Monthly Archives: June 2006

Before I head off for beddy-bye, I want to link to this article by Andrew Sullivan, a gay Conservative if such a thing is possible. It's about the way Bush and Cheney have treated gays in the past. It may or may not remain Sullivan's viewpoint after Bush's reported plans this week to start pushing that Federal Marriage Amendment that everyone seems to agree has no chance of passing. Which makes you wonder why he's suddenly getting behind it. The more right-wing end of his base won't be fooled into thinking that support for a constitutional amendment that won't happen is any sort of substitute for the things on their wishlist that they still might realize during his term of office. Bush sure doesn't need to look ineffectual about one more of his stated goals and to look like more of a "divider" to the middle-of-the-road crowd…so why get behind this movement now? I don't get it.

I decided not to post any more of the Forbidden Broadway scenes since I can just send you to this page and let you watch a much better-edited version of 'em there. There's a Demo Reel, which is mostly a commercial for the show, that runs a little under eight minutes and there's a reel of "Symphony Highlights" that runs almost twenty and is well worth the time. The video clip I posted yesterday was the first half of this.

So today, we have three minutes of Lewis Black plugging his HBO special which debuts next week. I dunno how the special will be but just about everything Mr. Black does amuses me greatly. So did this three minutes even if the video aspect ratio is a little screwy.

One of the panels we'll be doing at the Comic-Con International in San Diego this year will be about Batman comics from the beginning through the 1964 "New Look" makeover. The dais will include — and this is a sad comment on the passing of time — three of the only four artists still alive who pencilled Batman stories before '64.

Among the topics I want to zero in on is how much Bob Kane did on the early Batman stories. We all know he did next to no artwork whatsoever on the comic books or strips after about 1946 but some people have — wrongly, to my understanding — declared he never did any of it. No, the man could draw…not well, perhaps, but there were certainly worse people drawing comics in the early forties. He also did a lot of swiping, we must note, copying poses out of pulp magazines, newspaper strips and elsewhere.

There's a weblog devoted to the illustrator Henry E. Vallely that has made an interesting discovery. What was probably the single most famous panel Kane "drew" in comics — a panel from the story in Batman #1 — was copied from a drawing Vallely did for a then-recent pulp magazine. Take a look and see.

A birthday shout-out to my longtime friend, artist extraordinaire Wendy Pini…who with her hubby Richard created Elfquest, one of the great enduring comic art creations of the last few decades. I have known Wendy for mumble-mumble years — since before she met Richard, even. At my first comic and science-fiction conventions, she was the individual that everyone followed about…the ideal mate insofar as most attendees were concerned. All the other attendees were guys, after all, and what more perfect life-partner for a fan than a beautiful, smart woman who could draw?

Wendy was nice to everyone but every guy she refused to marry — which at the time was all of them — wanted to go out and throw himself off the roof of the Sheraton. When she met Richard a few years later (yes, via a comic book letter page), they forged an important and perfect partnership in all ways visible to their amigos, and she remains among the sunniest presences on this planet. If you love Elfquest — and everyone who's read it sure seems to — you have only to meet the people responsible to know why. I just phoned Wendy to wish her a happy Wendy day but she's not answering. Hope she's out doing something fun and will accept a blogged birthday greeting instead of a personal howdy.

The L.A. Times runs a nice obit on Alex Toth.

The two gentlemen performing in the Forbidden Broadway clip I just posted are Ed Staudenmayer and Jonathan Hadley.

Yesterday, we plugged our favorite Los Angeles comedy troupe. Today, we have a nine minute sampler of Forbidden Broadway, a New York-based institution which is usually among my stops when I hit town…and it has also been known to tour. It's parodies of show tunes and scenes by four talented performers. (The cast is constantly changing. Jason Alexander was in an early company. First time I saw it, one of the players was Brad Oscar, who went on to star in The Producers on Broadway.)

This clip, I should warn you, ends abruptly in the middle of a number. Don't blame me for this. I didn't do it. But it's worth watching anyway. I'm not 100% sure of the gents' names so I won't say…but the two ladies featured are Suzanne Blakeslee and Christine Pedi. Suzanne can now be heard in many cartoons and Christine had lately been appearing in her own shows, often with her killer impression of Liza. (I wrote about Christine here.) They're not in any current Forbidden Broadway show as far as I know but the franchise has a way of attracting other, very talented folks. Anyway, here's nine minutes of what the whole thing is about…and I hope you like it because I may be linking to more of this over the next few days.

My pal Elliott Maggin, who wrote Superman for a long time, has written a nice little op-ed for the Los Angeles Times. He compares Jor-El (Superman's pa) warning of the destruction of Krypton to Al Gore warning of the destruction of this thing we live on. Fortunately, Elliott doesn't carry the comparison too far. Give it a read, even though the L.A. Times may make you register.

Quick "heads up" to the folks watching the hoary What's My Line? reruns on GSN. The show that airs tonight (i.e., tomorrow morn) is the one from 3/15/64 and the Mystery Guest is Allan Sherman, then pretty much at the peak of his brief stardom. Mr. Sherman, as you may know, got his start in TV as a behind-the-scenes guy at Goodson-Todman, producers of game shows including What's My Line? So this appearance was probably a very satisfying moment in Mr. Sherman's life.

