right. Stating that Stan Lee created Spider-Man is technically correct, but misleading. There are two correct ways to do this (assuming this is an article about Stan): 1. Spider-Man, co-created by Stan Lee; or 2. Spider-Man, co-created by Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko.
One of the real difficulties in this job is that you have to be an "expert" in many things. So, when you write about something you have scant knowledge of and use information you thought was a solid — and it's wrong — you perpetuate certain inaccuracies that seem to have a life of their own. We know this all to well in our hobby and how it gets mangled in the news media. Should journalists check and double check their material? Sure. Many of them do. Some don't. Sometimes time gets in the way. No excuse, that, but it happens.
One thing we do in our newsroom is go to other workers who have knowledge of certain subjects. People come to me about comics stuff all the time. But if someone is writing a story on the creation of the surfboard and somehow credits it to the Beach Boys and there is no one to help on it … well, it happens. Slowly we are developing a nice mountain of sources for these things in comics: people like you; Web sites like Toonopedia; and an increasing number of books. Of course, we don't always agree about the "facts," but that's another story.
Hope you're well. No hurricanes in sight this morning.
One of the things that shattered my trust in "The Press" was following articles about things I knew stuff about such as comic books. For a long time, I didn't see a single newspaper article about comics that didn't contain some outrageous inaccuracy, up to and including the one which identified me as the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. I think it's getting better, what with so many former comic readers now employed in the field, and the ease of doing research on the Internet. Still, you keep seeing errors that could have been prevented with thirty seconds of Googling. It's one of the reasons I'm leery of articles about Washington or The World, at least until such time as I see multiple sources reporting something.
Here's a message from Tony Collett…
In answer to your questions as to whether O.J. is getting paid for his appearance this weekend, from reading what you wrote, my guess is the money will not go to him directly but to some sort of account or fund to pay for his kids' college education. He still has some of the civil suit damages to pay off and I believe with some exceptions such as his NFL pension, any money he receives has to go to pay off the suit.
I suspect it's something of the sort…but the first article does say, "Riccio [the convention promoter] said he would keep whatever is left of the proceeds after paying for various expenses, including Simpson's travel costs." It sounds like those expenses include the donation of either a flat fee or a percentage of the take to some sort of special fund that is at least ostensibly earmarked to pay to send the kids to college. If so, it was misleading to suggest that Simpson was not receiving a penny for making the appearance, and was doing it as a favor and to test the waters for future appearances that might pay his kids' way through college. Oh, well. At least the article didn't say Stan Lee created Spider-Man.
Pierre Fournier, who I assume lives in Canada, writes…
Re. your post "Wanna Start Something"… I write for TV, and up here, starting a show at :29 or :59 is quite common, especially during prime time. It's called "hot switching." The point is that you "keep" viewers by sliding directly from one show into another, whereas the old method of running a bunch of ads between shows allowed viewers to surf and perhaps end up watching another station.
Nowadays, they'll flash Station ID between shows, and hot switch immediately to the start of the next show. The program promos that used to run between shows are now split-screened during a show's end titles, and the commercials run within the show, after the initial hook and show opening. Recently we've been getting a lot of "countdown ads". You get a regular, full minute commercial between shows, but they have a countdown clock superimposed (usually top right) that says "(Show Title) starts in 60 seconds… 59… 58… 57…" Shows flow into one another as an antidote to zapping.
They do that here sometimes, including blurring (one way or the other) the end credits into the opening of the next show. The thing that puzzles me about starting Saturday Night Live early is how that helps them. On weeknights, the late night shows start at 11:35. This enables the local news broadcasts to sell a bit more commercial time and it discourages switching at 11:30. Why don't they do that on Saturday? What's with the fudging of 30 or 60 seconds? Their main competition, Mad TV, starts at 11:00 so the minute doesn't make any difference there. Beyond that, if the goal is to get people who watch the 11:00 news to not switch over to something that starts at 11:30, shouldn't they run the news past that time so those viewers miss the beginning of the competing show? The way they're doing it, if I find the opening of SNL boring and decide to channel-surf and see what else is on, I'll have missed a minute or so less of a competing 11:30 show.
I could understand starting at 11:35. I'm trying to imagine the viewing actions of the person who is more likely to stay tuned to a show that starts 30-60 seconds early. How does that work? And how could that be a good trade-off for annoying the people who miss the opening of Saturday Night Live because of it?
Thanks to all who wrote, including those whose messages I didn't post here.
Comic book fans who receive the G4 gaming TV channel might want to catch a current edition of their series, Game Makers, entitled "Ultimate Spider-Man." Though it's something of an infomercial for an Activision Spider-Man game, the first part is a history of the character and it's one of those strange/awkward bits of double-talk journalism that vacillates between treating Stan Lee (above right) as the sole creator of the comic and giving Steve Ditko (above left) some of his props. Ditko is acknowledged mostly in a brief interview with Erik Larsen, who is to be congratulated, though I might quibble with his statement, "All of his [Spider-Man's] major foes were created during Steve Ditko's run." Uh, how about the Kingpin? Or The Rhino, whose first appearance — five months after John Romita replaced Ditko — was selected by the show's producers to illustrate the quote. (I'm being too fussy here, I know. I should focus on how pleased I was that Ditko was acknowledged as much as he was. Okay, forget I said anything.)
There's an occasional problem of semantics in creator credits…one which has caused some anger and accusations of credit-grabbing. The usual, accepted creator credit for Spider-Man is "Stan Lee and Steve Ditko." Assuming that's correct, is it wrong to refer to "Spider-Man Creator Stan Lee?" Is that giving him sole credit? A few weeks ago, a journalist who'd done that in an article argued to me that it was correct; that it did not assert there were no other creators. It was, he said, like making reference to "Baltimore Oriole Rafael Palmeiro."
"That doesn't mean he's the only Baltimore Oriole," the guy said and he's right in the sense of being literally accurate. He's also wrong in terms of making sure the reader does not get a false impression even when the language is technically correct. Everyone knows baseball teams don't have one player apiece so they're not going to misunderstand. Not everyone knows that Stan Lee did not create Spider-Man all by his lonesome. So it's misleading…and it's also a short step from "Spider-Man creator Stan Lee" to "Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee." That mistake has been made way too many times.
This episode of Game Makers airs several times over the next few days. Here's a schedule.