Monthly Archives: June 2015

This, dear friends, is a photo of Lydia — one of the two stray cats I feed in my backyard. I took this picture just a few days ago and last fed her just a few minutes ago.

I've been feeding Lydia for more than ten years now. This may seem long for a feral feline but apparently, there's no such thing as an "average" lifespan for a stray because their living conditions vary so widely, depending on how many other animals (including other cats) are in their vicinity and whether they find steady food supplies and places of shelter in bad weather. Lydia seems to be doing well.

Back in 2008 as some of you may remember, Lydia went and got herself pregnant. As advised by experts on this kind of thing, I trapped her and took her in for a kitty abortion and the surgery that would ensure she never got that way again. That was an adventure which took several days and I posted the whole thing as a running diary on this site. I've had a number of requests to isolate those posts and to format them for easy reading. So on this page, you can read the whole story. You'll also hear how she got her name and how I felt an odd kinship with Steve McGarrett on Hawaii Five-O.

I woke up this morning, noticed it was 8:15 and found myself wondering if the Supreme Court had just announced one of its looming important decisions…say, the one on Same-Sex Marriage or the one on Obamacare. I put on CNN and they were talking about the Confederate Flag so I thought, "I guess not." But they're coming…

I think Obamacare has done an awful lot of good — certainly more than doing nothing or any alternative that's been discussed in vague terms — and I expect it can be made even better once the resistance and the sabotage die down. So I'd like to see them rule that one little bit of clumsy wording is no reason to muck with it. One Obamacare-favoring friend of mine is praying for it to be damaged because, he says, that will rebound in the worst way against Republicans…and a number of Republican officials are acting all scared of that, too. Yeah, but if the Supremes rule agin' it, a lot of people will suffer so right there's a good reason to hope the Justices let it continue as is.

You probably know how I stand on the Same-Sex Wedlock issue. If the decision legalizes Gay Marriage across the land, I hope the outraged would pause and take a look at the cases that have actually been presented to try and block it. I've read a bunch of them and they're pretty lame. As Nathaniel Frank notes, the argument against Same-Sex Marriages that was presented to the Supreme Court was pretty feeble. In all of these, the person arguing against letting members of the same sex wed has trouble explaining how allowing that would in any way harm the institution of straight marriage…and without that, they don't have much of a case.

Unlike Mr. Frank, I am not confident as to how the Supreme Court will rule. The argument to stop the vote count and declare George W. Bush president in 2000 was pretty feeble but look how that turned out…and even the feeblest arguments usually persuade at least a few Justices. But any morning now, we'll know. The Supreme Court has a lot of decisions to release and they're adding dates to the calendar when they might do this. I'll probably wake up at 8:15 on every one of them.

There is no form of music — no style, no instrument — which has not been or will not be used to perform "Bohemian Rhapsody." Here it is on a fairground "player" organ that is more than 100 years old — or about the same age as the guys in Queen…

Floyd Norman began his cartooning career assisting Bill Woggon, artist of the Katy Keene comic books. In 1956, he got a job as an in-betweener (an assistant animator) at the Walt Disney Studio where he started by working on Sleeping Beauty. He was the first black artist to work there and he subsequently applied his talents to other Disney films, including One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book, moving from animation to the story department in the process.

He has not spent his career exclusively at Disney — though he worked there enough to be named a Disney Legend in 2007. He popped up at almost every animation studio in town — I met him at Hanna-Barbera — and even co-ran a studio for a time. (It was Vignette Films, which among its other projects did a lot of the early animation for Sesame Street and produced the first Fat Albert cartoon for Bill Cosby.) He's one of those guys who's done just about everything in animation. He's also an incredibly nice, clever guy.

And he not only draws well, he draws fast…as you'll be able to see if you attend the Quick Draw! panel on Saturday at this year's Comic-Con International. Floyd has done it before and we're having him back to be one of the rapid-sketching combatants in our little game.

Floyd is 80 years old today, a fact that his friends are having a hard time believing, considering how young and energetic he is. I am pleased to be one of those friends and to wish him the happiest of b'days. If he had some obvious flaws, I could close this with a snide insult but he doesn't so I can't. It's the one thing I don't like about the guy.

Fred Kaplan says there's lots of terrorism around the world but very little of it ever kills Americans. Interesting to note.

