Monthly Archives: June 2012

Jeez, this is a depressing thing to hear: Comic book and animation writer Roger Slifer is reported to be in critical condition following a hit-and-run car accident last Friday night between the hours of 11 PM and 1 AM in Santa Monica. Roger is best known to comic fans for his work as an editor at Marvel in the seventies and at DC in the eighties, and for writing The Omega Men for DC and co-creating the character, Lobo. In animation, he was a writer and producer on shows including Jem and the Holograms, Transformers, G.I. Joe Extreme and Conan the Barbarian.

He is one of those great guys without an enemy in the world and many of his friends are rallying to his aid with donations and are doing what they can to locate the driver who apparently hit him at the corner of Colorado and 5th, then fled the scene. Along with the obvious reason of justice, it might help Roger if that driver had insurance that could contribute to his care. Reports from the hospital do not sound hopeful for a good recovery. At last word, he was still in a coma. Anyone with information to contribute should contact this address.

Unless I have to come back to post an obit for someone — which happens way too often on this blog — I won't be around here much the next few days. Too much to do in too little time. I'll be even worse about responding to e-mails than usual, as well. Please forgive my putting paying work ahead of blogging. Yes, foolhardy, I know…

Just watched a little of the Daytime Emmys. Okay, I can see why no one wanted to televise this.

Greg Eckler notes…

A decade ago there were nine daytime soaps and now there are four, and at least two of those are clinging to life. I think that largely explains the lack of interest.

I think it explains a certain amount of it…but people are watching something on Daytime TV. They're not watching soaps, and game shows have also declined to almost nothing…but Ellen's show has a large viewership. So does The View. So does Dr. Phil. So do a number of syndicated shows. Those shows draw enough interest to remain on the air but not enough to telecast the awards on E!. I think fans of these programs are simply no longer as possessive about them as they once were. Folks who watch The Price is Right don't care as much if Drew Carey wins an Emmy as they once did about whether Bob Barker did. And I don't think it's the show or the host as much as it is changing times.

A flash mob in Moscow tries real, real hard to be like Gary Cooper. Take this one full screen and thank Carolyn Kelly for sending me the link…

The second of two Daytime Emmy ceremonies airs tonight on the HLN cable channel. The first, which was last Sunday evening, was not televised. That's the one where June Foray won her first Emmy at age 94. I do not know for a fact that they will show a clip of that moment (or any moments from last Sunday) on tonight's telecast but it wouldn't surprise me.

It's interesting that there's so little interest in this ceremony. The first time I was nominated, it was not televised. The event was an afternoon, non-tuxedo event at the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City and I found it pretty boring and did not go the next few times I was up for a statue. By that time, they'd begun airing it on TV…and as I recall, it aired during the daytime, preempting The Price is Right or other shows, for a few years until they tried it in prime-time for a while. It's still pretty much the same event it ever was but no one seems to want it these days. HLN was a last-minute deal because nothing more appropriate seemed possible. The E! Network didn't want it. TV Land didn't want it. And even though much of it is about their shows, CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox didn't want it.

I understand institutions like the Miss America Pageant losing a mainstream audience. Beauty contests celebrate some kind of antiseptic, phony worldview that most folks today don't relate to. But awards for soap operas, game shows and kids' programming have not gotten any less relevant or any more interesting. I don't think it's a bad thing that folks no longer care that much about such honors. It may even be a good thing. It's certainly an odd thing.

If the entire Affordable Health Care bill gets killed by Scalia and his political-action pals, a lot of people are going to be in this situation: Unable to afford life-saving medical treatment.

Today would have been the 100th birthday of Alan M. Turing. If ever the word "genius" applied to a human being, it applied to him…and I don't mean "genius" in the way Milton Berle used to use it to describe anybody who knew how to get a laugh on stage. I mean "genius" as in: The man who figured out the basic concepts of artificial intelligence on which most computer science is based. That was after he was the master cryptologist for the Allies during World War II and broke many key Nazi codes to aid our side. Either achievement is pretty impressive.

Turing was born June 23, 1912. He died June 4, 1954 — a suicide obviously caused by being persecuted for his homosexuality. This world has wasted a lot of geniuses that way.

Thanks to Ed Toomey for reminding me about a day well worth noting. Turing is also the subject of today's Google doodle which I'd try to figure out if I had a few hours…

Matt Taibbi is just about the only reporter out there covering (a) the recent criminal doings on Wall Street that will likely go unprosecuted and (b) the tactics that you'd think would be illegal — and perhaps were at one time — but aren't. I'm not sure which category is more outrageous. I think what most bothers me is this notion some people seem to have that it's wrong for the government to ever stop anyone from making vast sums of money even if the way they make them are to steal them from someone else. If you want to get mad today, read the linked article by Taibbi.

Number two hundred and sixty-four in a series…

What Jerry Sandusky did disgusts me. So does cheering for him to be raped or killed in prison. So will the lack of accountability, if that's how it all plays out, of those who knew what he was doing and did nothing to stop it and/or covered it up.

Admittedly, I have not followed every detail of this case but I've read a number of articles. I hope somewhere in it there's someone who acted honorably and with true heroism. So far, I haven't heard of any such person.

Gilbert gets more things that Gilbert gets…