Monthly Archives: March 2009

Have you been following what's happened with the National Lampoon brand? Once the title of a brilliant, best-selling humor magazine founded in 1970, it long ago morphed into a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for low-budget teen comedies…and now it's teetering on insolvency and someone may be heading for prison.

Past NatLamp contributors and fans debate just when and why its Golden Age ended but it was surely over as of 1989 when its first publisher Matty Simmons was no longer involved. That was the year of a transaction that has variously been described as an outright sale or as a hostile takeover. However one characterizes it, the business was acquired by a company fronted by actor Tim Matheson, who had appeared in the movie, National Lampoon's Animal House. A year or so later, it was sold to a firm called J2 Communications that was apparently less interested in publishing a magazine than in merchandising the name. Publication became more intermittent, diminished to annual status…and ceased altogether in 1998. You probably didn't notice. No one did.

Still, the name has continued to appear on movies, videogames and other forms of entertainment with, sometimes, great success. And other times, not. I've been a little mystified at the business model and at a general instability. One keeps hearing of plans by various entrepreneurs to acquire the right to revamp or resurrect the magazine but these never materialize. Then in 2002, a company named Four Leaf Management bought the name and formed National Lampoon, Inc., which is currently in a mess of financial/legal trouble. Last December, federal prosecutors filed charges of stock manipulation against seven people, including the outfit's former CEO. And now, National Lampoon, Inc. is scrambling to not be evicted from its West Hollywood offices for non-payment of rent.

Talk about how the mighty has fallen and it can't get up. There was a time when the good name of National Lampoon denoted a little brain trust of comedic excellence…in the magazine but also in films, radio, records and live shows. An amazing number of great humorists got their start or an important boost via that name but that was in a long ago land. At some point in the future, all the legal mishigoss will get settled and someone will wind up owning the trademark. One can only hope they'll do more with it than slap it on a product to promise it will contain tits.

I would like to humbly apologize to Rush Limbaugh for all the negative things I will be saying about him in the coming weeks and months here. In most cases, my remarks will be taken out of context and/or grossly misunderstood.

The L.A. Times has a blog that offers nuggets of Los Angeles history, usually in the form of scans of old newspaper clippings. There's lots of good stuff there including a look at how the Times comic strip page looked in January of '59 and news stories on the deaths of Raymond Chandler, Ernie Kovacs and Lou Costello. You might also like to read about how Dalton Trumbo revealed he'd written under a pen name while blacklisted and how Mary Astor admitted to her affair with playwright George S. Kaufman. Have a look around.

For those in Southern California! This is your last (maybe next-to-last) reminder that tomorrow night, you can hear a great from the Golden Age of Comics. Jerry Robinson, one of the key Batman artists from the character's earliest days, is the guest curator of "ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938-1950," an exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center. You can see it there until August 9 but if you go tomorrow evening, you can hear Jerry as he's interviewed by Yours Truly. That program commences at 8 PM and you can click here to get tickets.

And, speaking of Carol Channing, lemme tell you what I did last evening. The Magic Castle up in Hollywood, of which I am a longtime member, is launching a series of events called "Cabaret at the Castle," with musical performers appearing. The inaugural show, performed on Monday and Tuesday, featured the legendary Carol Channing. She's 88, she's just getting back to work following a hip operation…and she's still captivating.

The intimate audience was packed with stars, including Lily Tomlin, Florence Henderson and Donna Mills. Joanne Worley was there, too. Joanne Worley was Carol Channing's understudy for Hello, Dolly and the story is that when they met, Ms. Channing told Ms. Worley, "You're very lovely and you're very talented and you're never going on." (And she never did. Over the years, Carol Channing did over 5000 performances of that show and never missed a one of them.)

Last evening, a loving audience heard her sing her big songs, tell anecdotes from her life and even do some uncanny impressions. And not only did she sing to us, we sang to her. During her rendition of the title song from Hello, Dolly, Carol sang the part that Dolly sings to the waiters. Then, when she got to the part that the waiters sing to Dolly, she said, "I can't sing that because I'm Dolly…so you all sing it to me." And we did — quite well, I might add.

These two performances were a benefit. She and her husband Harry Kullijian (who joined her on stage) have a charity that's looking to promote the arts in California's school system. You can read all about it at their website which, I'll warn you, plays "Hello, Dolly" the minute you go there. I don't know where else she'll be doing her one woman show, which is entitled "The First Eighty Years are the Hardest," but if she does it near you, go. No, she doesn't sing as well as she once did but she's still wonderfully entertaining and very, very funny.