Preview Night for Comic-Con International is a mere seventeen days away. If you haven't arranged for a badge, you probably ain't going. If you have one, here are some things someone oughta say to you…

• You can have a great time there if you plan a little. The convention website is full of useful information and it will get fuller as we near the dates. For instance, in a few days, they'll begin posting the Programming Schedule. Take the time before you go to review it and make some notes. Jot down the events you'd like to see. Some of them require long waits in line and taking the chance that you won't get in. Others are wide open and relatively simple. It wouldn't hurt to go there with a list of first choices, second choices, third choices, etc.
• It can also help to study the map of the main hall. Get a sense of where the exhibitors you want to see are located. If you have zero interest in videogames, it's a good idea to know where those exhibitors are so you can avoid that area, which can be very noisy and very hard to get through.
• Wear the most comfortable shoes you own. Consider packing a lunch. Bring as much money as you're willing to spend and hang onto enough to get home without running on empty.
• The building will be packed with people you've always wanted to meet. Don't be afraid to approach them. Just understand that some of them may be swamped or busy, and that you need to be polite about it all.
• There's a colorful, noisy street fair outside the convention center and I always enjoy taking at least one stroll through it. It's big and fun enough that some people don't bother with getting tickets to actually attend the con. They go and enjoy what's going on all around. Check it out.
• If you're attending in costume or eager to take photos of those who do, please remember that aisles are meant for others to walk through. I love cosplayers but dressing up as some fantasy character seems to cause some people to think they have a right to pose wherever they are, no matter who they inconvenience. I have also seen near-accidents from the foot-traffic jams and the swinging of fake weaponry. Last year at Phoenix Con, I had to say to one cosplayer, "You have a lovely costume but the spot where you've chosen to pose is preventing people in wheelchairs from getting where they need to go." She looked at me like I had odd priorities.
• Still need a hotel? Believe it or not, there are still hotel rooms available through the convention. They're five or so miles away but they're on the shuttle route. (And just because they're on the shuttle route doesn't mean you have to use the shuttle buses. I have friends who last year were happier using cabs or Uber to get them close to the Convention Center and then they'd walk the rest of the way.)
• I have no advice about parking except don't drive down there unless you have a pretty good idea where you're going to leave your car.
• I have no other advice about driving except that you need to remember that Comic-Con International is not responsible for how bad the traffic may be at times. If you're coming in on the 5, you have one bonus this year because the convention is earlier in the month than it usually is. You usually have to deal with a huge snarl of autos because Del Mar Race Track is running. But Del Mar doesn't open this year until July 16 and the convention this time is July 9-12. In case you're interested, the San Diego Padres will be away for the entire duration of Comic-Con.
• Those of you who want to take the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner down to San Diego should remember that trains sell out and that some of them already have.

And I close with what may be the most important thing: Pace yourself. Accept the fact that you won't get to see everything you'd like to see and won't get into every event you'd like to attend. Every Disneyland travel guide says it's important to understand that going-in and it's no different with Comic-Con. You can have the greatest time of your life if you do a little planning and don't go in wanting the impossible to happen. Very little in the hall is realistic but your expectations ought to be.

One evening when I was around sixteen, give or take a year, I was reading or watching something in my bedroom while my parents were out in the living room. Suddenly, we all heard a loud crash — clearly the sound of one automobile colliding with another. I leaped up and sprinted outside — at that age, I could still sprint — to see that one of the two cars was my father's Buick, which was parked in front of our house. The other was a later-model Cadillac. Its right front headlight had smashed into the left rear taillight of the Buick and more than just the lights had been destroyed. It was pretty much the left rear of the Buick and the right front of the Cadillac.

Running about, shrieking like panicked villagers in a doomsday movie, were three young girls aged 13-14. One of them was over on a neighbor's front lawn near some bushes. The other two were crying and pretty much running in crazed circles.

My father and mother followed me out, instantly concerned that someone had been injured. No one was. The squealing was all about how much trouble they were in.

My father gathered the three girls together and quizzed them as to what had happened. They all began talking at once, telling wildly-different tales that were obviously being invented on the spot. I yelled out, "Let's call the police!" and at the mention of the "P" word, their hysteria increased. "Please, please, please," one of them said. "Don't call the police!" The other two joined in, pleading.

We got them calmed down enough to tell us what seemed to be the truth. I do not recall the girls' names so we'll call them April, May and June.

The car belong to June's mother who was not at home. The three of them (friends unrelated to one another) had been at June's house and had decided to take Mom's car out and go for a drive. The destination was a party at the home of a boy they knew from school. All three were in the front seat. None of them, of course, had licenses.

June was driving — or trying to, at least. An older brother had once given her a few lessons, mostly for fun, and let her drive his car around a deserted parking lot. Somehow, that had wrongly convinced her she could take to the streets…and her lack of expertise had brought together Mom's Cadillac and my father's Buick.

All three girls begged my father not to call the police, not to call June's mother, not to do anything. "We'll pay you back, I swear to God," June said about thirty times.

My father was rather angry. "How?" he asked. "Out of your allowance? What do you get? Two dollars a week?" The Buick looked like it needed several hundred dollars worth of work. So did the Cadillac. He pointed at it and asked, "And how are you going to explain to your mother about that?"

