Monthly Archives: July 2007

The late, great Bert Lahr was best known for his classic role as The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. But there were a few years there where people knew him best as the guy in the Lay's Potato Chip commercials. Here's one of those classic spots…

There's a limit as to how much of a candidate's distant past should be held against them today. I have enough trouble finding things to admire in most people currently seeking high office without dragging in the scummy thing someone did in 1973 or whenever. On the other hand, it doesn't reflect well on the present-day human being when they attempt to mispresent or otherwise fib about past indiscretions and deeds. Which brings us to Fred Thompson. As you may know, I'm a major wallower in Watergate, still utterly fascinated with almost every aspect of what some thought would be a major shift in the tone and ethics of American politics. It wasn't. About the only lessons that came out of it were "Don't get caught" and the rarely-heeded "The cover-up is worse than the crime."

Fred Thompson was the Senate Watergate Committee minority counsel. Nothing wrong with that. Somebody had to defend Richard Nixon in that venue. But it long ago struck me that once Nixon went down, a lot of folks who'd been fervently taking his side and branding the opposition as partisan witch-hunters suddenly began taking credit for leading that witch-hunt in the first place. And there was Thompson at the head of the pack, pretending he'd only been after the truth and had helped bring it out. This recent article pretty well summarizes the revisionism.

I have little enthusiasm for any of the announced candidates for president and the lowest regard for those who seem unlikely to start undoing the damage of Bush-Cheney. So that puts Thompson way down on my list to begin with. Nothing I've seen of the man lately has changed that. He seems to think it doesn't matter what you say or what you believe as long as you're glib and you sound presidential about it. As with many a Democratic candidate, I think his current high standing in the polls is a function not of how much is known about him but how little. I don't know why we don't all just do what most of us would really like: Elect "None of the above."

Harlan J. Protass makes an interesting point about Lewis Libby's "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

So…what's about to happen to the Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood?

Sunset Gower is what they call it today but once upon a time, it was Columbia Studios. The area was nicknamed "Gower Gulch" because back then, it housed a lot of cheap, low-budget studios that made B-Movies, many of them westerns. Columbia started out as one of those ratholes but through the tenacity of its president, Harry Cohn, and filmmakers like Frank Capra, it became a major player. A lot of wonderful movies were made on that lot.

Cohn died in '58. They held his funeral on two adjoining stages at the studio. That was where Red Skelton reportedly looked around at the huge mob scene that had showed up and made the famous remark, "That just proves what Harry always said. If you give the public what they want, they'll turn out for it." Mr. Cohn, obviously, was not well-liked…but his absence seemed to harm his studio. Throughout the sixties, its fortunes declined. Even with a couple of hit TV shows, it couldn't support that huge studio complex and between 1970 and 1972, Columbia began closing it down, step by step, moving their ongoing production to other facilities, primarily the Warner Brothers Burbank lot.

The operation at Sunset and Gower was almost a ghost town for a few years there. Around 1977 however, a producer named Nick Vanoff and some partners purchased the lot and began to run it as a rental facility. I worked on that lot for a few years in the eighties and it was a great, albeit seriously old place to produce shows. It's been upgraded a lot since then and has remained a busy place…but one wonders if that's going to continue. Or if something else is in the wind as an add-on.

In 2004, a company called G.I. Partners purchased the lot and announced an ambitious upgrade construction plan, adding new structures and refurbishing the more ancient ones. A six story post-production building for the Technicolor Corporation is nearing completion. That would make it seem like Sunset Gower Studios will remain up and operating. But just last week, G.I. Partners sold out to a commercial real estate firm called Hudson Capital. It has been suggested that while G.I. Partners wanted to run Sunset Gower as just a TV-movie production facility, the new owners will want to sneak in retail stores and maybe condominiums or apartments, too. Every real estate company in town, it seems, looks at a movie studio and thinks, "Hmm…mixed use and condos."

I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. Just wondering out loud what's going to happen. No, I take that back. I know what's going to happen. Someday, there will be a big shopping center on that land, possibly with places to live, as well. If the current owners don't do it, the next ones will.

