So we all know about this clerk in Kentucky who has now been jailed for refusing to do her job and issue marriage licenses. I think we all know she is not by her actions going to overturn any laws or establish the principle that a government employee can refuse to do a part of their job they feel is in conflict with their religion.
What I'm kind of curious about is what's on this woman's mind. As I write this, she's in a jail cell and she ain't gettin' out until she backs down on this position or quits or something. I keep seeing different scenarios here that are possible…
She actually thinks she's going to change some laws or policies or something. She's wrong but she actually thinks that.
She's the unwitting puppet of the lawyers advising her who see a chance to serve their political goals or financial ones and don't really have the best interests of their client in mind.
She's loving the attention, the fact that she's famous, the fact that so many people consider her a hero…and she hasn't figured out the endgame yet.
She thinks she has a future in right-wing media or politics and can use this publicity as a stepping stone to something she wants to do besides issue licenses all day.
She has no idea where she's going with this. She earnestly believes what she believes and is convinced that if she holds to those beliefs, it will somehow work out well for her in the end.
Any others? Those are the ones I came up with. I'm leaning to #3 at the moment but I think it could be any of them. And of course, we have Mike Huckabee out there claiming that people in this country are now being jailed for being Christian. I don't for a minute believe he thinks that; only that it may rile some people up to the point of supporting him.
Someone needs to quote a Jon Stewart line to these people: "You've confused a war on your religion with not always getting everything you want."
If there's anyone following this blog who doesn't know who Jack Kirby was, here's a little video that gives a nice overview of some (hardly all) of his career. The thing I like about it is that it was produced by Marvel for their web presence and it speaks of Jack the way a lot of us have long felt Marvel should speak about him and his contributions. Earlier folks at Marvel either didn't want to speak of him that way or were told they couldn't. It makes me quite happy that the company finally recognizes his contribution…
I haven't mentioned it lately but I continue to get 2-5 calls per day from folks who want to remodel my home, solarize my home, paint my home or even sell my home. Somehow, I got on a list that someone sells of homeowners and I've given up asking the callers where they got my number because none of them seem to have a clue. They got it from someone who got it from someone who got it from someone…
A few of these people sound like actual contractors who are desperate for new business. Most, I suspect, are people who have almost nothing to do with the outfit for which they are fronting. Once, I asked a caller who claimed to be with a contracting company if their firm did refractory zone compliance work and he said, "Yes, we're very experienced in that," even though I made that term up.
For the most part, I feel like the caller is someone who's outta work — probably way outta work — and who answered an ad somewhere that said, "You can make up to $2000 a week." What that means is that they're handed a list of phone prospects, possibly as part of a piece of software that does the dialing for them, and they're given a script to read…and then they call strangers cold. If one of those cold strangers is willing to let a sales person come over to give an estimate, and if that sales person lands a sale then the caller gets a commission on the deal.
Theoretically, those commissions could add up to $2000 a week or whatever number is promised in the recruitment ads…but I'll bet they never do. I'll bet a lot of those callers do the job for a week or two, realize it's never going to yield any real bucks and then go try to find something else.
I generally feel sorry for them on an individual basis but not on a collective one. Sometimes, I tell one, "You know, if I was interested in this, I would have said yes to one of the ninety people who've called in the last few weeks reading me the exact same sales pitch." When I say this, I often hear a little sad sigh that suggests to me the caller is thinking, "Jeez…I didn't realize these people have already turned this down so many times."
The real annoying ones though are the ones reading scripts that suggest we have had a prior relationship and I asked them to call. One such caller phoned here around Noon yesterday…
HIM: Good day, Mr. Evanier. This is Bob Johnson with the Home Repair Center calling again. You spoke with me last year and you asked me to call you back in September because you said you'd be ready to do some work on your home…
ME: No, I didn't speak to you. You're lying.
HIM: Well, I spoke to someone there. Is there another Mr. Evanier?
ME: Not this side of the Mississippi.
HIM: Well, I spoke to someone there. We're working in your area so if it's all right with you, I'll stop in shortly and give you that free estimate we spoke about.
ME: You mean the one we didn't speak about. No, you may not stop in. We never spoke about a free estimate and I don't need any work done.
HIM: I'll be by shortly. Goodbye.
And that was the call. Ninety minutes later, a man came to my door. He was not Bob Johnson — I doubt Bob Johnson was even Bob Johnson — but he stood ready to give me my free estimate on whatever it was his company could do for me. When I told him I didn't need any work done and had not said I did, he got a bit perturbed…
THIS GUY: Then why did you ask to have us come by and give you a free estimate?
ME: I didn't. I told the man on the phone not to come by.
THIS GUY: He told me you did.
