Monthly Archives: July 2015

Sergio the Exhibitionist

Posted on Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 9:49 AM

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Our friend Sergio Aragonés is the "cartoonist in residence" for the Ojai Valley Museum in Ojai, California. A few years ago, they featured a very nice exhibition of his drawings. Yesterday, they opened what I assume is a very nice exhibition of his drawings that he didn't do. These are pieces of art from his personal collection — mostly paintings and sketches that were given to him by the many artists he has met throughout his career.

I assume this is a very nice exhibition because I know what Sergio has and boy, is it a wonderful collection…so I'm going to get up there and see this presentation of some of it. I have plenty of time because the show is there 'til January 3.

For more info, here's a link to the Ojai Valley Museum website and here's a link to an article there about Sergio's status as a cartoonist in that town.

Today's Video Link

Posted on Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 9:15 AM

A few weeks ago, my friend Jon Armstrong appeared with his Tiny Plunger on the TV series, Penn & Teller: Fool Us. If you haven't see the show (which airs on the CW network Monday evenings), magicians come out and perform and they "win" if they do a trick which fools Penn and/or Teller. Jon scored 50%. He fooled Penn but Teller had once performed an act not unlike this so all Jon won was a nice showcase on television and a lot of praise from Penn Jillette.

The show only gave us a shortened version of Jon's routine so here's the entire thing as recorded recently at the Magic Castle. I have seen a lot of magic in my day and this is one of the cleverest presentations I've ever seen — and one which genuinely baffles a lot of experienced magicians…

How I Spent Today

Posted on Saturday, July 25, 2015 at 11:01 PM

I spent most of this afternoon at a hospital out in the valley where my longtime friend Scott Shaw! is recuperating from surgery. Let me give you an idea of what "longtime" means in this case…

The entity we now know as Comic-Con International started life as the Golden State Comic Con in 1970. A gentleman named Shel Dorf is generally credited as its founder and while that's not wrong in some senses, I believe others had a lot to do with it, including a fellow named Ken Krueger and a bevy of comic fans in San Diego. In '70, a few months before the first con was held, Shel took most of that bevy on a field trip to the home of Jack and Roz Kirby in Thousand Oaks, California.

Scott Shaw! was in that bevy — exclamation point and all — and that's when he and I first met. So we're talking a month or three over 45 years here. Later on, we worked together on any number of comic books and TV shows…and he even moved in with me for a brief time when his first marriage ended, thereby creating an Odd Couple with two Oscars and no Felix. We have a lot of history there.

A "shattered ankle" (that's his term for it) put him in the hospital and caused him to miss this year's Comic-Con so I went out to see him and he appears to be doing quite well. In fact, in the four hours I was there swapping stories with him, his doctor and a couple of other medical-type folks came by to interrupt our punch lines and tell him he was doing quite well and would be heading for home soon.

He was feeling a lot better and because of that, I was feeling a lot better when I left.

Rumors About Rumors

Posted on Saturday, July 25, 2015 at 8:17 PM

Last Monday, the rumor was saying that Keith Olbermann might be returning to MSNBC and that he might be paired with a new show hosted by Brian Williams. Now, MSNBC prez Phil Griffin is reportedly saying that he hasn't talked to Olbermann and someone there is saying that Williams does not want his own show at this time. I have no idea where Olbermann will land or even where he could land…but I'll bet he finds a place.

Lot of Trouble

Posted on Saturday, July 25, 2015 at 9:12 AM

From August 14, 2009…

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Forgot to tell you what happened to me the other day. I had a meeting over at a big movie studio. I drove over and they made me park in one of those "double-deep" spaces where another car will likely park behind yours. The driver of that other car is supposed to leave his or her keys with the attendant because you can't get your car out until they move that one.

Went in, had the meeting, came out…and there, parked right behind my auto was a gleaming, silver top-o'-the-line Mercedes. I waved to the attendant and gestured that he needed to move it so I could drive my much less impressive vehicle home. Nervous and apologetic, the gent came up to me and said he was sorry but he couldn't do that. The driver had not left the key. Then he added, "I noticed it and started to run after him to get the key but then I saw who it was."

Sensing a cue, I asked, "Who was it?"

"I shouldn't tell you," the parking lot guy said. "Someone very important." Another attendant who'd wandered over to join the conversation added, "Very big movie star."

"But you won't tell me the name," I said.

"We shouldn't tell," the second attendant said. And I realized they weren't sure why but they figured I might do something in reprisal that would get that Very Big Movie Star riled and cause them to be fired. Like I might run upstairs, find out where he was and barge into his meeting. Or worse, I might post his name on my blog.