More of Lewis Black. That is, if this danged embed from the Comedy Central website works.

Hey, wanna be thanked by name in my upcoming book on Jack Kirby? That will be your sole reward if you help me out with something. I need to scan a panel out of one of his old comics and I can't find my copy at the moment.

It's Fighting American #2, which was published in 1954. The reprints won't help in this case. I need a panel out of the first printing. If you have a good copy of that, a scanner that can do at least 300 DPI (600 would be preferable) and the willingness to help, drop me a note and I'll tell you which panel.

The presidential commutation of Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence isn't sitting well in some quarters. Quickie polls don't indicate widespread happiness and even the editorial page of The Washington Post, which has been trending rightward and defending Libby every possible way, wrote…

We agree that a pardon would have been inappropriate and that the prison sentence of 30 months was excessive. But reducing the sentence to no prison time at all, as Mr. Bush did — to probation and a large fine — is not defensible.

Meanwhile, The New York Times, which only occasionally lives up to its reputation as a Liberal newspaper, said (in part)…

Within minutes of the Libby announcement, the same Republican commentators who fulminated when Paris Hilton got a few days knocked off her time in a county lockup were parroting Mr. Bush's contention that a fine, probation and reputation damage were "harsh punishment" enough for Mr. Libby.

Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.

I think that's right…and would maybe add that Bush wanted to send a message to several members of his crew who are likely to face indictment, perhaps even for perjury raps: "Don't worry. I won't let them throw you behind bars."

But whatever outrage this has generated across America won't last long and won't have much impact. The folks who are mad at Bush have better reasons to be mad at the guy, and Congress isn't about to do anything. Yesterday, Joe Biden was urging people to call the White House and register their anger. That strikes me as about the most useless thing a body could do. To what end? Bush isn't going to rescind the commutation, and The Decider seems to pride himself in putting his judgment above that of public opinion. What might make a bit of difference is if the movable Republicans in Congress — which is to say, the ones facing tough re-election bids soon — were bombarded by voters. But I guess Biden didn't want to tie up his colleagues' phones.

Hey, on a more important aspect of this: How come most of the talking heads on my TV, talking about this, keep saying "Scooter Libby" over and over again? It's rarely "Libby" or "Mr. Libby," which are the common forms. It's like "Bush commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby because of the effect a jail term for Scooter Libby would have on the Scooter Libby family." I guess the guy has one of those names — like Charlie Brown or Stan Lee — that just lends itself to always being used in full. But if you didn't know better and watched cable news, you might get the idea his name was Lewis Scooterlibby. Come to think of it, I guess those of us who don't know better are the target audience for cable news.

Here's a couple minutes of Lewis Black…maybe. This is a link from the Comedy Central website so there's maybe a 50/50 chance it'll work. If it does, you may enjoy it.

My friend Carolyn Kelly and I will be two of three Guests of Honor at the Anthrocon in Pittsburgh this weekend. Carolyn will be discussing her cartooning and the work of her father, Walt Kelly, creator of the great comic strip, Pogo. The third Guest of Honor, Rob Paulsen, will be talking about his career as one of the top voiceover artists in the business. And I'll be talking about…

Hmm. I'm not sure what I'll be talking about, not that I ever am. Maybe about writing comic books about Bugs Bunny and other cartoon superstars, maybe about writing the Garfield animated show. I don't know. Anthrocon is — I cribbed this from their website — the world's largest convention for those fascinated with anthropomorphics, which are humanlike animal characters. It's a gathering of folks who draw, write about, dress up as or just enjoy cartoon animals. I'll tell you more about it from there.

There will be panels. On Friday afternoon at 1:30, Carolyn and I will be doing a panel about writing and drawing comic books and cartoons. On Sunday at 10 AM, Rob and I will be discussing the cartoon voice field and then at 2 PM, Carolyn and I will be talking about Pogo. There are other panels and games and presentations and exhibitors and an art show and if you're there, please say howdy. If you're not there, watch this spot for reports on what you missed.

