Monthly Archives: August 2007

A nice New York Times op-ed by Brent Staples about recognition — or lack, thereof — for Jack Kirby. And I'd say that even if Mr. Staples hadn't quoted me in it.

Let's go back to 1962 and the Broadway show, Little Me, which was one of those low-grade hits, winning some critical praise and one Tony Award. It lasted only 257 performances and among those involved in the production, there seems to be some disagreement as to whether it closed because the public stopped buying tickets or because its star, Sid Caesar, was tired of it. Caesar was pretty much the whole draw. He played seven different roles and, as one writer put it, "proved he could do anything on a stage except sing and dance."

The book was written by Neil Simon (his second Broadway show, following Come Blow Your Horn) and the songs were written by Carolyn Leigh and Cy Coleman, with Cy Feuer and Bob Fosse directing. Fosse also handled the choreography and in so doing, won the show's only Tony. The female lead was a character named Belle Poitrine who was played by Nancy Andrews in the present day and by Virginia Martin in flashbacks, and the plot followed her through her life with various husbands. In today's clip, I think the young man with the eyeshade is Mickey Deems, who had a very long career playing broad comedy parts in sitcoms and on stage. Here's ten and a half minutes of Little Me. I suspect this is from The Ed Sullivan Show but I don't know for sure.

I've long since scratched Rudy Giuliani off my list of Republicans I Could Imagine Myself Voting For…a list that until fairly recently also held the name of John McCain. There are many reasons Rudy's off but a biggie is that I don't think macho swagger and mentioning 9/11 in every other sentence is an excuse for not having a grasp on foreign policy.

If I'd needed another reason to cross Giuliani off, I got it this morning when I read…

Giuliani, who has strong national polling results but trails former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in New Hampshire, planned to "give the death tax the death penalty," his campaign said. What some politicians call the "death tax" involves the taxes on wealth passed on through inheritance.

I think the drive to reduce or eliminate Inheritance Taxes is one of the great crocks of Western Civilization, and a perfect example of wealthy folks figuring out how to transfer their fair share of the tax burden to others. Every so often, I'm going to link to this post which, in turn, links to two others that explain why this is not only a scam but a deliberate, calculated sham.

But I have to say that I was fascinated to read the following line in the news stories on Giuliani's statement…

The current rate is set at 45 percent through 2009. It would drop to zero in 2010 but jump to 55 percent in 2011.

Is that true? If so, make a note. 2010 would be a great time to murder that wealthy grandmother of yours.

When I was a kid and my parents took me to their favorite bookstore, I would always buy a book, usually a book of comic strips. Up until the time I had all of those then in print — I think there were four or so — it was the Peanuts books. That was when I started in on Pogo, which is not to say I fully understood Pogo at the time. The dialogue was inaccessible to my toddler mind and even when I could decode what I could decode, I wasn't sure what they were all yelling about. In a way, it was frustrating the way it's frustrating to watch certain TV shows with the sound off. You can tell something interesting is being said but it drives you up the ever-lovin' wall to be denied it.

That was how I felt about Walt Kelly's swampland comic strip up until the age when I started to "get it." I knew it was funny. The characters were so alive and expressive. You could tell just from their poses that wonderful things happened in their world. You could also tell that the guy drawing all them amusing pics was a man of great humor and wit. I never got to meet Walt Kelly but long before I met his daughter, I felt like I knew him. And of course, hearing her stories and being welcomed into that world, has only made me feel closer to this great Pogo cartoonist.

Walt Kelly would have been 94 years old today. For purely selfish reasons, just so I could have met him, I'm sorry he didn't make it. I'm also sorry for all of us because it would have been great to have another few decades of him and his wonderful creativity. Under Carolyn's watchful, protective eye, Fantagraphics Books will soon reprint the Pogo newspaper strips in full, and in the best presentation possible, and everyone who knows the material is very excited indeed about this.

To keep you Pogofied until then, we'll be posting more excerpts and goodies over at the Pogo Possum website. Pop over there later this weekend and celebrate Walt Kelly Day with a little Walt Kelly. It doesn't get any better than that.

