Monthly Archives: April 2007

As we all know, there's nothing on this planet cuter than a baby panda. Here's an entire website full of photos and links to videos of pandas, many of them babies. Thanks to Gordon Kent, who's pretty cute but not as cute as a baby panda.

Several people have written me about this so I guess there's sufficient interest to warrant this posting. A large hunk of land in Hollywood is for sale and it's the parcel that includes the Magic Castle as well as a famous Japanese restaurant called Yamashiro. The ten acres of choice ground have been owned forever by a family called the Glovers. There's also a motel there as well as a lot of undeveloped land which someone may be able to put to profitable use. All eyes though are focused on an old mansion, the former Rollin B. Lane estate, which was built in 1908 and which was later, with many add-ons and modifications, turned into the Magic Castle. I'm a longtime member of the Castle and no, if I don't know you, don't bother writing me and asking if I'll give you a guest pass because I won't.

The Magic Castle, in case you live in a hole, is a private club for magicians or anyone who wants to pay the membership fee. It's an old house full of exhibits and wonderful furnishings and architecture, and there are showrooms in which some very talented people perform the Linking Rings and occasionally other tricks. There's also a restaurant which used to be kinda so-so and mediocre but which has been upgraded to the point where some folks think it's pretty good. You get dressed up (jackets and ties for men at night) and go up there and see great magic and eat and wander around and look at things and no, like I said, I won't give you a guest pass if I don't know you. It's enormous fun.

The articles about the possible sale (like this one) are a little vague on the relationship but here's all you need to know: The Castle is operated by a group called The Academy of Magical Arts and for years, it has leased the structure from the Glovers. Not long ago, there was a crisis period during which it looked like the future of the Castle, at least in that precious building, was threatened. That all got settled and a lot of members rejoiced in the news that the continued presence of the Magic Castle seemed assured. I would imagine they're not happy to have this new uncertainty arise, especially so soon after.

As far as I can tell, no one knows if there'll be a buyer and if so, what that party might want to do about the Magic Castle. The buyer(s) may even be the Magic Castle folks, themselves. This is all a little new and fuzzy.

If you want to make an offer — no price has yet been mentioned — here's a link to the realtor's listing, which includes lots of photos and history. If the photos of the Castle make you yearn to visit, just remember what I said about guest passes.

I haven't put one of these up in a while. It's another one of the Superman cartoons produced by the Max Fleischer cartoon studio. This is The Bulleteers, which was released on March 27, 1942.

I don't have much to say about this one except that back when I was a kid, there was an extended period when you couldn't turn on Engineer Bill's Cartoon Express on Channel 9 without seeing The Bulleteers. It got so he'd introduce it by saying, "And now, it's time for another Superman cartoon, which means we're probably showing The Bulleteers again." I'm not even sure Channel 9 had any other cartoons.

Also, you may note the name of Orestes Calpini in the credits. Mr. Calpini was one of the better animators at the Fleischer Studio, responsible for some of the most memorable scenes of Popeye. He also had a nice career drawing comic books, particularly the Punch & Judy comic published by Hillman.

And now here, as Engineer Bill would say, is The Bulleteers…

Here's a nice article about some of the new features that us TiVo people have or will soon have to enrich our TiVoing experiences. I had one of the first TiVos sold in this country and I'll have one of the last.

I dunno how it is where you shop but in the market where I go, all the food seems to be migrating into 100 calorie packs. I fully expect to go in there next time and see a box containing 100 calorie packets of Peanut M&M's. Each packet would contain about half a Peanut M.

This afternoon, I spotted 100 calories packs of Hostess Cupcakes. Hostess Cupcakes! I thought it was a joke but there they were in a big display at the end of an aisle, available in three varieties — chocolate cake, golden cake and carrot cake. They look like traditional Hostess Cupcakes but they're smaller and the company, obviously trying to keep the calories down, omits the famous squiggle. I always knew that the squiggle was where all the calories were.

Yes, of course, I bought a box…of the chocolate kind. Each box contains six packets and each packet contains three small cakes that collectively will put a mere hundred calories into your system. How were they? They were Hostess Cupcakes. How good or bad is that? The bakers (I'm using that noun loosely) apparently reconfigured the recipe a bit to lessen the unhealthy content — and of course, they got rid of the fattening squiggle. And then they made the cupcakes smaller. Each is about two bites. I think the question becomes whether the six bites you get in one of these packages would satisfy your craving for something sugary or if it would just make you hornier for a real Hostess Cupcake…or something better.

I'm in the former camp. Since my Gastric Bypass Surgery, I have much less of a sweet tooth. My sugar consumption is way, way down. In fact, I'll tell you a story about that, about how my intake of sugar actually plunged well before the surgery. I used to be one of those people who downed 3-6 cans of non-diet carbonated something per day — usually Pepsi during daylight hours and something non-caffeinated, like 7-Up or Canada Dry Ginger Ale, after dark.

