Monthly Archives: May 2008

While Bob Elisberg is waiting for that lunch I owe him, he wrote an article about The Greatest Musical You've Never Heard Of. In his opinion. When we do have that lunch, I may argue for a couple of others…but go see what Bob thinks.

Just back from the event I mentioned earlier…the opening of the Will Eisner art exhibit at Storyopolis, a fine art gallery and bookshop on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. Lots of fine, creative people were there. Lots of Eisner art was on the walls. Couldn't have been a nicer evening.

Another weblog that mentioned the event made it sound like the exhibition would only be up for this one evening. Not true. For the next month or so, you can drop by Storyopolis and see a lot of drawings that will remind you just how good Will was. I suggest you do this if you're in the area.

Scott McClellan's new book quotes George W. Bush as saying he can't remember if he ever used Cocaine.

I don't know if McClellan's quotation is accurate. But I do know that if you can't remember if you ever used Cocaine, then you used an awful lot of Cocaine.

The ten most incredible art thefts of the modern era. Take a look.

Despite recent and dire reports of deadlocking, AFTRA has arrived at a deal that its board is recommending to the membership for ratification. This morning's press reports would suggest it is not a great deal, and I would imagine that Screen Actors Guild leaders are studying it right this minute — unless they don't yet have its actual terms — and pondering a response. One possible one could be a massive push to get AFTRA members to reject it.

The slightly-overlapping memberships of the two actors' unions may come into play here. SAG has 122,000 members. AFTRA has around 80,000. There's about a 44,000 person overlap and it's generally believed that those who are members of both unions are more likely to be actively working and therefore more likely to vote. So a lot of those who'll vote on the AFTRA deal will be doing so with an eye towards what that would mean for SAG.

AFTRA covers primarily magazine-type programs, some soap operas, a few game shows, some cable shows, no movies and very few prime-time shows, especially the kind that have storylines. If SAG went on strike but AFTRA signed, the networks would have some new programming…mainly the shows that managed to stay in production during the Writers Strike.

That's not a likely situation — AFTRA signing, SAG striking — but it's possible. What I'm waiting for is some response from SAG leadership. They're going to have to decide (and soon) if they're prepared to hold out for substantially better terms. The studios have dropped their formerly-intractable demand for the right to use clips of actors in almost any venue without the actors' specific permission. Presumably, the AMPTP guys realized that was an issue that could galvanize an actors' strike…one which would even be rejected by AFTRA, the less militant of the two unions. So it's gone…for now. With that matter off the table, SAG will be left with a deal that's just plain weak on the dollars and cents, especially with regard to home video.

Let's see if the leadership of SAG is prepared to denounce the terms AFTRA's negotiators have accepted, and to insist they'll never settle for that. They probably are. So then the next question will be if SAG is prepared to follow through on that vow.

Just a reminder: This evening, there's a gala exhibition/party about the artistry of the late Will Eisner. It's at the Storyopolis gallery in Studio City and it's free, though I think you have to R.S.V.P. to be there. Doors open at 7 PM and around 8:00, there will be a panel discussion of the works of Will. Present on this panel will be Denis Kitchen, Jackie Estrada, Sergio Aragonés and me. But even better, the whole place will be full of pictures drawn by Will Eisner. Should be quite an event.

Even though I think she's lost the race and oughta start acting that way, I still have great respect for Hillary Clinton. She's a smart woman and I wouldn't bet that she won't be president some day.

That said, I don't think someone whose campaign is $21 million in debt should be telling us how good she is at financial management.

Good night, Internet. See you in the morning.

This is one of those "someone who reads this blog will have a suggestion" queries…

Years ago, in the simpler era of the DOS operating system, I used a couple of simple database programs on my computer. For a time, I employed one called Nutshell. Later, when DOS became more sophisticated and Nutshell didn't, I moved to one called Alpha Four. These were not fancy but I didn't need fancy. Just needed to enter data, sort it and print it out.

In time, database programs got fancier and came to involve all sorts of bells, whistles and sirens. Alpha Four became Alpha Five and in so doing, became so complicated that I figured I might as well move onto Microsoft Access…which I did, following a brief detour through Filemaker Pro. These programs were all more complicated and full-featured…but truth to tell, for about 80% of my databasing, Nutshell and Alpha Four were jes' fine. I'd like to find something like them that runs under Windows XP.
Anyone have a nominee? I just need to be able to define fields, enter data, sort on any field, print out data and, of course, be able to export and import. Drop me a note if you have an idea. Thanks.