I've been derelict in my duty. I get a lot of fine books that are about comic book history or which feature reprints of classic comic books or strips…and I keep meaning to recommend them to you. Somehow, I keep not getting around to it…but since I have my own comic book book coming out before the end of the year, the least I can do is make the effort. So for the next few days/weeks/months — however long it takes before I get too busy or I start forgetting — I'm going to suggest one each day to you.

These are not reviews so much as recommendations so I should declare here that I'm not fond of everything I've seen in this area lately. Some of the reprint books have had very weak reproduction…or in a few cases, have been "restored" to death by some guy who has Photoshop but no idea of how conspicuous his presence is on pages that should represent the work of someone else. Some of the history books have been born of good intention…but done by someone who didn't have access to the proper sources. That's assuming those sources are still available, which is not always the case. I'm going to move those books to the bottom of the pile and deal from the top.

Today, I'd like to point you towards Wally's World: The Brilliant Life and Tragic Death of Wally Wood, the World's Second Best Comic Book Artist — and yes, that's an Amazon buying link — by Steve Starger and J. David Spurlock. I'm not sure I'd say Mr. Wood was the second best comic book artist, nor am I sure who they think is/was Numero Uno. Then again, I wouldn't waste time arguing the point, either. He was a tremendous talent whose life and career (though rarely his art) were tinged with stress, pain and despair. This biography starts with his 1981 suicide, then flashes back through his life to see him struggle, producing wonderful work for employers who often were not grateful or generous.

I didn't know Wood that well…met him three or four times, spoke with him for maybe two hours total over ten years. He was an angry man but with a veneer of despair that made you wonder how life and the industry could be so harsh to someone who drew so well. But of course, he did a lot of it to himself. Other fine artists lived in the same system and usually made it work for them. The book by Starger and Spurlock tracks Wood's life at the drawing table and away from it, giving us some insight into why his life went the way it did. Not that it's completely understandable but I felt I learned something about the guy…plus there are a lot of nice pictures to look at. Get yourself a copy.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are both on vacation for two weeks.

I just heard that George W. Bush has commuted the sentence (but not the fine or probation) of Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Seems to me this is a decision that will make everyone happy. The pro-Bush crowd gets the thrill of seeing Bush acting decisive and knowing that he'll protect his own. The anti-Bush crowd gets to see him drop another point or two in the polls among Independents.

I haven't seen Michael Moore's Sicko…but then I haven't been to any movie for quite some time. I doubt I'll catch up with that one before it catches up with me on HBO, but I am intrigued by the reaction to it among reviewers and bloggers. Some, who are predisposed to wish Moore would die a painful death, are having an awfully hard time faulting him for this one. It usually comes down to a slam on his "methods" with a few gratuitous jabs at his weight and wardrobe. I suspect they're overlooking that one of Moore's methods is to deliberately piss off people like them to generate controversy and, therefore, notoriety. Moore got a rave review from someone on Fox News and there's probably an element of truth in his jests about, "What are they trying to do? Ruin me?"

As longtime readers of this here blog are aware, I think health care is a disaster in this country. If a terrorist did that much damage to human life, we'd be on quadruple-red alert and never pass through any doorway without a metal detector and having our shoes x-rayed. As I understand it, the film speaks only briefly of people who have no health insurance at all and spends most of its time detailing how you can have health insurance and still not have your needs covered. A catastrophic illness or accident can still wipe out your savings, your home and your body. If that's his premise, great. Because that's my premise…and I haven't even seen his most outraged detractors do much to argue that point. Whether his solutions are the right ones, I don't know — but he's got people talking about an important problem, and that's about all you can expect a muckraking documentary to do. It's certainly more than most do.

Joel Achenbach explains how, in Washington these days, being certain you're right is just as good as actually being right. In fact, I'm beginning to think some people don't realize that there's any difference between those two things.

And now, Bullwinkle is selling Cocoa Puffs. That moose will sell anything…