Monthly Archives: February 2011

Robert Reich was this nation's 22nd Secretary of Labor and is now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. I met him once at The Tonight Show when he was a guest and I was loitering in the halls…a very nice man. Also a very short man but that's not relevant to anything I want to write about here. I've followed his writing and generally find that he states clearly the left-of-center viewpoint…or as they call it on Fox News, Radical Socialism and America-hating.

Today, I was reading this item on his blog. I came across this sentence and I found myself staring at it for quite some time…

The truth is that while the proximate cause of America's economic plunge was Wall Street's excesses leading up to the crash of 2008, its underlying cause — and the reason the economy continues to be lousy for most Americans — is so much income and wealth have been going to the very top that the vast majority no longer has the purchasing power to lift the economy out of its doldrums.

That seems so simple and obvious that it makes me suspicious. But I also can't figure out what could possibly be wrong about it.

Not long ago, I bought a new car and traded in my old one at the dealership. A mechanic there mentioned to me that he was going to try to purchase my trade-in because even though it had a lot of things wrong with it, it was in pretty good shape. He could fix the flaws on his own time and have a pretty good vehicle. The dealership, he said, gave its employees first shot at buying trade-ins for a decent price.

I asked him if he got any sort of employee discount towards a new car and he laughed. He said, "No one who works here in the service department will ever be able to afford to buy a new car here." That surprised me. I mean, I guess it shouldn't have but it did. Didn't Henry Ford once say something about how he wanted to pay his employees well so they'd turn around and buy the Fords they were making?

I posted some charts here recently that showed the Income Inbalance in this country…how increasingly, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. One Conservative friend wrote me that there's nothing wrong with that, morally. The American Way, he says, is that people should be able to get as wealthy as they possibly can. I'm not sure that's so but even if it is, there's a separate question as to whether that's even good for the rich. The way things are going, I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Here's someone's list of the 101 best restaurants in America. I've been to three and a half of them…

• Peter Luger's Steak House in Brooklyn, which I agree was wonderful. Easily the best steak I've ever had anywhere.
• Katz's Delicatessen in Manhattan, which I agree was terrific…but frankly not all that much better than about six other delicatessens I could name.
• Arthur Bryant's Barbeque in Kansas City, which I thought was okay but I wouldn't even put it on a Ten Best list of barbecue restaurants I've been to.
• And the half is Spago in Beverly Hills. Haven't been to the current one but I went to the original Spago in Hollywood twice and boy, was I unimpressed.

The thing that strikes me as I scroll through the other 97.5 is that I'm not likely to ever eat at most of them. Many are in locations I will never visit. Others wouldn't tempt me if they were across the street. I am not adventuresome in my dining. In fact, even when I go to a restaurant I've liked in the past, I do not think, "Hey, what else is there on the menu I can try?" I think, "Hey, what did I have last time I liked so much? I'll order that again."

My Aunt Dot used to treat it as a grotesque character flaw and lecture me on the value of trying new things. It had something to do with just becoming better as a human being…and how that followed, I still don't comprehend. She'd say, "Your world can't grow if you view it like that." And I'd think, "My world's not going to grow if I have the beef instead of the lamb?"

I also wonder how many restaurants are on this or any such list for reasons other than the taste of the food. Aunt Dot used to like one fancy restaurant in Beverly Hills because, I suspect, the ambiance was lush. The place was filled with celebrities. And the staff kissed every body part you allowed them to kiss…and then some.

The food? Not so hot. But the place had such a grand rep, you felt like a commoner to suggest it wasn't The Place To Be. (It's not, by the way, on this list of 101, probably because it went out of business in 1972. Some place else had become The Place To Be so the former The Place To Be became The Place To Avoid.)

I need to find a dining guide that bridges a gap, rating places better than Arby's but not as grand as The Four Seasons. Those are the kinds of places where I eat. Once at a convention outta town, I heard a friend ask the concierge at the hotel if she could recommend a restaurant that was, "like an Outback Steak House but not a chain."

Note that the assemblers of this list of 101 avoided such eateries except for barbecue places and delicatessens. There seems to be an unwritten law that applies to BBQ joints and delis: The crummier the decor, the more likely the food is to be great. And come to think of it, maybe that truism is the only dining guide you really need.

