Monthly Archives: May 2008

As explained on this page, I'm a guest on today's installment of Fresh Air, the popular conversation program on National Public Radio. The subject is Jack Kirby and my new book on him, and that page has an excerpt from the book.

After I mentioned I was doing the show, I received a number of e-mails advising me on how to respond to the interview style of its host, Terry Gross. My correspondents missed the fact that the interview had already been recorded by then, and they didn't know that my interrogator was not Ms. Gross but the program's TV critic, David Bianculli. We conversed for 40-45 minutes (it seemed) and I assume they're going to edit it down by at least half, which is fine with me, especially if they lose the portions where I was incoherent and clumsy of word, and include the occasional moments when I made sense.

I believe the program will be available for listening on this page, beginning around Noon (West Coast Time) and I'll post a more direct link when there is one. And like I said the other day, you can also turn on your radio and hear it. People still do that, I'm told.

Tomorrow on Shokus Internet Radio! Janet Waldo guests on Stu's Show, a live, two hour chat fest that you can listen to, absolutely free! Janet is, of course, the veteran radio-TV-cartoon actress who is best known as the voice of Judy Jetson and Penelope Pitstop. She is a charming, wonderful lady who has been working in show business since she first sounded like a teenage girl. She still sounds like a teenage girl, as you'll hear if you tune in.

Matter of fact, don't be satisfied to just tune in. Call in and ask Janet a question about…oh, maybe about her work on I Love Lucy or about her years on radio as Corliss Archer. You can even ask her if it's true that she's a distant relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the man for whom my junior high school was named. (I was the only person on campus, by the way, who knew who Ralph Waldo Emerson was. My English teacher thought he was some guy who made radios.)

My buddy Earl Kress will be co-hosting because interviewing Janet Waldo is a two-man operation. You can hear all this by going to the website of Shokus Internet Radio at the appropriate time, which is 4 PM West Coast time, 7 PM East Coast time. How can you pass up the chance to talk to Judy Jetson?

Tim Russert's getting pissed that Hillary Clinton doesn't realize he's already declared Obama the nominee.

Hey, if it makes Russert mad, that might be reason enough for her to stay in the race.

One of the great features of The Smoking Gun website is their collection of "riders." These are contract add-ons when performers tour…a list of things they'd like in their dressing rooms, on stage, etc. Some of them are quite amazing with their piggish or fussy demands, or revealing about what really matters to the performer(s) in question. The guys who comprise Gnarls Barkley, for instance, insists that their dressing room be equipped with Magnum Condoms. Is that on the list because they need them or because they want everyone to believe they need them?

But they recently posted the all-time champ among such documents. I'm not particularly a fan of Foo Fighters but I would be if their music was as wonderful as their touring rider.

Ted Kennedy is not dead yet. I know it looks bad and I know we kind of expect male Kennedys to die and that you're surprised he's lived as long as he has. But he's not dead yet. If you wait until he is, we only have to go through all these eulogies once.

I'm not sure if this correspondent wanted his name withheld or not so I'll err on the side of protecting his identity…

As an employee of United Airlines I think the most pertinent quote in the article about consumer satisfaction regarding airlines was the following one about the passengers themselves, "They buy primarily on price, and very little else," he said. "The result of that is very low service and a business model of cost-cutting that really leaves no one happy, certainly not the businesses, the shareholders or the flying public."

That really says it all. When I came to United in 1991 we offered a full service coach product, with meals on flights of 2 hours or longer. Southwest offered a bag of peanuts, a cup (not a can) of soda, and a cattle call boarding process. United could take you from coast to coast on either a non-stop between major cities or a one stop between smaller cities. On Southwest they took at least three flights to get you across the country.

United and other full service carriers could not entice the average traveler (plain folks going on a vacation) to pay any kind of premium for this higher level of service. Frequent business travelers did appreciate the difference but it was not enough to keep the business model. The internet made the situation even worse with so many sites showing all airfares between cities at a click of the mouse and intensifying the cost cutting.

So today we have very low prices, frequently so low that it costs the airline more than they charge to get you from "A" to "B". No industry can survive when their product costs more to make than they can charge to sell it, and the industry is going to consolidate in order to return to a business model where some level of profit is more routine and not an exception.

It's ironic that the carrier that drove the airline industry to where it is today (Southwest) still gets a pass from you and the rest of the traveling public because they don't expect much from them. While the same people apply a double standard to former full service carriers wanting them to give their former level of service at today's prices.

Southwest gets no pass from me. I'm just as rankled at them when they lose my luggage — as they do with alarming frequency — as I am with United when I have a problem and I can't find a United employee in the whole bloomin' terminal willing to discuss and solve it. I don't think either situation is acceptable, regardless of how much or how little the ticket cost.

If you search this site stem to stern, you'll find plenty of complaints from me about various air carriers. Not a one of them relates at all to whether I got peanuts or a can (as opposed to a cup) of soda. I suspect a key reason that Southwest is now one of the healthier companies in its field is that they figured out long ago that most people didn't care that much about refreshments. What we care about is getting from "A" to "B" with our luggage as close to "on time" as is possible, and we care about having competent service to assist us when something occurs that disrupts that process.