February of 2006, as you may recall, I was briefly hospitalized. This had nothing to do with the Gastric Bypass I would have a few months later but at the time, I was on the waitlist and studying up on my impending stomach surgery…and one thing I'd learned was that after the procedure, I would need to eliminate all carbonated beverages and to lower my sugar intake. A nutritionist I'd met with emphasized that to me and said, "Do you think you can give up sodas?" And I replied, at least half-seriously, "If I could give up sodas, I wouldn't need the Gastric Bypass."

It turned out I could give them up. While I was in Cedars-Sinai for those four days, I had no Pepsi or anything of the sort, nor did I miss it. I'm not sure if it was because I was just lying there the whole time, not exerting myself and therefore not needing any energy boost. Or it may have been because nurses kept taking my blood sugar and bringing me either snacks or insulin depending on whether it was too low or too high. In any case, I had no soft drinks and when I got out, I decided to see how long I could refrain. It turned out that breaking that addiction was much easier than I'd imagined. CO2 bubbles have not crossed my lips since, nor have I missed them. It also turned out that I still needed the Gastric Bypass, which I had three months later. Lowering my sugar intake (or at least, the levels of High Fructose Corn Syrup) caused me to lose some weight but not enough.

I can still eat sugar but I consume and want a lot less of it. Cakes and candy just don't taste as wonderful as they once did and that's not a bad thing. In a way, the joy of them now is that the taste reminds me of earlier, better experiences. So the six bites of Hostess 100 Calorie Cupcakes are just fine, insofar as I'm concerned. They may work the same way for you.

Bruce Bartlett, who was one of the architects of "supply-side economics," says that the theory is being cited — wrongly — to justify a lot of tax cuts that aren't good for the economy.

I've linked before to clips of the late and lovely George Carl. Here's another. Mr. Carl spent around 65 years doing his act all around this and a few other continents. He could do it anywhere since it was all in mime and there was no human alive who couldn't laugh at it. This is Carl from one of his appearances on The Tonight Show and as you'll see at the end, Mr. Johnny Carson was a huge fan of his.

Here's a list of names. Guess what these people have in common. No, on second thought. Don't bother. You won't be able to guess. I'll tell you what they have in common after you scan the list.

• Johnny Carson
• Bob Hope
• Frank Sinatra
• Dean Martin
• Mel Blanc
• Jim Backus
• Stan Laurel
• Bud Abbott
• Buster Keaton
• Oliver Hardy
• Lou Costello
• Buddy Hackett

Okay, yes, they're all dead but that's not the answer I'm looking for. Here's the answer: They all apparently have money being held for them by the Screen Actors Guild department that collects residuals. Their names all turn up on this database on the SAG website. The union collects this money and is supposed to forward it to the performer or if said performer is deceased, to the appropriate heirs. But sometimes they don't have an address and that's where the database comes in. If you're a member of SAG or you know a member of SAG or you know someone who's a relative of a deceased member of SAG, go to the database, enter their name and if it's in there, let someone know.

This does not just apply to biggies like Carson and Sinatra. My friend Earl Kress and I just entered the names of every cartoon voice actor we could think of. In addition to Mel Blanc and Jim Backus, the database says they're holding cash for Daws Butler, Don Messick, Alan Reed, Paul Winchell, Bill Scott, Jackson Beck, Jack Mercer, Mae Questel, Syd Raymond, Jean Vander Pyl, Vance Colvig, Thurl Ravenscroft, Paul Frees, Lennie Weinrib, Walker Edmiston, Howard Morris and Sterling Holloway. Earl and I are going to alert the heirs of some of those folks but if you're in contact with any of them, by all means, be our guest.

You might caution them, by the way: It could be a lot of money or it could be almost nothing. Some people are going to go to the trouble of calling SAG and/or downloading and filling out forms in order to receive a check for three dollars or thereabouts. But I'll bet some of them have tidy sums waiting.

The problem may puzzle some of you. Why can't SAG find Bob Hope's family? The Hopes operate a website. There's still a Bob Hope estate that produces projects and controls the rights to what he owned. Okay, so the current address they have for Frank Sinatra is no good. Don't they have one for Frank Jr. or Nancy? And the answer is that it's probably a drawback to the age of computers. Back when human beings handled all this stuff, someone could figure that out. SAG needs to do what some other unions, including the Writers Guild, have sometimes done, which is to hire a few people to just work the phones and play Detective. It's probably a pretty formidable task however, given the size of the SAG membership, past and present.