ME: He lied to you the same way he lied to me when he claimed we'd spoken before and I'd asked him to call. He probably also lied about his name being Bob Johnson. Hey, how many Bob Johnsons do you have making these calls?
THIS GUY: A few. I don't know. Look, I'm sorry about that but I am a good contractor. While I'm here, is there any work you need done around here? I'd be glad to put in a bid on it.
ME: I have some work but I also have a good contractor. I have a guy who's worked for me for years and I trust him and he doesn't have a single lying Bob Johnson working on his behalf.
THIS GUY: Those guys don't exactly work for me. It's like a service. They find me prospects. Listen, let me bid on the job, whatever it is. I promise you I'll beat your guy's price.
ME: I'm sure you will on the first job…but you're not going to beat his track record with me or his reliability. Don't take this the wrong way but you could be the most inept, dishonest contractor in the business for all I know.
THIS GUY: I can give you referrals…testimonials from satisfied customers…
ME: And I'll bet they're all named Bob Johnson. Look, you're wasting your time and even worse, you're wasting my time. I don't need a contractor. I have one I trust. If you were me, you wouldn't dump a contractor who's proved his skill and honesty because some other one you never heard of came in and gave you a lowball estimate. I'm even suspicious of low prices. I figure any guy can do the job cheaper if he doesn't do it as well.
THIS GUY: All right. Sorry I bothered you. It's just that…well, you know it's tough out there these days for a contractor. I have a family and I have a mortgage just like you.
ME: I don't have a family and I don't have a mortgage but I know what you mean. Hey, how many jobs have all these Bob Johnsons gotten you?
THIS GUY: Not many. None, come to think of it. But I had to try something.
So I wound up feeling sorry for This Guy, too — not sorry enough to consider throwing over my honest contractor for someone else who might be just as good but a tad cheaper — but sorry nonetheless. Your life can't be going well when you're counting on Bob Johnson to save it.
There are a lot of articles around about Stephen Colbert. Here's the one from The New York Times.
This article and some others suggest that Colbert decided well before he had the offer to replace Letterman that The Colbert Report would end when it did. If I weren't so sleepy right now, I'd take a stab at guessing when that was compared to the moment when Comedy Central could have offered that time slot to John Oliver
If you're breathlessly following whether Trump's up in the polls or Hillary's down or Lindsey Graham has actually found someone willing to vote for him, read Nate Silver. In fact, if you're too lazy to click over there, you should just read this paragraph from it…
It's not only that the polls have a poor predictive track record — at this point in the past four competitive races, the leaders in national polls were Joe Lieberman, Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton and Rick Perry, none of whom won the nomination — but also that they don't have a lot of intrinsic meaning. At this point, the polls you see reported on are surveying broad groups of Republican- or Democratic-leaning adults who are relatively unlikely to actually vote in the primaries and caucuses and who haven't been paying all that much attention to the campaigns. The ones who eventually do vote will have been subjected to hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of advertising, had their door knocked on several times, and seen a half-dozen more debates. The ballots they see may not resemble the one the pollsters are testing since it's likely that (at least on the GOP side) several of the candidates will have dropped out by the time their state votes.
If you're panicked that your pick will/won't win, read Silver's article and while you're at it, bookmark it and take three times daily.
Posted on Wednesday, September 2, 2015 at 10:11 AM
Read Amanda Marcotte's view on that clerk in Kentucky who's refusing to issue marriage licenses because some of them would go to gay people. Ms. Marcotte is right: Someone's giving this woman very bad advice in order to serve their own purposes, not hers.
Posted on Wednesday, September 2, 2015 at 10:06 AM
Jonathan Chait brings up an interesting point about Donald Trump. Tax cuts for wealthy people are not a big concern for rank-and-file Republican voters because…well, because most of them are not wealthy people. But lowering taxes on the rich is the obsession of Republican leadership and if you're not 100% for that, they won't let you hold public office and you have to go sit in a corner somewhere until you atone and vow never to let such heretical thoughts enter your brain ever again.
Mr. Trump, though richer than rich, does not pledge absolute fealty to the notion that nothing in this world matters so much as cutting taxes for the wealthy. Chait thinks while Trump's anti-immigrant positions probably account for the bulk of his popularity, one cannot discount that he is also more in tune with most G.O.P. voters on the issue of taxing the wealthy. Like I said: An interesting point.
And speaking of Stephen Colbert: Bill Carter writes of how the man is changing his act as he takes over the 11:35 slot on CBS. I am of the opinion that Mr. Colbert will do great — maybe not the first few months but in the long run. As I've said before here, the guy really has every possible skill and attribute you need to succeed as a late night host and he's real, real smart.
