Number fifteen in a series…
Monthly Archives: September 2011
Wrong Number
There's an art gallery in L.A. that has a phone number that's one digit different from mine. I just got a call from someone looking for them who'd misdialed.
I get one of those every year or so and it's no big deal. But some time ago, shortly after I moved into this house and got this number, I was getting a lot of them — one day, more than twenty. Several of the callers insisted they had the right number and I was wrong. They had an ad that they'd received and they read the phone number (mine) right off it.
I called the manager of the gallery and informed him. He checked a copy of the ad and said, "Oh…so that's why it hasn't increased our business any." He was most apologetic and then he added, "I'm afraid it's going to get worse for you. The ad runs this Saturday in the L.A. Times and it's the same ad with the same typo in the phone number."
I asked, "Is there any way you can stop it?"
He said, "I'll check and call you back. Let me have your number."
I said, "You have my number. And all your customers have my number, too."
"Oh, that's right," the man said. "I'll call the Times and see if there's any way to pull or change that ad."
A few minutes later, he called back and said, "They said they'd rerun it next week with the corrected phone number for a reduced rate. They're very nice about this kind of thing."
I asked, "Does that mean it will run this weekend with my phone number?"
He said, "Well, they said that to get it pulled out now, we'd have to pay a large fee."
I said, "I think you should pay that fee."
He said, "Look, I'd really rather not. Do you think you could put up with these calls a little longer? I could maybe pay you a little something to make it up to you. You could tell callers the right number…"
I said, "I think you should pay the fee to get the ad pulled from this Saturday's edition. It's really to your advantage."
He said, "Well, I know we'll lose out on the business but if you could just give them the correct number…"
I said, "No, I mean it's to your advantage to get the ad pulled because from now on, every time someone calls me looking for your art gallery, I'm going to tell them to come in and see our current exhibition of pro-Nazi lithographs."
He said, "You wouldn't."
I said, "Yep. I'm going to tell each caller, 'We've selected the finest works from around the world emphasizing why we must exterminate the inferior races and pledge our souls to the memory of Der Fuhrer. Oh, but you'd better hurry. The exhibit is only up for two weeks and then we have our annual showing of Child Porn.'"
He said, "Look, we can work something out…"
Just then, I got a Call Waiting beep and I said, "Excuse me a second. I have another call" and I put him on hold. When I came back, I told him, "That was someone who wants to attend your exhibit. I informed him the gallery had just been shut down by the police for trafficking in heroin and selling fake Picassos."
He said, "Okay, you win. I'll pay the large fee on one condition. You're still going to get some calls for us for a while. Would you please not tell them that kind of thing? Would you please just give them the right number?"
I said, "You have a deal."
Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang again with someone looking for that gallery. I could tell by the caller's badly-disguised voice (and the Caller ID) that it was the gent from the gallery calling to see what I was telling people who thought they'd reached his place of business. I politely told him the correct number and then just before I hung up, I told him that if my number was in the L.A. Times this weekend, I was going to tell people that they'd reached his gallery and that we had a sale going: With every purchase, a free kick in the groin and a mandatory enema.
The ad was changed. Sometimes, wrong numbers can be such fun.
Recommended Reading
Leonard Pitts on Michele Bachmann and that vaccination stuff. I'm starting to think that Congresswoman Bachmann may do something good for our public discourse. She may prove that it is possible — unlikely but possible — to lose an election by saying things that are not true. I'm not saying everyone who wins an election is stupid or lying but there doesn't seem to be much penalty these days in the political marketplace for saying things that just plain don't check out.
Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy
Number fourteen in a series…
Tuesday Afternoon
I am going to get this blog off the subject of death a.s.a.p. but I have some announcements first…
Yesterday, animation expert Jerry Beck and I guested via our respective phones on Stu's Show. We spoke with host Stu Shostak for about a half-hour about our mutual friend Earl Kress, then Stu replayed (without commercial interruption) a Stu's Show from 2007 on which Earl and I guested and Earl spoke extensively of his background. You can listen to the whole program as a free download for the next few days. Go to the website for Stu's Show and scroll down until you see the picture of Earl with Kermit the Frog.
