Hey, want another great weblog to visit? I mean, besides this one. My pal Bill Steinkellner is one half of the team of Bill and Cheri Steinkellner, award-winning authors of teevee shows and Broadway shows and all sorts of fun things…and Bill is also a best-selling author as well as being the best danged teacher of improv comedy I've ever encountered. He also writes cute li'l short-short stories that he posts every week on his weblog. Go read a handful of them and you'll be clicking back for more.
Monthly Archives: October 2011
Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy
Number forty-four in a series…
Recommended Reading
Fred Kaplan on Republican criticism of Obama's Iraq announcement.
When I first heard what Obama was announcing, I assumed it would be like killing Bin Laden. Republicans couldn't possibly attack what he'd done and would instead have to try and shift the credit over to Bush and others. You could actually mount a fairly credible argument that the G.W.B. administration deserved as much credit or more for ending the Iraq War. Of course, then you'd have to admit that ending it did not make up for starting it…
How To Know When Your Popularity Is Down
Just took this photo off the TV set in my office. In case you can't read the text, it says…
The Tonight Show With Jay Leno
"Amanda Seyfried; John Cho and Kal Penn" (2011) Actress Amanda Seyfried; actors John Cho and Kal Penn; President Barack Obama; Yo-Yo Ma & Friends perform. (CC, Stereo)
Well, at least he got billed before Yo-Yo Ma.
Today's Video Link
Last week, there was a concert at the Hollywood Bowl on behalf of the Clinton Global Initiative. Along with Lady Gaga and other forms of entertainment, this video was debuted. Very funny…
Recommended Reading
When Republicans complain about people who pay no Federal Income Tax and who actually may get back the money they paid into the government, they're basically complaining about the Earned Income Tax Credit. This was a plan introduced into our lives by that well-known Socialist, Gerald Ford and later expanded (and praised) by that Commie, Ronald Reagan. As this article notes though, it's misleading to suggest that those folks are getting a free ride and not paying taxes.
E.N.B. Remembered
One of the great unsung heroes of the comic book industry was a man named E. Nelson Bridwell. Nelson was an odd little fellow who walked with a cane who had all sorts of odd tics and breathing problems that caused strange noises to come inexplicably out of his body. Yet trapped within that body was a mind of amazing brilliance, a pure love of comics and a wickedly witty sense of humor. With equal ease, Nelson could quote to you the dialogue in every comic he'd ever read (and he'd read all of them) or a few paragraphs from Chaucer. He was mainly an assistant editor at DC in the sixties, seventies and eighties, and sometimes he wrote scripts or edited. He was often more qualified than those he assisted and he frequently did their jobs for them or caught their mistakes. He also created one of my favorite comics of the sixties, The Inferior Five, and several other good ones as well.
I mention all this to direct you to a fine remembrance of the man written by Mort Todd. I endorse everything he says about the guy.
Never the Twain Shall Meet
Last Sunday was the ceremony in Washington at which Will Ferrell was presented with this year's Mark Twain Prize. It airs next Sunday on PBS. This article at Salon by Mary Elizabeth Williams vigorously defends the selection…and it seems to me Ms. Williams is missing the point of those whose objections have made a defense necessary. As I read it, "they" (those whose eyebrows shot up higher than Groucho's during a particularly lascivious one-liner) aren't objecting to the choice so much as the timing. And they are perhaps uncomfy with the Kennedy Center surrendering to economic concerns, picking the guy who'll sell tickets to the award ceremony over someone who has been around long enough to see his or her work endure for a few generations.
I started to write a long piece explaining how I feel about this. Got three sentences into it when I suddenly experienced a jolt of déjà vu and said to myself, "Wait a sec, Evanier. You've written this before." So I searched this blog and found out that, sure enough, I had. Here it is. (And where was that jolt all those years when I wrote Scooby Doo? Hmm?)
Go See It!
Here's a list of good articles available online about Woody Allen. The best one is the first one they mention — the long piece by Kliph Nesteroff.
Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy
Number forty-three in a series…
Today's Political Thought
Exxon made $19 billion in profits in 2009 and paid zero federal income taxes. How come Republicans are upset about people paying no income tax but not about corporations paying none? Don't they know corporations are now people?
Groo News
The big Groo News is that there is Groo News. I promised many folks that when we had a firm release date for the Groo Vs. Conan mini-series, I would report it here. I can report here that the first issue will be out the third week of April of 2012, the second and third will follow in May and June, and then the final issue will be out the week of next year's Comic-Con International, which is in July.
The first two issues, which are by Sergio Aragonés, Tom Yeates and Yours Truly (with coloring by Tom Luth) have been completed. Sergio and I are working on #3 this week. In this deathless series, Groo the Wanderer sorta/kinda meets Conan the Barbarian and they battle to the death not one but several times. Also running around the pages are Sergio and me, and it's all a very silly story that we hope you will enjoy. End of plug for that.
Plug For Something Else: Sergio continues to produce Sergio Aragonés Funnies, a regular comic from the fine folks at Bongo. In some ways, I like this comic better than Groo the Wanderer because I get paid exactly the same (i.e., zero) but I don't have to do any work on it. Pick up a copy wherever the best comics are sold.
Today's Video Link
Someone put up a couple of treasures for those of us who love the Jerry Lewis Telethon…or at least love what it used to be, as opposed to what it became the last decade or so. Here are thirteen minutes of highlights from the 1988 show…
And here's a little over eleven minutes from 1984…
Go See 'Em!
Iraq and a Hard Place
Obviously, the most tragic cost of the Iraq War is the human cost — the lives lost or shattered.
But there is also a dollar cost and it's pretty damn high. What else could we have bought with that money?