Eight charts that explain everything that's wrong with America.

Apropos of my link to Paul Begala's article on how some states live on the tax dollars paid by other states, I received a message from "Ruben Bolling," creator of the wonderful comic strip, Tom the Dancing Bug. He links me to this page and the info thereupon that shows, among other things, how much money each state gets back from the federal government in goods and services. For instance, for every dollar New Mexico and Mississippi pays to the U.S. treasury, they get back more than two dollars…or at least they did in '05, which is what the chart on that page covers. It may not be that way today but the principle, no doubt, lives on.

You should, by the way, be following Tom the Dancing Bug whenever and wherever you can. Here's a good place.

Proving that some convention organizers never learn, I will again be a Special Guest (or maybe it's just a Guest) at this year's WonderCon in San Francisco, April 1-3. For those of you who can't wait 'til or get tickets for Comic-Con…and those who are scared at the prospect of being in a hall with that many people dressed as Princess Leia…WonderCon provides a great alternative. Operated by the same folks who bring you that rogue nation down in San Diego every year, WonderCon is large enough to have something for everyone but small enough that maybe you could see all of it in a day.

It is also not sold-out and if you need a hotel room, they're not that difficult to book. (Another plus: WonderCon is downtown at the Moscone Center and there are a lot of great restaurants and museums and fun Frisco-type things to do around.) I always have a great time at these. Click on the link in the previous paragraph to find out how you can have an equally great time.

I will be moderating six panels at this fine event, including one on Writing for Animation, one on the history of WonderCon, one on what it was like to break into comics in the seventies and one in which Sergio Aragonés and I will exchange pointless banter and vow that a new Groo mini-series will be out soon. Not only will you not want to miss any of these panels but I won't want to miss any of them.

And while I've got you here: The Monday after the convention, I will be again teaching a course in How to Do Cartoon Voices at a fine studio/school up there called Voice One. Details on how to sign up may be found here. That's April 4th and it's always a lot of fun and — dare I say? — informative.

…read "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?" by Matt Taibbi.

Two different friends in the Broadway community have told me we are about to get yet another announcement that Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has postponed its opening. This is a rumor but it sure sounds likely to me.

The old date was March 15. I have no word on what a new date might be but I'll bet it's before April 28. That's the cut-off date on eligibility for this year's Tony Awards, which are being presented June 12. If you have a new show in New York, you want to be eligible this year and not wait 'til next time when you might not be around and when it may be too late for the heat from any Tony wins to help your box office.

Does the show stand a chance of winning some Tonys? Sure. A lot of folks have praised the art direction and lighting and elements of that sort.

Okay but those kinds of wins don't generally impact the box office. The producers of Spider-Man probably figure they have a good shot at some of the major ones, especially since the new, non-revival musicals that have opened so far this season on Broadway do not present highly formidable competition. They include Elf, Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles on Broadway, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, The Scottsboro Boys, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and probably one or two others I'm forgetting. It might be quite possible to snag some nominations against that field.

However, still to open before 4/28 we have Baby It's You, The Book of Mormon, Wonderland, Sister Act, Catch Me If You Can, The People in the Picture and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert…and again, I may have missed a couple. There's gotta be a couple of serious contenders in that list. (Personally, without seeing any of these, I'm rooting for Sister Act since a couple of my friends wrote it.) My guess is that the Broadway community will rise up against Spider-Man and deny it any big trophies. They did that with Young Frankenstein, which struck many as oversold and arrogant. Surely some see the Spider-Man show as even more of that.

We shall see what we shall see. The Tony Awards this year, by the way, will be coming our way from the Beacon Theater, which is on on Broadway but way, way up at 74th Street. Radio City Music Hall is unavailable due to its being filled with a new Cirque du Soleil production for a while. There's probably something symbolic there that relates to all the comments about Spider-Man being more like a Cirque show than a Broadway one but I'm too tired tonight to try and figure that one out.

And now the Gahan Wilson book is down to $58.77. If I didn't know better, I'd say Amazon.com is haunted.