I should also mention that you'll want to go to that page tomorrow and hear the regular Wednesday broadcast of Stu's Show, now coming to you from a new spot on the Internet. Tomorrow, Stu will welcome three members of the cast of the sixties' sitcom, Dennis the Menace. He'll have Dennis himself (Jay North), Gloria Henry (Dennis's Mom) and Jeannie Russell (Dennis's friend Margaret) and this booking is quite a coup as Jay hasn't done this kind of thing before. I'll post a reminder tomorrow morning but you might want to make a note. You can listen live tomorrow for free at 4 PM Pacific, 7 PM Eastern. Or after that broadcast, you'll be able to download the show and hear it for a measly 99 cents.
Getting back to Earl: There will be a funeral and memorial service this coming Friday, September 23 commencing at Noon at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills. It's at The Old North Church, a location that is sadly familiar to folks in the animation community. Earl and I said goodbye there to lots of cartoon folks who were loved and admired. If you knew Earl, come and say goodbye to another.
And now I'm going to post another photo of Laurel and Hardy, two men Earl loved dearly.
Jack Adler, R.I.P.
Radio's Howard Stern reported on yesterday's show that his cousin Jack Adler had passed away over the weekend at the age of 93. Jack Adler was a staffer at DC Comics from 1946 to 1981, working in the production department and eventually becoming vice-president in charge of production. What that means: The folks in the production department are the ones who prep a comic book to go to press, taking care of the technical specifications and doing art corrections and mechanical tasks. Adler did all that. And at DC, it meant supervising and often doing the coloring.
It would not be exaggerating to say that Jack Adler was the guy in charge of color in DC Comics for 35 years. It would actually be understating his contribution because Jack invented many of the procedures and techniques used to print comic books, especially their covers. During that period, he colored most of DC's covers and even did the color separations by hand on them for many years. He also designed the color schemes of most of their characters.
Adler's involvement in DC Comics supposedly dates back to the beginning. It is said (some dispute this) that he did some of the color separations for Action Comics #1 which in 1938 featured the debut of Superman. That was done for one of several outside art services that Adler worked for before joining DC in '46. The photo above shows him working for one of those firms, doing by hand the color separations for a Prince Valiant Sunday newspaper page. The one below is him in the DC offices in 1974…
He was brought in by his friend and former classmate Sol Harrison, who had been hired to run DC's production department. Adler and Harrison had a long but sometimes contentious relationship. In 2004, Jack was a Guest of Honor at the Comic-Con International in San Diego and I had the pleasure of interviewing him on several panels and speaking with him in private. He made it clear in both venues (more forcefully in private) that he felt he'd received insufficient recognition for his many technical breakthroughs and inventions; that too often, credit had gone to Sol and the entire department. Many who worked there supported his view. DC Editor Julius Schwartz called Adler, "The guy who knew more about how to color and print a comic book than any man alive."
Others called him that, as well. The company put out a good-looking product for decades and a lot of that was due to Jack Adler.
His Name Was Earl
Stu Shostak will host a special episode of Stu's Show this afternoon. It'll be me and other folks talking about Earl Kress for a while followed by a commercial-free replay of one of Earl's many appearances on Stu's program. To hear it, go to stusshow.com at the appropriate time, which is 4 PM Pacific and 7 PM Eastern…and if you live anywhere else, you can probably figure out the time where you are.
Earl Kress, R.I.P.
And boy, was that subject line hard to type. We've known it was coming for weeks now but it was still hard to type. Just as it's hard to tell you that a really great fellow named Earl Kress died about thirty minutes ago from the cancer he'd been fighting since earlier this year. He turned sixty last month.
Earl was a writer, an actor, a producer, a puppeteer, a voice artist, an animation historian…and he was very good at all of those endeavors. He hailed from Philadelphia and worked in broadcasting there before relocating to Los Angeles in the mid-seventies to broaden his avenues. Most of his efforts were in animation and he toiled for a time for Disney mostly on story (on The Fox and the Hound, mainly) but occasionally doing voice acting jobs, such as on The Rescuers Down Under. For TV, he wrote for dozens of shows including The Oddball Couple, The Transformers, Taz-Mania, Pound Puppies, Yogi's Treasure Hunt, The Addams Family, Road Rovers and Baby Looney Tunes. He won two Emmy awards for writing on Pinky and the Brain and several nominations for that show and Animaniacs as well as a Prism Award and an Annie Award, plus he wrote the last Road Runner theatrical short, Little Go Beep. His most recent animation project to be released was the Direct-to-DVD movie, Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes. It's real good and like everything Earl ever wrote involving classic characters, utterly faithful to its source material.