Carter seems to be placing the failure of Conan O'Brien on The Tonight Show on the star's unwillingness to change his act for the earlier hour. I thought Conan lost a lot of his appeal while he was still at 12:35. I kinda agree with someone who wrote to me and said, "Conan's first ten years as a late night host, the attitude of him and his show was 'I don't deserve this' and he relied on charm and a lot of sharp written material. From about the time he knew he'd be taking over The Tonight Show, the attitude became 'I deserve this' and he became Mr. Show Business and relied on funny faces and trying to top his guests."
I think that's a bit harsh but the change I felt was roughly in that direction. I just didn't like the guy as much as I once had. I sometimes tune in his TBS show and find myself turning away.
Carter's article is accompanied by a ratings chart that shows Fallon currently with 3.7 million viewers, Kimmel with 2.5, Meyers with 1.5 and Corden with 1.3. To track this race, you really need numbers in two other categories. You need to see Letterman's numbers at a time before they were boosted by his impending retirement…
…and you need to see the closing numbers for the 11:35 guys — i.e., how many people are watching the ends of their shows. Corden's ratings might be more impressive than Meyers' depending on how many people are watching the last fifteen minutes of the programs that precede them. The strength of Leno's Tonight Show over Letterman's Late Show was demonstrated not by the average ratings for their respective hours but by how many of Jay's viewers stuck with him for the whole program as opposed to Dave's audience hanging around 'til the end.
As you've probably figured out, I'm eager to see Colbert's new show. And I'm almost as eager to see how it does. For me, this is way more fun than following professional football.
If you use the Waze app on your Smartphone for driving directions, you might want to set it to use Stephen Colbert's voice. Go to "Settings," then "Sound," then "Voice." You can also set it to talk like Neil Patrick Harris, Colonel Sanders or many more…
Mayor Kevin Faulconer of San Diego is throwing his weight behind a plan to expand the existing San Diego Convention Center. There was another proposal out to instead build a new "campus" facility a few blocks away and the Mayor says that a new feasibility study has convinced him the better bet is to expand what's there — i.e., the building we fill each year for Comic-Con International.
One possible barrier to this happening is that local voters would have to approve an increase in the hotel tax. I'm not sure why they would vote that down since most of them would never pay it and there would be great benefits to the community to expand the city's convention. But voters did veto something of the sort a few years ago so maybe they would again.
In any case, expansion or no expansion, I continue to believe that Comic-Con ain't gonna relocate for a long time, if ever…and that the periodic rumors that it will move are about as likely as President Lincoln Chaffee. Thanks to Douglass Abramson for pointing me to this article which is all about that new study.
So there's this county clerk in Kentucky who stopped issuing marriage licenses after the Supreme Court legalized Gay Marriage last June. I guess the message was that if gays insisted on getting married in her area then nobody was going to get married in her area.
Back when this was a real debate in this country, a lot of folks against Gay Marriage insisted that legalizing it would destroy Straight Marriage. A lot of us thought this was nonsense but we failed to reckon with this woman. She hates Gay Marriage so much, she's willing to subvert Straight Marriage.
She's lost every court battle and must appear in court on Thursday to show cause why she should not be slapped in prison or fined. I assume if the judge sets a fine for every day she doesn't issue the licenses, her supporters will use online crowdfunding to pay her fine so she'll hold out as long as the bucks roll in. But she is going to lose this battle and she has the brains of a shrimp if she ever thought it would go any other way.
This is an entry to Mark Evanier's list of the twenty top voice actors in American animated cartoons between 1928 and 1968. For more on this list, read this. To see all the listings posted to date, click here.
Jim Backus
Most Famous Role: Mr. Magoo.
Other Notable Roles: Almost none unless you count the genie in the Bugs Bunny cartoon, A-Lad-In His Lamp.
What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: Dozens of character roles in radio, movies and television, including several regular series like Gilligan's Island, I Married Joan and even The Jim Backus Show. The dozens of films in which he appeared included Rebel Without a Cause and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He also appeared in hundreds of commercials and probably made as much money dubbing the voice of "The Little Old Winemaker" for Italian Swiss Colony Wine as he did playing Quincy Magoo.
Why He's On This List: Few theatrical cartoons got so much of their charm and humor from a voice as did the Magoos. Backus was allowed to ad-lib during recordings and his muttered asides made sure the cartoon was funny even if the visuals and gags sometimes were not. Tex Avery once called Backus as Magoo the single greatest bit of casting in the history of animation.
Fun Fact: The U.P.A. cartoon studio, where Backus most often recorded his Magoo dialogue, was next door to the Smoke House, a still-extant Burbank restaurant where animation folks were known to gather. Before a recording session, voice director (and occasional co-actor) Jerry Hausner would take Backus over there to the bar for a few drinks. Hausner would ask him after each one, "Is Magoo here yet?" and Backus might answer, "I think he might arrive after one more gin and tonic." When Backus was sufficiently Magooed, they'd go over to the studio and record, and would sometimes return to the bar area of the Smoke House afterwards for what Backus called "the wrap party."
