Back here, we linked you to the website of a new company that takes people on short, expensive air flights in which they get to experience weightlessness and other variations in gravity. As you may have seen on the news, renowned Cosmologist Stephen Hawking recently took such a flight.
So did Teller of the team of Penn & Teller. Here's a short essay he wrote about his experiences.
Rosa Brooks says we shouldn't be as afraid of terrorism as a lot of us are. I think she's right.
…as Billy DeWolfe used to say. And on what other blog today are you likely to see a Billy DeWolfe reference?
Last night, I was out in the Valley for the first of what may be a regular — every other month or so — informal gathering of Animation Writers. My pal Steve Marmel threw it together. No speeches, no agenda. We just all go to a restaurant en masse for food and beverage. This one was at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in Burbank, which I guess is a nice place if you like the beers they make. I never touch the stuff and I almost couldn't handle the hamburger or the noise, either. Still, I had a good time mingling with around seventy of my colleagues and will go to more of these, if and when Steve arranges them.
Then today, it's back out to Burbank for the Hollywood Collectors Show, where the Great and the Near-Great sell autographed photos and other memorabilia. Among those scheduled to appear today and/or tomorrow are Henry Winkler, Mickey Rooney, Brinke Stevens, Gregg Berger, Kelli Maroney, Nastassja Kinski, Traci Lords, Erik Estrada, Tom Bosley, Alan Oppenheimer, Monique Parent, Henry Silva and Joey Heatherton. I always find the attendees at least as interesting as the featured guests so I expect to have a good time.
Tomorrow, I'm heading for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books up at U.C.L.A. There, I will make my way to lecture halls I always tried to avoid when I was a student on said campus, and I will hear authors discuss their current books. One, I expect, will be Joe Conason, who's among my current favorite political reporters and commentators — a list that is hard to get on and harder still to stay on. Mr. Conason has a good article today over at Salon, all about Rudy Giuliani's silly "elect Democrats and die" remarks of the other day. I was already thoroughly disappointed by John McCain when he started renouncing past positions to try and get the support of the hard right-wing. It's sad to see Giuliani going the same route.
Sunday, I expect to spend writing and then Monday, it's back out to Burbank (again!) to do another one of those interviews for a special feature on an upcoming DVD. At this rate, I'm going to be on more DVDs than copy protection. I'll report on some or all of these events as they happen. And then I'll try not to go to Burbank again for the rest of '07.
On June 7, 2005, I posted the following item on this weblog…
George W. Bush's approval rating is now a full twenty points lower than Bill Clinton's was on the day he was impeached.
Quite a few people wrote me to express amazement at this. It was true, of course, but it was also amazing. I wonder what those people think now that Bush's approval rating is forty points lower than Bill Clinton's on the day he was impeached.
The Three Stooges — colorized within an inch of their lives — lead a classroom in "The Alphabet Song." I never quite understood the premise of the tune, either. But it is kinda catchy.
We're always on the lookout for articles that explain what the U.S. is trying to accomplish in Iraq and what it means to "win" or "lose." This one by blogger Joshua Micah Marshall strikes me as frighteningly on-target.
Just when you think the approval rating for George W. Bush can't get any lower, he outdoes himself.
Actually, the public doesn't seem to like anyone very much. And why should they?
We spend way too much time on this webpage saying goodbye to great artists and writers of the early days of comics. So let's say Happy Birthday to two of 'em…
George Tuska is 91 years old today. George did his first known work in the comic form in 1939 as an assistant on the Scorchy Smith newspaper strip (which he later handled all by his lonesome) and for the Eisner-Iger shop. He's drawn thousands of comics in his day but is probably best remembered for his work on Lev Gleason's Crime Does Not Pay and for a long stint at Marvel drawing, among other comics, Iron Man. Stan Lee often referred to him as "Genial George Tuska" or "Gentleman George Tuska" and both those adjectives apply.
Paul Norris is 93 years old today. Paul started cartooning for the Dayton Daily News in 1937 and was drawing comic books by 1941. His most lasting contribution to the latter was as the co-creator of Aquaman. He later worked on a number of syndicated strips including Brick Bradford, which he wrote and drew from 1956 until it ended in 1987. I was delighted to write some of the comic books he also drew during that period (including Dynomutt) and to get to know this fine man.