Other credits? He did scripts for comic books including The Simpsons and DC's Looney Tunes. He collaborated with me on June Foray's autobiography and ghosted a book for Yogi Bear, Life is a Pic-a-Nic that was released to tie-in with the recent movie. He produced CDs of vintage Hanna-Barbera music and contributed to the special features of many recent DVD animation releases, especially Top Cat where you can see him interviewing most of the surviving cast members. He did voiceovers for comedy bits on Jay Leno's Tonight Show. He served as an officer in Local 839, the Animation Guild, and was a forceful voice during contract negotiations, particularly about improving the lot of writers. The last few years (excepting this year for obvious reasons), he co-hosted the Cartoon Voice Panels with me at the Comic-Con International.
He handled puppets. In the finale of The Muppet Movie, there's a shot of darn near every Muppet singing the final lines of the closing song. Next time you see it, see if you can spot Ernie from Sesame Street. The person operating him in that shot is Earl Kress.
As a voice actor, Earl studied with a man he loved dearly, the late/loved Daws Butler. One day, Daws said to him, "There's a writer I know…I think the two of you would get along." Daws said much the same thing to me about Earl and he was, of course, right. Daws was always right. Earl and I became fast friends and logged hundreds of hours talking about animation and cartoon history and show business and other shared interests like Soupy Sales, Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, The Muppets and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Everything I liked, he liked…and I also liked Earl.
He had many health problems in the time I knew him and at age 38, he underwent a heart transplant. Surgeons installed one that had formerly belonged to a teenage girl and after a rough period, he made a good, solid recovery…though I did try to convince him that any day now, he would begin menstruating. He never believed it, though one time when he came over, he asked if I had any tampons around. Just in case.
It turned out the transplant had a much more serious potential side effect. The doctors warned him before the surgery that a certain medication he had to take to get through the transplant could make him more prone to cancer. As I understand it, this drug is no longer in use but at the time, they had no option but to administer it and Earl understood the risk.
A few months ago, he was complaining of aches in one hip and elsewhere, and tests revealed that he had indeed gotten cancer and that it was spreading fast. At the end of March, one of his kidneys was removed and this was followed by other hospitalizations and treatments. His doctors kept thinking they'd arrested the problem but every few weeks, they'd find it in a new place. In early June, his wonderful wife Denise called and said that a test showed it had reached his brain. Later, it was in his liver and other Earl parts. I wouldn't wish what that man went through on my worst enemy…and Earl was about as far from my worst enemy as any person could be.
He wasn't anyone's enemy. In an industry where jealousy and resentment sometimes seem as prevalent as nitrogen, Earl was utterly undespised. I don't know anyone who didn't like the guy. He was smart. He was funny. He had good, honorable motives for every single thing he did.
I try not to make these too personal but with this one, it's impossible. I have lost enough folks who were close to me that I no longer waste energy wondering why a loved one had to die. They never "have to." They just do and often you want to treat the cause of death like it's Gilbert Gottfried after some tragedy and yell "Too Soon" at it. But of course with some individuals, any time is "Too Soon." If Earl lived to be 105, it would still be "Too Soon" for someone like that to go away.
A memorial service will, I expect, be announced shortly. If there is one and you attend, you might be amazed how many pals Earl had and how every one of them really loved him. I am one of those people and right now, I feel like I lost my best friend.
Maybe This Time
For those of you who live in or around Los Angeles, here's one more nudge to go see the Reprise production of Cabaret. It's up at the Freud Playhouse through the 25th and then it will go away forever. By the way, Freud in this case is pronounced to rhyme with "nude" or "crude." It's not Sigmund. It's Ralph Freud, who was largely responsible for founding the theater arts department at U.C.L.A.
Here is the review by Charles McNulty in the L.A. Times. I rarely agree with Mr. McNulty and have considered avoiding any play he gives a rave and attending those he pans. That would have been foolish in this case because he happens to be right. This time. Click here to get tickets.
Happy June Foray Day!
The woman on the right is the great character actress Jane Withers. The woman on the left is the First Lady of Cartoon Voices, the wonderful June Foray. This picture was taken Thursday evening at a party to celebrate June's birthday, which is today.
It's rude to tell a lady's age but (a) you can find it out with one click on the Internet and (b) at some point, it becomes a point of pride to tell how long a person has endured. So I'll bet June won't mind when I reveal here that she's 94 years of age. I have to divulge that in order to make you fully appreciate the following fact: She is still doing what she does best. She is still doing voices for cartoons.