I lied. I went to bed and only now am I posting the video link. It's from last week when CBS Sunday Morning did a nice memorial piece on Groucho and it includes interviews with Elliott Gould, David Steinberg, author Charlotte Chandler and a reporter who's seen Horse Feathers 28 times. There's also a nice bit with our friend Frank Ferrante, who does such an uncanny job of replicating The One, The Only on stage. If Frank is ever doing Groucho anywhere near you, run — preferably in a half-crouched posture and with your eyebrows going up and down — to see him. His touring schedule is on this page.

Some may be puzzled by the reference to Steinberg helping write the Broadway show Minnie's Boys since his name appears nowhere in its credits. I believe Mr. Steinberg was the first of several writers who tried to write a book for the show that would pass muster with (from all reports) an extremely-difficult-to-satisfy Groucho. I believe he gave up and none of his work made it into the finished product.

Well, my Internet connection got fixed and I was just sitting down to post something here when I got a call and had to go take my mother in to the emergency room at a nearby hospital. That's always good for at least six hours of not getting any work done. Her condition was not life-threatening and she's now back home and resting but she had something that needed fixing, it couldn't wait 'til Monday and there was nowhere else to take her. In fact, I couldn't help thinking that it was a lot easier to get a guy out to fix my cable modem than it was to get my mother in to see a doctor.

Every time I go to an emergency room, I come away with at least one observed story. This time, it involved a very lovely young lady of high school age and Asian extraction. She was dressed in a cheerleader outfit and had been wheeled in by a guy in matching (but for males) cheerleading garb. Sitting in the wheelchair, she somehow had to — and amazingly, managed to — keep an injured leg elevated at an impossible angle. It was actually perpendicular to the floor and if she'd pulled it back a few more degrees, she would have been seated with her leg behind her head.

She was being checked in and next to her, an elderly woman — I'm guessing at least eighty, maybe close to ninety — was being checked in for some ailment or other. While waiting for the triage lady to fill out some forms, the elderly lady turned to the cheerleader and said, "I was a cheerleader when I was your age."

The cheerleader didn't seem particularly interested but just to be sociable, she said, "Well, I hope your team won."

— to which the elderly woman replied, "I don't remember. I didn't even pay attention then. I hated sports. I just became a cheerleader because I wanted to be popular. That was all that mattered to me…being popular." Then she looked at the younger woman's leg still elevated in this astounding contortion and added, "You know, if I could have put my ankles behind my ears like that, I wouldn't have had to be a damn cheerleader."

True story. Anyway, I lost an evening and now I'm behind so there may not be a lot of posting here for the next few days. I'm going to post a video link, then go to bed. And when I wake up in the morning, I'll have some things to say about Walt Kelly Day. It's Walt Kelly Day, you know.

Still cutting in and out. It's kinda frightening how it slows up my entire life. Repair guy's due between 3:00 and 5:00 this afternoon, they say.

My Internet connection has been cutting in and out all day. I'm connected. I'm not connected. I'm connected. I'm not connected. A man is supposed to come tomorrow to figure out what the problem is.

While I'm connected, I thought I'd post something to just mention that I may not be posting much here until this is cleared up. E-mail may also not be as voluminous as I might like. But all will someday be well.

And now I'd better hurry and post this before I get unconnected again.

Hey, how about an encore from Tom Lehrer? This is "National Brotherhood Week," also with one line changed from his original recording.

I'm hearing from several sources that the Popeye DVD set is selling quite decently. This is good to hear as it may inspire more studios to haul classic animation from the vaults for home video release and (big AND) spend the bucks to fully restore the material. This is not only great news for us consumers but it's beneficial to film fans as yet unborn. Over the years, a shameful percentage of the movies made have been lost. Negatives were allowed to rot and prints were lost because current management — whoever was in charge at the time — didn't see an immediate financial benefit to restoration and preservation.

That has changed in the era of home video, DVDs and digital storage. The negatives to the Fleischer Popeye cartoons can rot, fire can destroy the vaults, every 35mm or 16mm can of film can be thrown away…but the material will endure. I'm happy to have this collection but even happier to think that no matter what happens, they'll never be unavailable and they'll never look any worse than they do on this new DVD set. And like I said, they look pretty darned good there.

