Monthly Archives: July 2010

Craig "Meathead" Goldwyn tells you the proper way to grill a steak. And if you can't trust a guy named Meathead on something like this…

How much do the top U.S. corporations pay in taxes? A lot less than you'd think…and in many cases, nothing. Christopher Helman has some numbers.

Here's a report on what I did last Saturday night: I attended the premiere of a new documentary about Stan Lee and spoke on a panel that followed it. (Fair warning: I'm in the documentary…in frightening close-up.) I'm not sure where or when it'll debut but I'll keep you posted.

By the way: Not to pick on Jeremy Goldstone, who wrote this piece because it may not have been his mistake and we all make the occasional typo…but in the article, you'll notice that Paul Levitz is quoted about writing "forwards" for books. Does anyone know what a "foreword" is? A short article that comes at the beginning of a book is a foreword. I write a lot of them and often I get my copy of the printed book and discover that the publisher or editor thinks I wrote a foreward or a forward…and once, I discovered that I'd written a forewood. In case you're interested, this piece explains the difference, however subtle, between a foreword, a preface and an introduction.

I'll probably be blogging about the Comic-Con for another week or so here and as you can see, I'm not even trying to proceed in sequence. It was an extraordinary event and at the risk of annoying those who couldn't be there, I have to say that I enjoyed every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

That statement will also probably tick off the two dozen or so folks who were there and who somehow think that I am the Complaint Department for the convention and that an irate e-mail to me will deliver an immediate promise that whatever pissed them off will be remedied. That wouldn't be the case even if I agreed with their bitching, most of which comes down to the shocking discovery that it's crowded down there. I'm afraid that's what this particular convention is. There were around 125,000 people at this year's convention. There will be around 125,000 at next year's convention. If and when the con moves (which I don't think it will) or the convention center down there expands (likely), there will be more than 125,000 people there. Moaning about the crowds at Comic-Con is like going to a strip club and being outraged to find naked women named Jasmine and Bambi with fake breasts.

Many of the other complaints could be alleviated if the complainer would do a little more advance planning. Let me give you some cold, hard facts of life. Next year's Comic-Con is July 21-24. It will sell out and given the pace at which advance registrations sold at this year's con — that is, folks at this year's buying tix for next year's — 2011 will sell out even sooner than this year's did. I'm not sure how soon online registration will open — I'll try to give you some advance warning if I can — but the minute it does, order your tickets. If you're even thinking of going, order your tickets as soon as possible and don't dawdle about arranging for lodging, either. If you decide next May to go, you're going to have problems.

A brief, probably unnecessary digression. Back in '69, I paid my first — and for a long time, only visit to Disneyland. My friend Dwight was in town. He wanted to go so we went…and did darn near everything wrong, starting with getting there via a long, circuitous bus ride that left us exhausted before we'd made it halfway past Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln. We didn't plan anything, didn't research. We had no idea where to eat or which attractions we might have particularly enjoyed. We just went, had a miserable time and blamed Disneyland. For years, I didn't go back.

Now, obviously this is not a majority sentiment about the place. More than one or two people seem to love the occasional visit to the Happiest Place on Earth. It took a while (I can be slower than the line to get into the Pirates of the Caribbean) but it finally dawned on me that it was humanly possible to go there and enjoy one's self…so maybe, just maybe the problem was on my end. Upon that realization, I obtained and studied a travel guide. I drew up a little rough map and itinerary. I figured out not to go on a steaming-hot, tourist-infested day…another mistake Dwight and I had made. And the next time there, I had a pretty good time.

Moral of the story? I had to figure out how to make Disneyland work for me…and now it does. If you attend Comic-Con down in San Diego and don't have a grand experience…well, first point: Maybe you're simply attending the wrong convention. There are plenty of smaller ones and maybe one of them would be a better fit. Or perhaps you could learn to have a better time at Comic-Con…figure out an easier way to go and a more efficient way to use your time there. I can't tell you how often the following conversation occurs with just the time and event changing: Someone comes up to me and says, "Hey, my friend told me Quick Draw! was great this morning. Wish I'd known about it."