Flying back from and forth to San Francisco these last few days got me to thinking a lot about air travel. I don't understand this rule about how you can bring three ounces of liquid on a plane but not four ounces. I understand the regulation was established after authorities (in Great Britain and Pakistan) uncovered and nipped a plot to blow up planes by mixing a "…British sports drink with a gel-like substance to make a potent explosive that could be ignited with an MP3 player or cell phone." But if it's okay for me to bring on three ounces of liquid but not four…and if it's okay for you to bring on three ounces but not four…couldn't we work in tandem, each bring on three ounces and then combine them on the plane so I have six ounces? Seems to me this is just a way to force terrorists to buy more tickets on planes they want to bring down.

Has anyone ever thought to color-code seat belts? Whenever I sit down on a plane, I have to figure out if this buckle is mine or it goes with the seat belt on the seat next to me. How about putting little bands on the ends of the belts, just above the buckle part, so you'd just match yellow to yellow or red to red or whatever?

I wonder if people who fly U.S. Airways are paying special attention now to that little speech where the pilot introduces himself, just to see if they got Sullenberg. And if they're more nervous when they don't.

Years ago when you picked up your suitcase at Baggage Claim, most airports made you show someone a claim check to get out of the area with what you claimed was your luggage. Some didn't and I always wondered: Was there a reason to presume folks were more honest at some airports? Now, none of them check — at least, none of the airports I've been to in years — and I'm still wondering. Was luggage theft never much of a problem and it was a waste of time to have someone checking tags against claim checks all those years? If it was a problem, when did it cease to be? Or is it just a matter of the airlines no longer caring if someone grabs your Samsonite and flees with it?

Bottled water is a business with a tremendous mark-up and everyone knows it, so you feel like a true pigeon when you're paying $2.50+ for a bottle of Dasani once you get past Security. I'll bet some failing airline could attract an awful lot of customers if they announced that on their planes and in the waiting areas, you could get Crystal Geyser for a buck a bottle.

Lastly: I used to enjoy opening the in-flight magazine and scanning the lists of the World's Great Steakhouses. There were usually several different lists and once in a while, I'd see the name of one I'd been to…or might conceivably ever visit. But we're getting carried away with this concept. Recently, they started having ads for the roster of the World's Great Italian Restaurants and the World's Great Sushi Restaurants…and now they've gone farther and they have doctors in there: The World's Great Surgeons, The World's Great Plastic Surgeons, etc. The American Airlines mag this month has a page of The World's Great Physicians. Apparently, there are only four of them. You know, if I didn't know better, I'd suspect people were paying to be on those lists.

Actually, I felt like I was home at the WonderCon but I'm home for real now. Great time. I'm well aware that my convention reports here might as well be a macro since they're all the same. I keep going to great conventions, being treated well, seeing good friends, hosting fun panels, etc. I'm not quite to the point of hoping for a disaster of a con so I'd have something different to write here.

WonderCon was medium-crowded on Friday and Sunday, wall-to-wall on Saturday. I heard people saying that with the economy tanking, the higher-priced merchandise was going unbought but dealers were doing well with the low-end items. They certainly didn't suffer from a lack of turnout.

My favorite moments from the con? Well, I received an in-person apology from someone who's been writing me vituperative e-mails for years, telling me what a great man George W. Bush was and how it's pathological hatred to suggest otherwise. This gent is now more negative on the subject of Bush than I ever was. I also had a nice reunion with a friend of mine, Daniel Will-Harris, who I haven't seen in too many years. Everyone who knows anything about computers has a friend who knows more than they do…someone they can call in hours of dire technological emergency. I am that friend to many people and when I'm stumped, I call Daniel — and not just because he knows his way around a crashed desktop. I need to set up a little tickler program to remind me to call certain people when I don't need their help.

We had a nice panel on Sunday called The Art of the Cover, a thing we also do at San Diego. It's a real Shop Talk event where we gather together a group of artists who excel at drawing covers — in this case, Jim Lee, Aaron Lopresti and Dave Johnson — and project and critique their work. Some attendees love it because they learn a lot about composition and art materials and design; others enjoy the mutual respect and the insights they gain into how artists approach their work. I sure learned a lot by listening to Jim, Aaron and Dave.

Monday morn, I taught a four-hour class in Animation Voice Work at VoiceOne, a top school and recording studio in San Francisco. Some very promising talents there. Then Carolyn and I went to our favorite dim sum restaurant in S.F. (this one) and went and got on a plane. And I think that's all I have to report here. Yeah, I know: Nothing all that exciting. Maybe that's why I enjoy things like WonderCon. They're exciting but not in a surprising way. Or something like that.