This video syncs up (roughly) all three openings that were used on The Dick Van Dyke Show after the first season. They filmed three and then each week, the editors would randomly select one and affix it to the beginning of the episode. There were people who worked on the show — and I suppose, some who didn't — who'd wager each week on whether Rob would trip over the ottoman, sidestep the ottoman or sidestep the ottoman and stumble.

That's all fascinating but the main reason I'm putting this link up is to salute Earle Hagen, the man who wrote the wonderful theme song for The Dick Van Dyke Show and many other programs, as well. Mr. Hagen has passed away at an age, fittingly, which is the same number of notes on a piano keyboard. As this obit notes, he leaves behind a fine legacy of creations which will be hummed and rerun and remembered. This one is even the ringtone on my BlackBerry…

If you're interested in the state of health care in this country — an occasional topic of this board — you might want to glance at a new website set up by the Kaiser Foundation. It's chock full o' info about that.

If you watch that HBO movie, Recount, you might want to read this review in Salon as a kind of companion piece. It's a pretty perceptive (I think) piece of writing, and it notes which of the participants, among those depicted in the film, have objected to the portrait and which have endorsed. James Baker, who led the fight for the Bush camp, is said to be quite happy.

Several folks who've written me about my remarks have not "gotten" that my view of the whole mess is that I don't see any reason to trust any of the vote counts or recounts…and I think it's especially self-deceptive to point to the scenario that proves your guy won. All were flawed. There's one whole set of questions about people who were qualified to vote and were not allowed to do so. That alone would cast unacceptable doubts over the process even if we had an inarguable tally of how those who did vote voted. As it turns out, we don't even have that. Every count and recount (including the half-assed job done later by a press consortium) yielded a different total, in part because each time through, different ballots were being read or discarded…or in the case of recounts, simply not recounted at all.

I think the process was flawed in a dozen different ways, ranging from unreliable machines to widely different interpretations of the rules in different counties and even on recounts within the same county. The end result was many sets of totals…and no dispassionate reason to accept one as any better than another. So it came down to a matter of which side could argue/bully the acceptance of the numbers more favorable to their guy. Republicans were more aggressive, plus they had more officials (like Katharine Harris and various judges and Supreme Court Justices) in place so they were able to ram through their version of how the mess should be regarded.

George W. Bush might have actually gotten more votes than Al Gore. That's quite possible since the election in Florida does seem to have been quite close. But I don't think those ballots were ever counted honestly and I think it's outrageous, and contrary to everything we like to believe about America, that we don't have elections where the loser can walk away, satisfied the final score was legitimate. When I said this to a friend who was delighted to not have Gore in the job, he came back with the old, insulting "Get over it" line. I don't think any of us should "get over" believing that we should expect our votes to be tabulated with at least the same level of accuracy that PayPal applies to my eBay purchases.

I haven't gotten around to mentioning it here — I don't tell you about most things I do and you should be grateful — but I've been writing for a publication called Nature Comics. This is a freebee educational comic published by the Educational Broadcasting System as a companion guide to Nature, a fascinating TV series produced by Thirteen/WNET in New York. The comic is distributed free to classrooms and other educational entities that request it and if you're a teacher, I think they'll just send you a pile to pass out to your students.

At the very least, everyone can download a PDF of the second issue from this page. You'll be especially impressed by the fine illustration work of Rick Veitch, who's drawn the stories I've written for the project and written some of his own, as well. I found out about this offer from Rick's website…where I also learned that the comic has been nominated for an Association of Educational Publisher's Distinguished Achievement Award in the graphic novels category. That sounds very impressive even though I don't know what that is.

Here's a link to the New York Times obit for Dick Martin.

Most of the pieces on Martin mention the 1969 Rowan and Martin movie, The Maltese Bippy…a really awful, hurriedly-made film. It was quite a flop that did not replicate, as was intended, the success of the Martin and Lewis movies. In fact, one of the first jokes I ever sold to television was a line that Dean Martin delivered when they roasted Rowan and Martin on his show. (I didn't write on that series but the head writer, Harry Crane, sometimes bought material like that.) The line went something like this: "Dan and Dick starred in The Maltese Bippy…the movie that put MGM where it is today. In the hotel business."

That was touted at the time as their motion picture debut…but they actually starred in a 1958 western comedy called Once Upon A Horse, written and directed by Hal Kanter. It wasn't a great movie but it was a lot better than The Maltese Bippy. Most things in life are.