Remember that silly article by Journalism Prof Michael Skube in which he said that bloggers don't do anything that approaches real reporting? Well, here's Jay Rosen to take that argument apart, piece by piece.

Since I'm seen briefly in an interview on it, I keep getting wonderful compliments on the new DVD collection of early Popeye cartoons. I'm happy to accept all accolades even though I couldn't have had much less to do with the project. Many folks, some of whose names are unknown to me, all worked with the common goal of showing the world how this kind of DVD should be done.

It starts, of course, with superior material…and the Popeye cartoons produced by the Max Fleischer Studio were about as good as any cartoons ever produced anywhere. Later Popeye cartoons by others make it easy to forget this, but there was a creative energy in that studio that is still amazing: Gags piled on gags piled on gags. I find a lot of the non-Popeye Fleischer shorts to be a bit on the hollow side — everything moves and everything's funny but all that action is a bit spineless, hung on premises and characters that don't quite deserve it. But the squint-eyed sailor (and later, when the Fleischers got hold of him, Superman) was more than up to carrying a story…at last, a star worthy of all that animation.

Also making it easy to overlook the Fleischer Popeyes has been a general unavailability…and when you do come across them, you usually see chopped-up, washed-out prints. One of the stunning things about this new DVD set is the sheer quality of the imagery. I'm not sure if these cartoons looked this good when they were originally shown in theaters but I know they've never looked this good on TV or previous home video releases. "Restored" doesn't begin to describe what has been done to these cartoons. I can't recall another home video release that has more delighted animation buffs.

So, uh, anyone know how it's selling? I haven't heard and I'm worried. Popeye hasn't been as visible lately as some cartoon characters…and like I suggested above, even the folks who know him are more familiar with his lesser adventures. They just plain don't know how good a good Popeye cartoon can be…and if this thing doesn't sell decently, we all lose out. There are a lot of us who lobby home video companies to unlock the treasures of their film vaults, to present those treasures in a complete offering, to spend the time and money to restore the material to the best-possible condition, and to create commentary tracks and other extras. If this Popeye DVD doesn't yield a significant profit, we're going to hear that it can't be done for other material because "that Popeye DVD didn't do well." That won't be the reason but it'll be the excuse to not bring other home video releases of classic animation up to this standard.

If you're like to order the best animation package ever put out on DVD, click here.

I dunno about you but I'm getting pretty weary of folks who go to Iraq for 48 hours, most of which is spent taking a well-guarded tour that has been carefully planned by their hosts…and then they come back and claim expertise on how the situation in Iraq is going. To me, that's like having a condo salesman show you the model unit and then deciding you're an expert on how the whole building was constructed.

This applies to folks who come back saying the war is going great and the soldiers there are all behind it just as much as it applies to those who report that it's a total disaster and every person in a uniform told them so. It's anecdotal reporting that has everything to do with where they went, what they were shown, who they spoke with, etc. I'm much more interested in the views of people who've been there for some length of time and went, not as tourists to be shown around but as working grunts, be they troops or reporters.

This op-ed in The New York Times is by seven infantrymen and noncommissioned officers who are completing 15-month tours of duty over there. They don't think much of the war effort or the optimism that its supporters are touting in the press…and while their views are hardly inarguable, I think they're a lot more significant than the likes of Joe Lieberman, reporting how well things are going after he spends a day or two over there, being shown areas that will enable him to come back and say it's a trip to the Westfield Mall. So read that piece and then read what my man Fred Kaplan has to say about it.

Here's Tom Lehrer — he's appearing here all week, don't forget to tip your waiters — with his "Pollution" song. There's a line change from the version on his album. In the original record, which I believe was recorded in San Francisco, he sang "The breakfast garbage that you throw into the bay / They drink at lunch in San Jose." When Mr. Lehrer performed the number in other cities, he would always adjust the geography to correspond. In this film, he does a more generic version.

Several folks, starting with Nat Gertler, have sent me the credits on the new Marvel stamps. I think one or two are still wrong but most of them have been corrected as per the information posted here. This is a good thing and those of you who helped with the identifications have reason to be proud.