April, May and June began concocting fibs on the spot. Someone stole the Cadillac. No, better still, it was just parked in the driveway and someone came by with a hammer and smashed in the right front section. No, we just say we don't know what happened. No…

My father said, "There will be no lying. Now, your mother's insurance may cover this, I don't know. I'll do you this favor, young ladies. I won't call the police…now. Give me your mother's number and I'll try to work something out with her so getting the car fixed doesn't cost me anything. She can decide what other punishment is in order."

"She'll kill us," June shrieked. May and April cried, "And tell our parents!"

I was still playing Bad Cop. I started heading for the house saying, "I'm going to call the police!"

"No," the three girls screamed. June, sobbing, pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. It was the phone number of where her mother was — a number and a room number. My father went in and dialed. The number turned out to be that of a hospital and the room number was the room in which June's mother was recovering from surgery. That was why the girls were alone. June's parents were divorced and her father was in another state, no longer involved in her life.

My father felt terrible about bothering a woman in a hospital bed but there didn't seem to be an alternative. He told her what had happened and it was, he later told me, the worst part of the whole thing: "She started crying when I told her what had happened. I made it clear when I told her that no one had been injured but she still started crying. There she was in that hospital bed, unable to do anything. She told me the operation had cleaned out her savings but she'd find some way to pay me back. She didn't want to put it through her insurance because she was sure they wouldn't cover it and it would maybe get her daughter in trouble with the law or something."

While he was making that call, I was outside with the girls. They were all pretty upset and they kept asking me if I could help them, even though they had no idea what it was they wanted me to do. "Didn't you ever get into trouble?" one of them asked me. I said no and they looked at me like I was not of this planet.

Finally, June's mother phoned a friend who came over with her husband. They gave my father all the necessary contact info and assured him that the mother, though nearly penniless from her medical bills, was good for the damages. They thanked him over and over for not calling the police and then the wife drove off with April, May and June while her husband drove the wounded Cadillac off to wherever.

I went back to my room to work and then I had a sudden thought. I remembered how when I first ran outside, one of the girls was up on a neighbor's lawn near some bushes. I got a flashlight, went out to check those bushes and in them I found a little baggie of marijuana. At least, I assume it was marijuana. Whatever it was, I took it inside and flushed it down the toilet.

We had the fairest, nicest auto mechanic in the world. He charged my father $350 to fix the car, which means another mechanic would have charged around $700. Still, $350 was a lot of money for my father and I assumed he was going to stay on the case and threaten legal action if necessary to get reimbursed.

A few months later, it occurred to me I'd never heard any resolution to the matter. I went to him and asked if he'd ever been repaid. He said, "No, I sent that woman a copy of the bill and spoke to her a few times after that. She kept saying she was going to pay me back but I'll believe it when it happens. I could call Howard [an attorney he knew] but I figured that woman has enough problems."

She never paid him back. In fact, I think she even stopped calling to assure him she was going to pay him back but he never went after her.

A lot of people would have given up on getting reimbursed because they'd decide the money was uncollectible or that getting it would involve too much time and expense. That's a perfectly valid, possibly-wise reason to just eat the loss. But if you knew my father, you'd know that's not why he decided not to pursue it. He decided not to pursue it because, like he said, that woman had enough problems. That was the kind of guy he was.

• Mitt Romney calls the Confederate Flag a "symbol of racial hatred." You can talk like that when you're not seeking the G.O.P. nomination.

There are a thousand photos of Groucho Marx on the Internet. For some reason, when someone's designing a book or CD or DVD cover and they need one, they go to the web and a surprising percentage of the time, they select one that is not of Groucho Marx.

See that cover above for the Penguin Books release of The Essential Groucho? Well, that's not a photo of Groucho. That's Alfred Eisenstaedt, a well-known German photographer. Once for a photo shoot, he got dressed up as Groucho and took that picture and it often pops up on articles and merchandise as if it's the real guy. As I mentioned here a few days ago, my pal Steve Stoliar is working with director Rob Zombie on a movie about Groucho. There are several articles about it on the 'net and I found at least three that used the photo of Eisenstaedt, thinking it was Marx.

And see that cover above for a DVD of old TV show comedy? Not Groucho, either. That's one of my other pals, Frank Ferrante. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the person who used that picture for the DVD cribbed it from this site. If you do a Google image search for shots of Groucho, you'll see a lot of Ferrante since Google doesn't really identify faces. They just link an image to the nearby text.

I have nothing to add to this except that I thought it was worth mentioning. Odd to find out that "The One…the Only…Groucho" is other people.