It may also puzzle some of you that so many addresses would be no good. The widow of Daws Butler still lives in the same home where she and Daws lived since the sixties. Why doesn't SAG have that address? I'm just speculating here but I'd guess that near the end of his life, Daws had his agent's or business manager's address listed with the union. That address is now invalid — Daws's last agent died years ago — and no one at SAG has done any legwork to find the Butler home address, which they could get from any number of sources. That is, if they had anyone or even enough people assigned to do that.

And let me emphasize that though I'm talking here so far about deceased actors, the database is full of people who are alive. I'm going to call some of the ones I know over the next few days but, to quote Regis Philbin (who does not seem to have any money due him), I'm only one man. In particular, we oughta try to notify the performers who could really use it.

I'm thinking of one particular veteran character actor who I believe is now homeless and on the streets. Or at least he was a few years ago when I used to occasionally see him in my neighborhood. I tried once to slip him some cash but he refused it because I made the mistake of greeting him by name before offering. At least, I think that was his reason. I sure got the feeling that if he hadn't known I knew who he was, he would have grabbed the loot. Anyway, I haven't seem him in some time but his name is in the database. I'm not sure what can be done to get him whatever money they have for him — that is, assuming he's still around. But if he is, I'll bet he could sure use it.

Thanks to James H. Burns who wrote to remind me about this database. I'd been meaning to link to it and also to the much smaller Writers Guild Undeliverable Funds database to see if we could help get some of these bucks to the right people. If you're in or around what they call "The Industry," take a look and see if you can help a friend.

George W. Bush keeps saying that the Democratic Congress must send him a funding bill without "artificial" timetables for withdrawing troops from Iraq. I don't understand the repeated use of the word, "artificial." What would a real timetable be and does he have any of those? How might a real (as opposed to "artificial") timetable emerge? The only thing I can think of is that at some point, our military could be so exhausted and in disrepair that it will create a timetable out of a sheer manpower shortage — i.e., we withdraw on a certain timetable decreed by a lack of troops.

Maybe I'm overthinking this but it seems like the word he really means there is "arbitrary" or maybe he just means "Congressionally-dictated." I'm assuming that if at any point, he and the military leaders decided some sort of withdrawal schedule becomes prudent, that one would not be artificial in his view. Perhaps a real timetable would be one we arrive at because of a heightened ability of the Iraqi governing forces to, as they say, "stand up as we stand down." In that case, the adjective Bush should probably be using is "imposed." He doesn't want an imposed timetable.

But really, isn't a timetable imposed by the Democrats in Congress the least of Bush's worries? Seems to me that if he wants to stick to his plan — and he always seems to want to stick to his plan for anything, no matter how poorly it seems to be working — he should be more concerned about a timetable forced on him by Republicans. Because Republicans are the ones worried about having a timetable forced on them by voters who are sick of this war. And that one won't be artificial.

In 1982, there was a short-lived sitcom on NBC called One of the Boys. Mickey Rooney was the star but if the show is mentioned at all today, it's probably because the then-unknown co-stars included Nathan Lane, Dana Carvey and Meg Ryan. It advanced none of their careers. About all any of them got out of it was that Carvey developed a great Mickey Rooney impression.

Here's a one minute promo for the show with a voiceover by Casey Kasem. For some reason, it's called The Mickey Rooney Show on this clip but as far as I know, it was never called that on the air or anywhere else that mattered. This was probably done well before the show debuted using scenes from the pilot, and they decided to change the name before its debut. Here it comes…

Sad to hear that director-writer Bob Clark and his son were killed in a car crash this morning. Actually, it's sad when anyone's killed in a car crash but it's especially wrenching when (a) it's a guy who directed a couple of your favorite movies and (b) it was because of a drunk driver. As you may recall from past postings here, I think people who drink 'n' drive should be spanked hard. It's truly a reprehensible thing to do, getting behind the wheel when you're tipsy. I don't believe it should be easily forgiven, even when the culprit doesn't kill anyone.

Clark directed and co-wrote A Christmas Story, of course, and I don't have to tell anyone who's seen it what a treasure of a film it is. But he also directed two other movies I like a lot…the 1980 Tribute, starring Jack Lemmon and based on Bernard Slade's play. It came and went with little notice but I thought it was a fine film.

And I'm sorry…I like Porky's. I laughed a lot at it, especially the scene in the principal's office. If you don't think it was a well-made movie, just watch any of the 7,000 imitations that were made in its wake. You can even watch the two excrutiating sequels, only one of which Clark worked on. If you do, you'll see that the original Porky's hit a note that all the others missed. It's the only one of those pictures about horny high school memories and fantasies that seems to depict someone's actual horny high school memories and fantasies.

I never met Bob Clark but I liked his work. So it feels like I've lost yet another friend to drunk driving.