Last Monday, I directed her (and some guy named Stan Freberg) in a voice session for The Garfield Show. June played a witch. You know how long she's been playing witches in cartoons? She voiced the witch in a Donald Duck cartoon called Trick or Treat that was released in 1952, the year I was born. How many other actors can you name who've been able to play pretty much the same role for that long? And what's more, she's still "got it." She still sounds like June Foray.
Of course, June has done a lot more than just play witches in her amazing career. She's done a lot more than voice Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale and other superstars of animation. She's done commercials and narration and looping other actors and appearing on funny records (like Mr. Freberg's) and radio plays. She's also still playing Granny, owner of Tweety, for The Looney Tunes Show, which I'm hearing has just been picked up for another year.
It was a great party, filled with other voice actors (like Bob Bergen and Joe Alaskey), veterans of animation (Bob Kurtz, Willie Ito, Jerry Eisenberg, Tony Benedict, Don Jurwich), friends and family…I'm leaving out an awful lot of names. We all convened to wish June a happy birthday today and many more. The way she's going, there will probably be many more…and June will still be doing voices for cartoons. Makes you think she might actually be a witch, doesn't it?
Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy
Number thirteen in a series…
Today's Political Comment
I won't be buying The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, the new book by Joe McGinniss about you-know-who and what a dreadful person she supposedly is. I have no idea how much of it is true and insofar as my purchasing goes, it wouldn't matter either way. No interest in it if it's accurate. No interest in it if it isn't.
The portrait of Palin as hypocrite, phony and shallow opportunist is not inconsistent with what I see when I look at and listen to the actual person…but that, of course, doesn't mean any given anecdote in the book that reflects that image is true. At best, it may mean that someone who's had contact with Palin claimed to McGinniss that it was true. I read a lot of things about myself that aren't true and there's a lot less money to be made or political yardage to be scored by lying about me than there is from lying about her.
Palin, I suspect, will exploit this book for all its worth, playing the victim card as she always does with her supporters. She's really good at extracting moral and financial support from a small group of loyalists by doing that. She's even convinced a lot of them that anytime she says something stupid or inaccurate, it's not her. It's those mean ol' biased reporters who tricked her into saying that.
Her popularity is plunging. I saw a figure the other day that something like 74% of voters don't want her to enter the presidential race and I thought, "Jeez, that's a campaign killer. I wonder what the percentage is like just among Republicans." Then I looked again and saw that was the number among Republicans. So my next thought was, "Well, that's probably one of those polls the Fox News crowd will claim is biased and rigged." Then I looked again and saw it was the Fox News Poll. You know: Fox News, the company that employs Sarah Palin.
I can't wait to see how she explains that one as Liberal Treachery. She'll probably wait a few months until the timeline has blurred in folks' minds and then claim her popularity took a hit because of the lies in that Joe McGinniss book.
Anyway, my sense of fairness tells me not to believe anything's so just because it's in this book…but I have to tell you something else about my sense of fairness. It sometimes feels like a chump these days because so many politicians and political operatives either don't have a sense of fairness or don't let one stop them from repeating any story, true or not, that can be of use to them. If it harms your enemies these days, it's true enough to use. Sarah Palin, her supporters and most of the folks at Fox News wouldn't hesitate to endorse every word of a nasty, inaccurate book trashing Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. I was pleased to see Keith Olbermann saying he doesn't believe a lot of the McGinniss book about Sarah Palin. That kind of unwillingness to use every available bludgeon against your opponents is rare in the political marketplace these days. Too rare.
Today's Video Link
We all know about Product Placement; how a fee is paid and suddenly, a product is featured in a scene in a new movie or TV show that's currently in production. Well, it might interest you to know what it's being done in old movies and TV shows, too. Current products are being digitally inserted…
Recommended Reading
Dahlia Lithwick discusses the death penalty, especially in Texas. I'm linking to this partly because I think this is a good piece on a serious subject and partly because I want to quote this line from it…
Republicans like Rick Perry are skeptical of everything the government does — except when it executes people.
Yeah, and we're also apparently infallible when it comes to bombing villages overseas.
My Latest Tweet
The Sarah Palin book seems to have a lot of assertions of "fact" that are not true. Then again, so does the Sarah Palin person. — [Follow me on TWITTER]