The above photo is from the early seventies. I'm the tall guy in the center and I look kind of sleepy in this picture, though I absolutely wasn't when it was taken. I was actually quite excited to spend an evening with gent in front of me, the legendary Carl Barks, the creator of Uncle Scrooge and the artist-writer of many wonderful comics featuring Donald, Scrooge and other ducky folks. Also thrilled were my friends who accompanied me to the Barks home in Goleta, California — at left, Dwight Decker; at right, Dan Gheno. As you can tell, I've known both Dwight and Dan for a long, long time.

Dan is the fellow who's been sending me those great photos of the marquee of the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York. He also just send me a copy of his great new book on Figure Drawing. Dan, you see, was inspired to become an artist by all those comic books he read while he was younger…but not a comic book artist. He got into life drawing and painting and went on to become an important artist and art teacher, currently tutoring at the Art Students League and at the National Academy School. He has exhibited all over the world in private and public collections including the Museum of the City of New York, The New Britain Museum of American Art and the Butler Institute of American Art, and his art and writings have appeared in many magazines and books, including American Artist, Drawing Magazine and The Artist's Magazine.

This is his newest book — Figure Drawing Master Class: Lessons in Life Drawing. It has been years since I did much drawing and as I paged through this volume, I had two reactions. One was that I wished I hadn't given it up because I'm sure Dan's lessons, breaking down the process into easily understandable chunks, would have made me better at it. This thought though was negated by the second reaction which is that even if I'd practiced 'til I wore all my pencils and fingers down to stubs, I wouldn't have been half as good as he is.

I'm still glad to have it though because it's a beautiful book and I'm sure it would be of value to any artist more serious about his work than I am. If you'd like to order a copy, here's just the link you need.

There are calls today to stop displaying the Confederate Flag as anything other than an ancient historical relic. Many of these calls are coming from unquestioned Conservatives like Rod Dreher. He thinks it "has become impossible for most people to see as symbolizing anything other than white supremacy."

My problem with flags is that I always think people treat them as too significant, acting like to burn the American flag is to somehow destroy America. Naah. You could burn ten thousand American flags and while it would insult and pain people, they'd remember that America is a lot more than a piece of cloth. After 9/11, it bothered me that a lot of people stuck a $2.98 American flag (probably made overseas) on their car for a week or two and acted like they'd struck a meaningful blow against the terrorists. Yeah, like that would show 'em.

I think there's a lot of real racism out there in this country today and we're not going to eradicate it by denying it exists. Many people want to, as witness the extraordinary somersaults that some politicians and pundits have gone to, trying to deny that Dylann Storm Roof — you know, the guy with the racist manifesto who announced he wanted to kill blacks — was motivated by race. My fear is that if the Confederate Flag is taken down, all the folks who need to face the reality of racism will say, "But we eradicated racism! We took down those flags!"

Jonathan Easley thinks it's time for Hillary Clinton — and I guess everyone — to take Bernie Sanders' presidential bid more seriously. I'd like to believe that but while Sanders does look competitive in some states, he's trailing her by as much as 55 points nationwide. The CNN and ABC polls show Sanders trailing Joe Biden — and Biden isn't even making the slightest noise about running.

This isn't the greatest analogy but I think Sanders may be like Obamacare. When people hear what it does, they like the individual components but an awful lot of them are still against it in general. A lot of folks will never get past the phrase "Democratic Socialist" with Sanders. Which is not to say his candidacy alone might not do the country a lot of good.

Our pal Joe Brancatelli, who knows as much about airlines as any man alive, asks why those companies treat their customers and even some employees with such contempt. And if Joe can't explain it, I sure can't.

A few years back, this blog went on a binge featuring versions of "The Lambeth Walk," a popular musical number from the 1937 musical, Me and My Girl. But I don't think I got this one in…and even if I did, it's time to enjoy this song again. This is from the 1985 London revival with Robert Lindsay and Emma Thompson…

The other day here, I was talking about Donald Trump's use of a Neil Young song without Young's permission and I noted how often Republicans seem to do it. I also said "I'm sure there must be Democratic candidates who did the same thing." A reader of this site named David Simmons wrote to me…

I'm so tired of this "both sides do it" crap. If you have knowledge of Democrats who do the same kind of thing with the same kind of frequency, please share.

With the same kind of frequency? No — and I didn't say they did it with the same kind of frequency, but it has happened. Barack Obama was asked to stop using "Hold On! I'm Coming" by Sam Moore. (Here's an article about it.) I can't find anything online about it but I think Al Gore got in trouble with someone about this kind of thing, too. Anyway, the point is that it's not unique to Republicans. They just do it more often.

I do agree with you that "both sides do it" is often a lame justification for all sorts of sins but it's not always wrong. There are a lot of slimy things in politics that are done by both sides.