I've been writing a lot lately about one of my favorite topics, Jack Kirby. In the last month, four separate pieces about the man some call the greatest comic book creator of all time have made their way through my copy of Microsoft Word…and for four separate publishers. Here's a rundown of them in no particular order…

DC Comics is bringing out a complete, hardcover, fancy, lovely (I expect) series of four volumes that will reprint all of Jack's "Fourth World" material in a format that would have made him very happy, indeed. When Jack launched The Forever People, The New Gods and Mister Miracle, it was on the premise that someday, the series would be collected in real — as opposed to comic — books. This was then a radical, almost inconceivable idea. Of course, he imagined a much longer storyline with a more developed ending but he'd still be delighted. I know I am.

Anyway, I'm consulting on these and writing Afterwords, which means that I turn up in the rear of each volume to tell you what you just read. This fine article by Ian Brill in Publishers Weekly will tell you more. It comes out early next month and if you can't wait, you can order a copy of Volume 1 by clicking here. You can also pre-order Volume 2 while you're at it. Amazon is offering another one of their exciting package deals where you can purchase two books at once for exactly the same price you'd pay to order them separately, thereby saving yourself one mouse click.

Neil Gaiman — despite the fact that I took him to a mediocre Chinese restaurant a few years ago or perhaps because of it — asked that I pen the foreword to Marvel's forthcoming collection of his (and John Romita's) take on Mr. Kirby's 70's series, The Eternals. I was delighted to do so because Jack's brainstorm was in fine hands and I got to write a little about him and the history of that comic along with blessing the Gaiman/Romita extension. This book comes out the same time as the one above and you can snag your copy by clicking here.

I just wrote yet another installment of my ongoing column on J.K. for The Jack Kirby Collector. I don't have to tout this publication to anyone with the slightest interest in Kirby so I'll just mention that you can order the latest issue here. My piece in this one is about Jack's speed in producing comics and about his relationship with a young artist named Joe Maneely who was killed in a tragic train accident in 1958.

Lastly, but hopefully not leastly, I'm putting the finishing touches on Kirby: King of Comics, a very fancy book by Yours Truly which comes out before the end of the year from Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Here's a page on that company's website with not much more information than I've given you here. And here's some exciting news: There's a place there you can pre-order at the full price if you have a yearning to pre-order and can't wait until you can pre-order from Amazon for less. I'm very pleased with how this book is coming out and I won't say any more now because I expect to become a bore and a nag (both at the same time) about this project.

So there you have them: Four times lately when I've written about Kirby…five, if you count this item. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish my income taxes. Maybe I can sneak a mention of Jack in there, too.

I'm going to reprint this news article in full…

Richards Denies Snorting His Dad's Ashes

April 04,2007 | LONDON — Keith Richards was joking when he claimed to have snorted his father's ashes along with cocaine, a spokesman said Wednesday. "It was an off-the-cuff remark, a joke, and it is not true. File under April Fool's joke," said Bernard Doherty of LD Communications, which represents the Rolling Stones. Doherty declined to say any more about why Richards made the statement in an interview with NME, a pop music magazine.

"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," the 63-year-old guitarist was quoted as saying. "He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared. It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

Richards' father, Bert, died in 2002, at 84.

Uh, why was the earlier report a news item? Didn't reporters and editors understand it was a joke? You did, right?

Since we've been talking Popeye here lately, let's make today's feature a Popeye cartoon. This is Little Swee'pea, which was released to theaters on September 25, 1936. Jack Mercer and Mae Questel provide the voices and that's all you need to know…

Oh, yeah. I should mention that this print starts with the A.A.P. logo. Associated Artists Productions was a company that acquired theatrical material and distributed it to television. They got a mess of Popeye material in 1956 and slapped their own title cards on the front of the cartoons to replace the Paramount logo. I'm not sure what they did but you'll notice that these Max Fleischer Popeye cartoons (most of 'em) start with the ship's doors opening and closing…and somehow, when the A.A.P. logo went on a lot of them, the music was adjusted so the sound of the doors closing was out of sync. On this print, it's okay but on a lot, it ain't.

Anyway, after you get past the A.A.P. title card, it's all original equipment. Here we go…

As this article explains, Garry Trudeau is now doing a Doonesbury sequence about the many and varied positions of Republican presidential wanna-be Mitt Romney. The storyline points out that Romney has reversed a lot of his past opinions about things like gay rights and stem cell research. He has now moved to positions more in keeping with the hardcore Republican base for, I suspect, the same reason John McCain now shamelessly panders to that group. You may not be able to win the presidency with those positions but you sure can't win the Republican nomination without them.

I haven't paid enough attention to Romney to have an opinion as to whether he's sincere in his "evolved thinking" or not. I'm just wondering aloud if "flip-flopping on the issues" is going to be a serious charge against anyone in the next election. After eight years of George "Stay the Course" Bush, even the staunchest Republicans may be a little leery of a guy who brags about never changing his mind.