I pulled out my ignition key, pointed it at the Mercedes and said, "I really need to get somewhere. Tell me whose car this is or I'll key my initials into the side of it." The attendants went so pale that I quickly pocketed the key and assured them, "I'm kidding, I'm kidding."

We waited about twenty minutes but the V.B.M.S. did not return. They moved out the cars on either side of mine and one of the attendants kept asking me if I thought I could somehow swing my car out from there…without, of course, damaging the Mercedes. I had about three inches between my rear license plate and his front plate so I said no. I'm not that skilled a driver. Finally, one of the younger parking lot guys said, "I think I can do it."

So we let him get into my car and it was then about ten minutes of five people guiding him and yelling, "Back another inch" and "turn the wheels to the left" and "back another half-inch" and so on. All through it, the head parking attendant guy was ashen with fear that the Mercedes might get nicked but it didn't. The kid defied all laws of Physics and got my car outta there without a mar on either. I gave him a big tip and, so everyone could hear it, told him he was not to share it with anyone else, especially the guy who let the Very Big Movie Star get away without leaving his key.

While the hero was extricating my vehicle, I heard one of the other attendants mention the name of a Very Big Movie Star and I will forever assume that was the owner of the Mercedes. Since I don't have first-hand proof though, and don't want to get the parking lot guys in trouble, I won't mention that name here. But if it was indeed him, I think I understand a little more. If I were a lowly-paid studio parking attendant, liable to get yelled-upon or dismissed for not being properly deferential to the super-important, I'm not sure I'd have chased after this person and demanded his keys. Or at least, of the two, I would have been a lot less worried about pissing off Mark Evanier…

Recommended Reading

Posted on Saturday, July 25, 2015 at 9:12 AM

Fred Kaplan, who favors the Iran nuclear deal, explains why the Republicans who don't say they don't and why they're wrong. So far, they're sounding like their main problem with it is that Obama was the one who made it.

Today's Video Link

Posted on Saturday, July 25, 2015 at 12:36 AM

You may know this sketch from some of the live performances of Monty Python. It's something John Cleese did before Python and it's one of my favorites. Anyone know its origin? (And by "anyone," I probably mean Kim Howard Johnson, if he's still reading this blog.) Here it is performed at a benefit by Cleese and Adrian Edmondson…

Good Blogkeeping

Posted on Saturday, July 25, 2015 at 12:22 AM

In the last few weeks, I've gone through all but the last few years of this blog and done some repairs, fixing errors and cleaning up little formatting errors. I went from the first post (on December 18, 2000) through the last post in 2010 and I know I missed some things but I did a lot of buffing and sanding.

Many of the problems date back to the two times I changed the software on which this thing runs. I hand-coded it in HTML at first, then switched to Movable Type and finally migrated to WordPress, which is what about half the Internet runs on. During this maintenance, I…

  • Fixed coding errors in about two dozen messages that caused them to display either in truncated formats or not at all. So these are restored.
  • Deleted a few messages that were duplicates of others.
  • Deleted a lot of dead video embeds. (Here's my policy: I don't fix or delete dead text links to other sites. I do delete dead video embeds if and when I happen to notice them. Don't bother writing to tell me that some YouTube video ain't there any longer. I only put up the little BROKEN LINK sign when I stumble upon them.)
  • Fixed a few dead video embeds. But only a few. Again, thanks but don't bother writing to tell me about an outdated link I can update. I can't spare the time to do much of that.
  • Upgraded a number of photos, especially on obits. I didn't have a good picture of the deceased when I wrote about them so I had to make do with a poor one. Now, I have a good one available so in it goes.
  • And in the case of a number of words that have acceptable variant spellings, I picked one and made the word consistent throughout this site. I decided not to do this with "theater" and "theatre" because a lot of those places are pretty insistent on that part of their name being spelled only one of those ways.

In case anyone's interested, once I post this there will be 21,919 posts on this blog. Less than a hundred are duplicates.

As you may notice, we have this PayPal link for anyone who wants to send a donation and we appreciate it whenever someone does that, and also when they use our Amazon gateway to buy anything from Amazon.

A lot of sites are beginning to use a service called Patreon where you can become a "patron" of a site or creator and make either one-time donations or regular contributions to them. Quite a few folks wrote to ask me to do this and I went and signed up and started to figure it out…and then decided it was too much extra work. They want you to make a video and to write little essays about your goals and to have all sorts of little bonus goodies for those who contribute bucks. So there's no Patreon link here. It's for the same reason I decline all offers to put paid ads on this page.

I hope that doesn't sound like I'm criticizing anyone who does any of that. I am all for my favorite bloggers and creators on the web making as much as possible from their efforts, especially if they'd like to do all or most of their work on that basis. I just made a decision that for reasons I'm not sure I can put into a coherent paragraph, I don't want to "monetize" this blog beyond the few cash-generating links I already have.