George and Paul may not see this posting. I don't think either of them has Internet access and anyway, they'll probably be out partying 'til all hours. But I wanted to wish them well and to note how much entertainment they've provided over the years for so many.
In the past, I've linked you to clips of great kids' shows of the past that I liked. Here's eight minutes of Andy's Gang, a show I could never stand when I was a child.
Andy's Gang was a kind of successor-in-interest to an earlier radio and TV series called Smilin' Ed's Buster Brown Gang. It started on radio in 1944 with Smilin' Ed McConnell. The goal was to sell Buster Brown shoes, and I guess it did, even though its connection to the Buster character and his newspaper strip and even to his shoes was largely ceremonial. Buster appeared in commercials — in today's clip, he's played by former Munchkin Jerry Maren — but very little that was on the show came from the strip. McConnell and his crew came up with a colorful band of characters who peopled the show and for some reason, young listeners got hooked.
The radio show aired on Saturday mornings throughout the forties and a TV version began in 1950. The radio version ended in 1953 and Ed McConnell ended in 1954 when he stopped smiling and passed away, not necessarily in that order. The program was done on film so it kept rerunning for a while…but in '55, the same producers began offering instead, episodes of Andy's Gang with the same cast of puppet players and supporting characters, but with former western actor Andy Devine as the host.
Most histories say this show lasted until 1960 but I think that's misleading. My understanding is that the production company made a bunch of them and local stations just ran the same episodes over and over in unimportant time slots as long as someone was tuning in…which wasn't often after shows like Rocky and His Friends and Huckleberry Hound debuted. I recall one station in L.A. airing them at 5:30 AM for a while, and that was in the days before TiVo. You actually had to get up at that hour to watch it. I didn't…but every now and then, I'd be up with a stomach ache or something and I'd catch a little Andy's Gang. The show had a surreal atmosphere, like it was filmed on some other planet, and it seemed even odder that early in the morning.
Even though it was weird, I'm afraid I never warmed to the show. Every bit seemed to go on half past forever, and the kids in the audience laughed and screamed at everything, no matter what happened. It was the phoniest audience reaction in the world, especially since the on-stage action was obviously not filmed in front of them. I was able to figure that out at age six and I couldn't have been the only one. What I always suspected was that they had about two minutes of footage of those kids and just spliced it into each episode at random. The one thing that was occasionally amusing was when character actor Vito Scotti would duel with Froggy the Magic Gremlin, but it wasn't worth watching the show just for that. Not if anything else was on. At 5:30 AM, you could often catch a Farm Report and it was a lot funnier.
Please don't write and tell me it was your favorite show. Even if you could make me believe that, my reaction would be, "Good for you. I still couldn't watch it." The following link is offered for historical reasons, just in case anyone ever asks you where the phrase, "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy" came from…
If you'd like to see an interview with Roger Ebert back in his healthier days — i.e., when he could talk — the Archive of American Television has posted its 90-minute one-on-one with him to Google Video. This link will tell you how to get to it.
As we surmised, the author of the letter in the previous item knew it was a joke. See here. I'm just wondering if the editor of the newspaper that published it did.
I'm trying to decide if this is a joke. I mean, this letter actually appeared in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, which is a real newspaper. But I'm trying to decide if (a) the author was kidding and (b) if so, if the newspaper editor who selected it for publication realized that. I'm leaning towards (a) yes and (b) no. Here's the letter…
Daylight exacerbates warning
You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. All of the trees were fully leafed out and legions of bugs and snakes were crawling around during a time in Arkansas when, on a normal year, we might see a snowflake or two.
This should come as no surprise to any reasonable person. As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they?
Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat. Perhaps next time there should be serious studies performed before Congress passes laws with such far-reaching effects.
CONNIE M. MESKIMEN
Hot Springs
One piece of additional information which may help you decide who's kidding who (or is it whom?): A quick search reveals that Connie M. Meskimen is a practicing bankruptcy attorney.
John McCain announced today that he's a candidate for the presidency in 2008. Isn't this about the ninth time he's announced this?
Remember: If you're interested in animation or animation history, you'll want to tune in Stu's Show today on Shokus Internet Radio when he hosts animation experts Jerry Beck and Keith Scott. 4 PM on the West Coast, 7 PM on the East Coast. Details are here.
Captain America gets arrested. Boy, this just isn't his year, is it?