Monthly Archives: July 2009

So what do you call any carbonated soft drink in your area? Soda, pop or Coke? Around my neck of the woods, it's soda. But it varies all across the nation…as you can see on this chart.

The good folks at Comic-Con International have posted the schedule for their Saturday programming. Take a look and see what you want to see.

Or better still, just consult my list of the panels and events I'm hosting (or appearing on) this year. This is where you'll find all the smart congoers…

So last night around 1 AM, I decided to bake a potato in my microwave. Fortunately, I had a pre-scrubbed, plastic-wrapped Microwave-Ready Russet Potato handy. Even though I've done this many, many times I decided to open up the little instruction pamphlet and see what it had to say.

And there I saw the problem: The label says "Oven baked taste in 7-8 minutes" but the instructions inside say to "Microwave in wrap for 10-11 minutes on HIGH." Which is it, Kroger people? And why are you teasing us with the outright lie that we can taste the oven baked taste in 7-8 minutes when it's going to take 10-11? I split the difference, left it in for nine and it came out a tiny bit overcooked but still edible. 7-8 would have been about right. If I'd left it in 10-11 like they said, I would have wound up with a softball.

Plus, my potato did not whistle. My potato never whistles. Every time I microwave one of these, no matter what the brand, the label tells me "Potato may whistle in microwave" so I eagerly listen, hoping to hear a happy tune. I hear nothing. It doesn't even hum a little. It just bakes. I trust there are potatoes that whistle. Why do I keep getting the non-musical ones?

Many things in this world that lie to you and disappoint you. You'd think you could at least trust a Microwave-Ready Russet Potato…but no.

For those of you in Southern California: July 29, the Aero Theater in Santa Monica will host a screening of a new documentary, The Legends Behind the Comic Books, directed by Chip Cronkite. As the press release states, "This documentary film captures for posterity the living artists and writers from The Golden Age of Comic Books (1938-1951) and The Silver Age of Comic Books (1956-1973). Insightful comments are provided by the creative geniuses who were there at the beginning, including Stan Lee (Spider-Man, The Hulk, The X-Men, The Silver Surfer, Daredevil and The Fantastic Four), Jerry Robinson (The Joker and Robin the Boy Wonder), Joe Simon (Captain America, Sandman, Manhunter) Joe Kubert (Hawkman, Sgt. Rock, Tarzan), Murphy Anderson (Buck Rogers, The Spectre, Dr. Fate, Hourman, Starman and Black Canary) and many more."

After it, they'll be screening the animated feature, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm but in-between, there'll be a panel discussion on stage at the Aero with producer Michael Uslan and novelist-historian Michael Mallory, the author of Marvel: The Expanding Universe Wall Chart and X-Men: The Characters and Their Universe. Oh, yeah…and me. I'll be up there talking about whatever we'll be talking about. I may start by arguing the above dates for the Golden and Silver Ages.

The documentary screens at 7:30. Before that, commencing at 6 PM, the panelists (plus artist Glen Orbik) will be across the street, signing books at Every Picture Tells a Story, a lovely bookstore/gallery that is well worth your patronage.

The Aero Theater is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. Tickets for the screening and panel discussion can be purchased at this link. Hope to see you there.

Ye Olde Comic-Con International has posted their programming schedule for Friday. Again, you might want to take a look and see what events you'll attend when you're not at one of my panels. My whole list should be up over the weekend.

Still working way too late…

The Comic-Con International programming schedule for Thursday has been posted. I'll have the list of the events I'm hosting (i.e., the ones you really want to attend) in a few days here.

I haven't written much here about the budget mess in my state, mainly because there's not much more to say than that it's a mess. Not that long ago, we ousted a governor named Gray Davis and replaced him with one named Schwarzenegger because, among other reasons, we were afraid that if we didn't, this kind of thing would happen. Well, guess what.

I concur with my pal Robert Elisberg about the root of the problem. The root is that we have this daffy system here of grass roots propositions. It sounds oh so democratic in theory but in practice, it ain't working so well. Everyone wants the roads paved, the schools improved, the infrastructure upgraded…but nobody wants their taxes to go up to pay for any of that. The system makes it easy to vote to spend without any connection with how to pay for those expenditures.

Bob correctly fingers one of the architects of my state's current woes — the late Howard Jarvis, who in '78 spearheaded Proposition 13, the aptly-numbered initiative that froze property taxes and other fees. I thought Mr. Jarvis was a horrible man even before that. He spent a lot of time 'n' money trying to ram through bills that said, in essence, that if I'm your landlord, I can do any damn thing I want to you, including tearing up contracts and raising your rent or evicting you whenever I feel like it. He never achieved most of the items on his wishlist but just Prop 13 has been pretty devastating. It basically turned into an invite for the state to spend money it didn't have and couldn't get.

So now the whole of California is one big Ponzi scheme and it's living off credit cards. I seem to remember that in 1978, there was a ballot initiative that was offered as an alternative to 13 by our then-governor, Jerry Brown. There was this sentiment up and down the state that property taxes were too high and were being raised too capriciously. In the hope of heading off 13 and the disasters it could bring, Brown and some others offered a bill that would have limited property taxes but allowed for them to be raised under certain circumstances, mainly if the public thought a given expenditure was worth it.

Jarvis and his group steamrollered over that proposition…which was a shame. I suspect it would have given them most of what they wanted but in a way that would have prevented what we're now facing. It's interesting that Jerry Brown intends to run again for the governorship in 2010. Yeah, I know he acts a little weird and he seems to have the sense of humor of a dead marmoset. But California never had better financial discipline than during his terms of office and that's what we need now.

He's not as well-known as a lot of folks who've left us recently — and at age 96, his death does not come as a shock — but we have to note the passing of Bob Mitchell last Saturday.

In the above photo, Bob is seated at an organ. It seemed like Bob was always seated at an organ. He played one for the L.A. Dodgers between innings. He played in a wide array of venues to accompany silent movies. He was especially good at punctuating the moments and beats in a film, improvising with a perfect sense of scale — never too grand, never too subtle. He made a lot of great movies even better for a lot of us.

Bob did other things as well, mostly in the area of choir music. This obit will tell you about some of them. I just wanted to tell you how good he was at what he did.

This will only be of interest to those attending the Comic-Con International in San Diego…

Up until a few years ago, a favored place for lunch or dinner was the Old Spaghetti Factory, located at 5th and K Streets, an easy walk from the convention center. The wait for a table was sometimes long but if and when you could get in, you could get a pretty decent plate o' pasta for not much money. It was one of the easiest, cheapest places to grab a meal, especially if you had kids with you.

So many were heartbroken when the place tuned into Dussini's Mediterranean Bistro, serving a more upscale, expensive Italian menu in fancier surroundings. Everyone I know who went there felt it wasn't as good and it certainly wasn't as easy on the wallet. Ergo, they should be happy to see on this website that the proprietors have kept the Dussini bar area but turned the rest of the building back into an Old Spaghetti Factory. And like the Comic-Con, the Old Spaghetti Factory is celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year.

In other San Diego Restaurant News: A lot of us were saddened when before last year's con, the down 'n' funky Kansas City Barbecue Company was closed by a fire. Well, it's back, too. They reopened for business last November. Assuming they haven't ruined it in reconstruction, it serves pretty good 'Q, especially the chicken sandwich. And if I had any brains, I wouldn't be posting this because now you'll all be there ahead of me, waiting for a table.