So thanks but you don't have to tell me about Patreon. It's great but I've decided it's not, in its present form at least, for me. Maybe later.

Go Read It!

Posted on Friday, July 24, 2015 at 10:46 AM

P.J. O'Rourke, who was the editor-in-chief of National Lampoon around the time it stopped being wonderful — not necessarily his fault — explains a little about what happened there. One point he doesn't make is that just about all magazines began sliding down a cliff about that time. Lampoon's content suffered a lot as its best people discovered there was much, much more money to be made in television and/or movies…but that was also a period where much of America seemed to decide it just wasn't comfortable with the whole idea of reading magazines. And not just because this new thing that was coming called The Internet.

Today's Video Link

Posted on Friday, July 24, 2015 at 9:40 AM

All week on YouTube, Stephen Colbert's operation has been posting "Lunch with Stephen" videos. Here's the week in review. The five videos should play one after the other in the little player below…

Recommended Reading

Posted on Friday, July 24, 2015 at 9:17 AM

Daniel Larison notes that almost everyone who is predicting disaster if the new Iran agreement is signed is someone whose predictions about the Iraq War were totally off the mark. How many times in this world can you be dead wrong before people stop listening to you? On political matters, as many as you want!

The Late Show

Posted on Friday, July 24, 2015 at 4:26 AM

This ran here on 8/15/10. It's another one of those posts I should probably rerun every few years…

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For a few months now, I've been in private correspondence with a gent who's fairly new to the art 'n' craft of writing comic books. He's sold a number of things and seen them published…and he'd hoped that by this time, his career would have picked up some momentum and he wouldn't still be scrounging for assignments like an absolute beginner. That has not happened. His old credits have not led to new ones and his dream — to give up his non-writing day job and become a full-time professional author — appears more remote than ever.

Many e-mails have been exchanged and we got to talk for a bit at San Diego. He suggested I quote here, so all could read them, some things I wrote to him in recent messages. I edited hunks of a few messages together and made a few changes so it makes more sense yanked out of the context of our back-and-forth…and here 'tis, for whatever it may be worth to someone. This is me writing advice to a friend who's having career trouble…

Your problem, pure and simple, is that you were late with your work. It is all well and good to rationalize, "Well, it's more important that I deliver a good script than that I deliver it according to some editor's schedule"…and yes, there are times when a deadline is utterly arbitrary and they tell you they need it in June when they aren't going to do a damn thing with it until August. But not all deadlines are like that and to let a real one go by unattended is a luxury that we rarely have in the writing game, especially when in a new relationship. There are times even then when they can give you an extra two weeks. There are also times when they can't…or when to give you that two weeks means taking it away from your collaborators; i.e., the artist is going to have to draw the comic in three weeks instead of the five he expected to have.

You may also have harmed his income. He expected to have that script next Tuesday. He planned his life and maybe turned down other work so he could start drawing your script then, plus he counted on being paid for it by the time his next mortgage payment is due. But because of you, he has nothing to draw next week and no way to make money on the days he cleared to draw your script…and he may have to turn down the assignment he was going to do after he finished your script because he's now not going to be done with it when he expected to be. Ask anyone who's worked in comics for a few years and they'll gladly unload a tirade of anecdotes about how someone else's lateness screwed up their lives and maybe even prevented them from doing their best work.

There is nothing noble about being late, nothing that suggests your work is better because you fussed longer with it and did that extra draft. Creative folks can meet deadlines and still be creative. Laurence Olivier somehow managed to be on stage when the curtain went up at 8 PM. He didn't tell them to have the audience come back at 9:30 because he needed more prep time to give the best possible performance. You can do good work and get it in when it's supposed to be in…or reasonably close to it. (When I write here of being late, I'm not talking about being a day or so late or even of skirting phantom deadlines. I'm talking about being late on a real deadline such that it causes problems.)

In San Diego, you went on and on about how [name of his editor on a recent project] had screwed you up by not answering questions or getting you certain reference materials you needed or…well, I'm sorry but my brain tuned-out after a certain amount of that. But let's say you're right. Let's say he is a bloody incompetent who couldn't handle his end of things. That does not give you special dispensation to be late. It's not like "He did these things wrong so I'm allowed to do some things wrong." If his actions made it impossible for you to meet the agreed-upon deadline then you should have told him that at the time and worked out a new, realistic deadline. (One thing I've learned to do: If someone hires me to write something that I can't start until they send me a piece of reference, I don't agree to deliver by a specific date. I agree to deliver X days after I receive the reference material. The clock starts ticking when I can start, not when they hire me to start. It minimizes the problem you had.)