The folks who run Comic-Con do a superb job. I've been going to conventions for four decades now. I've been to some of the worst-run, unprofessional gatherings and I've also seen how much can go wrong even at the well-operated ones. I am stunned by how much goes right in San Diego, how good those folks down there are at assembling this incredible event each year. There's always room for improvement and I'm sure they'll continue to improve. They always do. But the way I see it, they offer us this wonderful, varied buffet each year and it's up to us to take from it what we want. As I've said before, the convention you want to attend is in there amidst all the convention experiences about which you couldn't care less. You just need to find yours.

Here are 19 simple tricks that might help you when you search Google.

Six things you didn't know about High-Fructose Corn Syrup.

Fred Kaplan on what's up with the intelligence community. Rough summary: You can't believe anyone about anything.

A few years ago, as detailed here here and here, I had an unpleasant encounter with a local tow-truck operator. I believe what this person did was grossly immoral and deceitful…but in my little journey to try and extract some justice, I came to the following conclusion: That skillful lobbying and legal work by the tow-truck industry had made it very difficult for the law to prosecute such actions and even more difficult for a wronged individual to fight back. An awful lot of e-mails since then — some from others in the towing business who agreed with my outrage — affirmed my conclusion for me.

My pal Dana Gabbard e-mails me this link to news that the Los Angeles Police Commission has set up a hotline to accept complaints about those who tow. If they're serious about prosecuting transgressions, good for them. The authorities with whom I spoke all kind of said, "Yeah, it sucks but we can't do much about it."

I drove back from the San Diego area Tuesday evening, stopping first at a recently-opened Five Guys on Truxtun Road in that fair city. There, I ate a "little hamburger" — or as any other burger place would call it, a hamburger. I also got through about a third of an order of fries. The Dominican Republic could live for a week on one order of Five Guys french fries.

No sooner had I settled in with my order than someone came over to say hello. It was Paul Horn, a fine cartoonist I had not encountered at the convention. He was there with his lovely wife whose name, in my not-infrequent oafishness, I neglected to memorize. (I'm thinking Darlene…) Anyway, good conversation, good burger, good fries.

Then it was back on the 5, which took me to the 73, which took me to the 405. Just south of Lawndale, I got off to stretch legs and waddled into a little mini-mart. Immediately, a guy shopping there said to me, "Hey, Quick Draw! was great this year!" Which it was but I didn't expect a review in a Lawndale convenience store. The fellow (his name was Steve) told me he's been going to the con whenever he can afford it, which in the last five years has happened three times, once for just a day.

"What was the best part of this year?" I asked him…and then I quickly added, "Besides Quick Draw!," just in case he wasn't going to say that. He answered that the best parts were (a) getting Stan Lee's autograph, (b) meeting voice actor Maurice LaMarche and (c) some lady barely dressed as Princess Leia, who I gather made more of an impression than Stan or Maurice. He showed me a microscopic cell phone photo but I'm not sure which of the three I was looking at.

Then it was back on the 5 and on to Los Angeles. I kinda like it when parts of the con follow me home.

Matt Taibbi writes about Capital Punishment and then segues to Racism. I think there are more analogies between those two topics than even he draws.

Super Retailer Joe Ferrara took the above pic of Comedy Legend Chuck McCann posing with the three cartoonists who competed in Quick Draw! at the Comic-Con on Saturday. The three fast 'n' funny sketchers were, left to right, Sergio Aragonés, William Stout and Scott Shaw, who spells his name "Scott Shaw!" with the exclamation point. Quick Draw! is always great…and I can say that because it's not great because of me. We get three speedy cartoonists and I throw challenges at them and more than 2000 people watch as they draw and howl with laughter.

Here's one thing that happened there. Our cartoonists onstage were Sergio Aragonés, William Stout and Scott Shaw. I then brought three more up: Katie Cook, Sam Viviano and Tom Richmond. The idea was that one cartoonist would draw the top half of someone — a character, a monster, an alien, an animal, whatever — and then we'd cover over that drawing. Another cartoonist, who hadn't seen what the first one drew, would then draw the bottom half of the "someone" without having any idea what the top half was. Then we'd uncover the two halves and see what resulted. Here is one of the drawings done that way. Tom Richmond, who is the star caricaturist in the new generation of MAD, drew this…

We then covered Tom's drawing — everything but the belt — and had Sergio draw the bottom half. Remember now: Sergio had no idea what Tom had drawn…

Once Sergio was done, we unveiled the joint creation…

See? That's how it's done!