I haven't yet watched Jimmy Fallon's first outing in the Late Night slot and may not get around to it for a few days. But I think I agree with Aaron Barnhart who thinks NBC will give the show every chance to succeed and its early ratings may not matter much.

Speaking of impersonator shows: I was surprised years ago to learn that there was a professional Paul Lynde impersonator out there, touring with a show about the man. Turns out, there are two.

Those of you who are sick of hearing me gush about Frank Ferrante, go find something else on the Internet to read. In fact, I'll make it easy for you. Here's a link to a porn site for you.

For the rest of you: Saturday evening, I took a mob to see my pal Frank turn himself into Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush right before our eyes at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. The place was full of WonderCon attendees, and not just those I brought.

The transformation is in itself amazing. Frank enters as Frank and as one member of my party commented, "He looks nothing like Groucho." And then he does a little of this and a little of that…and next to me, my friend Paul Dini gasped out loud. Suddenly, right there on stage, we had Groucho Marx. In person.

What's really stunning, and perhaps I've said this when I've raved before about Frank, is that he not only looks like Groucho — that part's not that hard — but he moves like him, he sounds like him, he dances like him, he sings like him…

And here's the amazing thing: He even thinks like him.

Much of the show is ad-lib, bantering with the audience…and even when Frank is in his script, he doesn't get very far before he's off it, making asides and then making asides about his asides in the grand tradition. The utter lack of self-importance is so comforting. Another member of my expedition, the lovely artist Wendy Pini, made this observation to me this morning. She said, "I was never a big fan of Groucho but Frank made me love him. Frank brought out the pixie in him." This is the younger Groucho that Frank is playing — from (roughly) Cocoanuts through half-past A Day at the Races, which is when Groucho was his pixiest.

Oh, and I should mention Frank's excellent pianist and straight man, Jim Furmston. Jim adds just the air of dignity that Groucho was always so good at getting rid of.

Everyone in my group had a good time, especially me. Matter of fact, I liked Frank so much I'm going to see him again, a week from tomorrow. He's doing one show, a matinee, on March 8 at the La Mirada Theatre in La Mirada, California…and Frank tells me that Miriam Marx, Groucho's daughter, will be in attendance. For details on how you can be, go visit this website. And for the whole schedule of where Frank will be and when he might be in your neck of the woods, check out this page.

Note if you will that on March 15, he'll be at the Orpheum Theatre in Galesburg, Illinois. This is where the Marx Brothers were once on the bill with a monologist named Art Fisher. Mr. Fisher had this thing for nicknames ending in "o" and during a backstage poker game, it is said, he began referring to Julius Marx as "Groucho," to Adolph Marx as "Harpo" and so on. The names somehow stuck and Show Biz History was made. Needless to say, Frank continues to do the name of Groucho proud.

[Edited to fix a questionable factual assertion I made when I wrote this, on account of I'm exhausted.]

And hello this time from San Francisco. I flew back here yesterday morning on a plane full of Korean teenagers who were loudly rehearsing scenes from High School Musical. There's gotta be an F.A.A. regulation prohibiting that kind of thing.

The con was just where I'd left it but busier than the day before. I got back in time to host three panels in a row — a one-on-one with Gary Friedrich, a three-on-three (I guess you'd call it) with Sergio Aragonés and Stan Sakai and my ever-lovin' self, and a one-on-one with Roy Thomas. At the first, Gary spoke with disarming candor about his career writing for Marvel in the late sixties and early seventies, and how it ended due largely to alcohol abuse…or as Gary put it, "My becoming an unreliable drunk." He's thirty years sober and writing again, so the whole thing has as much of a happy ending as might be possible. If I were running a publishing firm today, I think I'd hire Gary to write some stories for me…including one that was painfully autobiographical. The audience at our panel was certainly riveted by the honesty of his narrative.

The panel with Sergio and Stan was fun, as those things always are. And I could have spent several more hours quizzing Roy about his long, colorful career. Mike Friedrich, who wrote for Marvel in the days when Roy was in charge, dropped in to heckle him about not supporting Barack Obama, even though Obama was a reader of Conan back when Roy wrote the comic.

Then in the evening, I took an expedition to see Frank Ferrante do his uncanny Groucho show at a local Jewish Community Center. But I'll write about that in a separate post because it's Sunday morn and there's another day of WonderConning to be done. See you later.