There's a certain minimum standard of service that I think it's reasonable to expect when you fly. If an airline cannot price their flights low enough to be competitive and still deliver that minimum level then I think they're guilty of bad judgment. It's the same kind of bad judgment that would be in play if they said, "Yeah, we know these ten planes have wings that are liable to fall off in flight…but we can't afford to fix them because we need to get fares down."

With the Internet unlikely to close down soon, comparison shopping is a new reality in the business. The carriers that survive will be the ones that learn to adapt to that fact o' life. I don't particularly like Southwest and before my most recent experience with United, I'd have been willing to pay a little more to fly United instead of Southwest if they (and I) were flying to the same city at the approximate time I wished to travel. I am no longer willing.

In any kind of business, if your get a Customer Satisfaction score of 56 out of 100, you're doing something wrong. It's too easy to blame it on the consumers and wail that they won't pay enough. Even if that's true — and it may be to some extent, though somehow Southwest got a 79 in that survey — that's not going to rescue your company. Merging with another airline people don't like won't, either. What will is if people like me stop having bad experiences when they fly. If for some reason you can't price your fares as low as Southwest and still make a profit…well, imagine the situation where your flight to where I'm going is $110 and Southwest's is $90. Then give me one good reason to spend the extra twenty bucks…because I certainly will. I'll bet a lot of people would. We just don't see that one good reason.

A study of consumer satisfaction has shown that America agrees with me: The airlines in this country have never been worse. And United Airlines — which you may recall I vowed to never fly again — got one of the lowest scores. This article will tell you more but I love the line about…

United Airlines and US Airways Group Inc., which are in talks to potentially combine into a single carrier, finished next-to-last and last, respectively, in the university's American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Think how wonderful that would be…the two lousiest airlines joining forces to create one big, super colossal rotten airline! I can't wait to not fly on that one.

Southwest, where I've also had my problems, got the highest rating and I think I know why. It's not that Southwest is any better but the way they act and dress, you just don't expect much out of them. You're real impressed if the plane takes off at all.

Sorry to hear of the passing of Rory Root, an important voice in the world of comic book retailing and the owner of Comic Relief, a darn good shop in the Berkeley area. Cause of death is being given as complications from some surgery he underwent to repair a ruptured hernia. Rory was fifty years old and was one of those sellers who truly loved the product and the people to whom he sold.

Last February, my new book on Jack Kirby was coming out just barely in time for the Wondercon in San Francisco. For a moment there, it looked like none of the dealers would get it in time for it to be sold 'n' signed at the con…but Rory went to considerable trouble and expense to obtain a few crates of 'em, and I was only too glad to sit and inscribe them at his booth. This was not just a matter of potential profits. Rory was a big Kirby fan and he just wanted to have the book at his table. Whatever profit he made off them was probably nullified by the number of copies he gave away to friends. You have to like a guy like that. Actually, I liked Rory even before then. Everyone did.

July 1, a couple of new laws go into effect in California. It becomes illegal for the driver of a motor vehicle to be using a handheld cell phone while driving. It also becomes illegal for drivers under the age of 18 to use any kind of cell phone while driving, including hands-free phones. If you're over 18, you can use a hands-free connection. Here's a link to a PDF that explains all about the law but I've pretty much told you everything you need to know.

I don't know why this hasn't been publicized more. We'll probably hear a lot about it around the end of June, whereupon there'll be a stampede to purchase hands-free kits and get them installed. Wise California drivers won't wait.

I got mine installed more than a year ago. My BlackBerry fits into a little cradle and makes a Bluetooth connection with the system in my car. I push a little button and a lady's voice says "Say a command." I carefully and distinctly say "Call Sergio Aragonés" and the phone immediately dials my plumber. If I want to talk to my plumber, I have to tell it to phone Sergio. For a while, it refused to dial my pal Scott Shaw!, who spells his surname with an exclamation point and was in my phonebook the same way. I finally figured out that the hands-free software was getting thrown off by the exclamation point.

The outlawing of handheld cell phones while driving is way overdue. Every one of us has had a few near-collisions because some clown was driving one-handed while ordering a pizza or engaging in some intense conversation. (I know some stats say that hands-free phone connections are just as likely to result in accidents but I'm skeptical about those numbers.)

That's about all I have to say on the subject except that I wonder if we're now going to hear stories of people contesting their fines on the following basis. You're allowed to use handheld phones while driving in the case of an emergency…and to some people, making an appointment to have your hair cut or finding out what time a movie starts is an emergency.

I will be a guest on Wednesday on Fresh Air, the popular talk program on National Public Radio. The topic, of course, will be Jack Kirby and my new book on the guy…though the interviewer (we taped it this afternoon) spent more time than I would have liked asking me about me. Why you'd discuss me when you could be discussing Jack Kirby, I cannot begin to explain. We recorded much more interview than they're going to broadcast so perhaps most of that will get excised. Either way, there'll be a podcast link here whenever one is available…or you could do the unusual trick of actually listening to a radio show on the radio. This link will take you to the home page for the series and from there, you can find info on your local station.