If you don't renegotiate the deadline, you should still meet it. Why? Because it's professional and because it gives you standing. I'm going to tell you something I've learned in more than four decades of professional writing for a pretty wide array of media and editors and producers: On any project, you should never expect to win an argument about anything unless your work is more-or-less on-time. If you're late to the point of creating production problems, you lose some or all of your rights even if it's someone else's fault. If the work is on time, you have standing to complain about what others do to your script, you can debate changes that the boss wants to make, etc. If the work is late, you lose a large chunk of the moral authority to say, "This needs to be fixed."

Two other things about being on time. When you're late, it's the easiest thing in the world to have a good reason why it isn't your fault. I know writers who are often tardy and they always have a good reason. Always. There's a power failure or a sick mother or a dental emergency — and they aren't fibbing. I used to say of one writer I worked with, "His greatest skill is in having disasters occur when a deadline is looming."

Eventually, I thought of a clearer way to look at it. Disasters can and do happen to everyone — I've certainly had them interfere with my writing — but some folks make those situations more destructive to the schedule than necessary. I'm talking about the kind of person who, deep down, is always looking for reasons not to work. So if Mom gets sick or the computer's on the fritz, they immediately let that stop them. It doesn't always have to. There's a famous story they used to tell around the Marvel offices about the great New York blackout of 1965 when power was off everywhere for about twelve hours one evening. Most everyone showed up at the Marvel office the next morning without their homework, figuring they couldn't be expected to write or draw by candlelight. Stan Lee, however, came in with all his pages done, having labored by candlelight. And the point of the story was that Stan was amazed that everyone else hadn't done that. It had simply not occurred to him not to write even though he had a perfect excuse. Which is one of the reasons he's Stan Lee and you and I are not.

Disasters are also more likely to stop you if you're the kind of writer who puts things off 'til the last minute. If you have all of November to write a script and you don't start 'til the day after Thanksgiving, you're gambling. That guy I said was really good at having disasters occur when a deadline was looming…I think that was his problem. He wasn't to blame when that car hit him two days before the script was due. But he was to blame for not starting on the script until three days before it was due.

The other thing I need to say is this: Don't get mad at other people because you're late. Don't get mad at people who may have contributed to your being late and especially don't get mad at people who didn't. I did this a lot when I was starting out. Secretly, I was angry at myself for screwing up but I couldn't cope with that so I found ways to direct that anger at others — at my editor, at my collaborators, at innocent bystanders even. Far better to be mad at them than mad at me. But I learned…and while I still occasionally still make that mistake, I don't make it for very long. Ultimately, it's a much easier problem to correct if you're clear on who's responsible for it.

You made a bad mistake being late with your first few jobs. I tell beginning writers, "Never get a reputation for unreliability. You will never lose it," which is an exaggeration but only a slight one. What you need to do now is cultivate the opposite rep and maybe, just maybe, the new one will trump the old one. If not…well, you just may have to look for another career. I'd check into jobs at United Airlines. Based on my last few flights with them, I'd venture you can make a good living there if you're always late.

Today's Video Link

Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2015 at 6:45 PM

This Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of a rather large controversy: The time Roseanne Barr — then one of the hottest stars on television — sang a dreadful rendition of our national anthem to kick off a San Diego Padres baseball game. Keith Olbermann recalls the incident and explains how he had a lot to do with it becoming a nationwide outrage…

Typo of the Day

Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2015 at 5:47 PM

Yes, two posts back I went to write that some people had decided Bill Cosby was a slimeball and I typed "smileball." I have fixed it. The mistake was reported by fourteen of you — or as Donald Trump would report it, 15,000 people.

However, in the above sentence when I went to write the word I intended to write originally, I typed "smileball" then deleted it and typed "smileball" again and then typed "smileball" again. It took me several tries to get it right. My fingers kept insisting on typing "smileball."

Let me practice here for a moment: slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball smileball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball slimeball.

There. Next time there's a reason to use that word — probably next time I write about political stuff — I'll get it right. I don't want to look like a bumdass.

Oh, wait. I got it wrong once in that big paragraph above. Can you find it?

This Just In…

Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2015 at 12:47 PM

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This is kind of what this whole Trump for President campaign is about. I don't think the guy has a clue how to run the country and I don't think he thinks it's even necessary to prove that he does or to explain what he would do other than to say, "I'll handle it." I also don't think voters are ever going to let him get close to having to deliver on any of his brags.

But he's really good at making the election be all about him. I wouldn't get a bulletin like that if Rick Santorum was speaking at the border. Maybe if he was crossing it as part of leaving the country forever…but not speaking there.