Then the next day, GSN should run the episode from 3/22/64 in which the Mystery Guest is Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong. Brief story. Armstrong then had a huge, unexpected hit with his rendition of "Hello, Dolly." He'd been hired for megabucks to go on a prime-time program — The Perry Como Show, I think — and give the first TV performance of the song. Among the many ironies of Satchmo's career was that after decades of making next-to-no bucks on wonderful, authentic jazz, he made his fortune and much of his fame with something as mainstream Wonder Bread as "Hello, Dolly." Anyway, he was to receive the largest check of his life for doing it for the first time on TV for Mr. Como's audience.

Then What's My Line? wanted him as Mystery Guest for the Sunday night before. Como's producers had the right to block this due to an exclusivity clause in his deal but the Goodson-Todman folks went to them and said, in effect, "Hey, it won't hurt you to let us have him. We'll plug his appearance on your show and it'll help your tune-in." Perry's producers said, "Well, that makes sense. But he's not going to sing 'Hello, Dolly' on your show, right?" The What's My Line? folks said, "Of course not. We're a game show. People don't sing on our show. We don't even have a band on stage." With that assurance and the promise of a juicy plug, the Como crew said fine.

So Sunday night, after Louis was unmasked, panelist Arlene Francis said to him, "Louis, dear…do give us a little of 'Hello, Dolly.'" And Armstrong, responding to the audience cheering and forgetting about the Como show's exclusive, started singing his hit song, a cappella. The producers of The Perry Como Show were not happy.

We're big fans of the Totally Looped improv troupe that performs every Thursday night up on Melrose in West Hollywood, in the building next to the Improv. I admit to bias: I'm friends with the director and many of his players but so what? They're still funny, still marvelously creative.

The whole field of improv comedy took an odd turn when Saturday Night Live became a smash. Around the time Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner began getting multi-million dollar movie offers, every up-'n'-coming actor in the country suddenly thought, "Aha! That's the new route to stardom." Suddenly, everyone was taking improv comedy lessons and trying to get into troupes so they could get discovered for SNL or one of its many clones. I would guess maybe 20% of those folks really got the idea of how to improvise on stage. The rest seemed to think it meant you have to quickly write your own script, which is not what improv is all about. Around 1984, I was an occasional substitute teacher for one local improv class and of the thirty or so people in the room, I think maybe three really wanted to use it as anything more than a stepping stone to Eddie Murphy's career. The whole art of improv has suffered as a result…less so in the last decade but the damage has still not been undone.

So I love to see real improv, where the performers are performing in the moment and are almost as surprised by what comes out of their mouth as is the audience. Totally Looped is real improv.

Director Vince Waldron selects video and movie clips…and I can assure you there's nothing prearranged with the cast. They have no idea what Vince has picked before they're called upon to dub in new dialogue live, right on the spot. Every time I've been to the show, there have been some amazing bits of on-the-fly brilliance. If you don't believe me, go some Thursday night. The details are over at their website.

I'm not sure this clip does justice to the show but it'll give you the idea. And if you like what you see, you'll really like seeing it in person.

I often disagree with Charles Krauthammer but his take on the Barry Bonds steroids issue makes sense to me.

The other day, I linked to this article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that makes the case that the 2004 presidential election was stolen by Bush, especially by rigging the voting in Ohio. Over on Salon, this article by Farjad Manjoo rebuts Kennedy's article. I want to read them both over again — and maybe see what others will toss into the discussion — before I decide which one (if either) to believe.

I think reading a piece in Salon still requires one to subscribe, purchase a day pass or watch a mess of advertising. I subscribe and would like to suggest you consider doing so. The online magazine has been attacked in some quarters for its Liberal stance and the contents probably do lean that way most of the time. On the other hand, they occasionally publish articles like this one that tell (or try to tell) their target demographic something those readers would rather not hear. When you look at all the media that has any sort of political attitude — websites, magazines, radio programs, cable news outlets, etc. — you don't find very many that will ever risk trampling on those precious Urban Legends that their audience wants to believe. Would that more of them were, like Salon, willing to do that.

We are pleased to see that Wen Ho Lee has won a cash amount — and therefore, a court declaration of having been wronged — in his lawsuit against the government and five major news organizations that accused him informally (meaning, the government never charged him) of espionage. I'm all for reporters protecting their sources but in this case, the reporters allowed themselves to be planted with phony information and they printed it. It was largely a plot to pressure Lee into confessing guilt to a crime for which he should never have been arrested in the first place. The New York Times, which was one of the organizations that got suckered into bolstering the phony charges, printed a major mea culpa but everyone who spread the story owes the man an apology.

Seven days ago at this very moment, I was lying on an operating table at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. I'd been "out" for maybe fifteen minutes and I'm guessing someone had just shaved my stomach in preparation for the surgeon who was about to perform a roux en y Gastric Bypass. About fifty hours later, I was home, feeling much better than I'd expected…and right now, I feel pretty much as I did before the surgery, only lighter.

How much lighter, I'm not sure since my scale doesn't work. But last Wednesday, I had a follow-up exam and the scale in my surgeon's office had me down eleven pounds. That's in five days. I'm guessing I'm down fourteen by now. Yesterday, a dancer friend of mine came by and she asked me how much I'm expected to lose. I told her and she remarked, "That's more than I weigh."

Frightening in a sense. And yet, exciting.

I'm already feeling better in many ways, mostly my legs and feet. I can tell circulation is improving.

I'm not going to dwell much on this, here or in future posts. Other folks' medical info can be very boring. But I wanted to tell all my friends I couldn't be happier with how it's gone and how it's going. Thanks again to all for the many well wishes.