This is a partial reprint of an item I posted here a few years ago but with some stuff expanded and altered.
As noted here, last Friday would have been the 98th birthday of Jack Kirby. On the long, long list of Jack's many accomplishments — down around #1,253 which was creating a character who had one line in a Green Arrow story — is that Jack was one of the three people most responsible for me getting into the comic book field. The other two were a gentleman named George Sherman who worked for the Disney Studios and a gentleman named Chase Craig who worked for Western Publishing Company. Last Friday would have been the 105th birthday of Chase Craig.
Chase edited thousands of comic books for Western Publishing which were published under the Dell and later the Gold Key imprint. Since titles like Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and Uncle Scrooge were selling in the millions per issue back in the fifties, there was a time when more people were reading comic books edited by Chase Craig than those of any other editor alive.
And by a very wide margin. There were individual Craig-edited comics of the day that sold more copies per month than all the comics edited in that same month by Stan Lee or Julius Schwartz or maybe both of them put together.
His comics were reaching a much narrower audience by the time I met him in 1970. Comic sales had declined everywhere and despite having superstar characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, Western was having trouble getting its wares distributed. So were DC and Marvel to some extent but DC and Marvel didn't rely wholly on newsstand sales for their income. To some extent, publishing comic books was for them a loss leader to promote their characters for merchandising. They didn't make money off the Wonder Woman comic book. They made it off licensing the Wonder Woman t-shirts.
With comparable newsstands sales, Western didn't fare as well. The revenues from the Mickey Mouse t-shirts went to Disney, not to them.
Photo by Mike Barrier
In 1970, my friend/partner Steve Sherman and I were assisting Jack Kirby with his new comics for DC. Our buddy Mike Royer was working for Chase, inking comics and sometimes penciling or writing them. Mike happened to mention to us that Chase had mentioned to him that Western was looking for ideas for new comics. Mike had nothing in mind to submit to them but he thought we might want to.
We decided to take a crack at it. Emboldened by our proximity to the all-time greatest creator of new comics the industry has ever seen, we whipped up written presentations for about a half-dozen new comics. Steve phoned Mr. Craig, got us an appointment and we ventured to the Western offices, which were located on Hollywood Boulevard directly across the street from the famed Chinese Theater.
Chase was very nice and treated us like seasoned professionals, which we were not. He said he'd take a look at our ideas and pass them on to the many other folks in the company who would have to approve any new books. Then he'd get back to us.
As I later learned, Western did want new comics but it wasn't as simple as filling that want. To get one approved by all the folks in that company who then had a say would be like getting an unanimous vote today out of Congress on anything meaningful.
Western did many things very, very well but they were quite conservative about publishing decisions. If Western and Marvel each put out a new bi-monthly comic at the same time and got the same encouraging sales reports, Marvel would instantly up the book to monthly and start planning spin-offs. Western would say, "Hey, let's keep an eye on this for a year or two and if these numbers hold up, we could try publishing it eight times a year!"
So they wanted new comics but they really didn't want new comics. They certainly didn't want ours. They were rejected with about as polite a turndown as any writers ever received anywhere. For some reason, it didn't dawn on me that Chase edited lots of ongoing comics that needed the services of writers. I cannot for the life of me tell you why I didn't think to go back to him and submit ideas for his Woody Woodpecker or Pink Panther comic books. I can't even tell me that.
If it had occurred to me, I might have been dissuaded by a brilliant but cranky artist named Alex Toth who drew for various publishers and animation houses, never for any one for very long. I occasionally visited Alex back then. He loved to sit for hours and talk about comics and so did I. When I mentioned that my partner and I had submitted some proposals to Chase Craig, he exploded.
Chase Craig? Alex had drawn years earlier for Chase and he hated the guy, thought he was an idiot, thought he was unethical, etc. Later because of his explosion, I learned two very important lessons in life…
One was that Alex felt that way at one time or another about darn near every single person with whom he ever worked. The problem wasn't always them but it was always, to some extent, him. He was one of the most talented people I ever knew but also one of the most insecure and self-destructive.
The other thing was that in this world, you have to go by your own impressions and experiences. If you're warned away from someone, you might be wise to keep that warning in mind. It might well be right and you can perhaps avoid or minimize the damage if you are on guard. But you also can't assume it's totally true or that your experience will be the same as their reported experience. Chase Craig was utterly wonderful to me.
I started working for him because I was working for George Sherman…and I started working for George Sherman because of Mike Royer. Him again.
Chase Craig edited Western's line of comics based on the Disney properties. The Disney Studio sold stats of all that material to the various publishers in other lands who published Disney comics. In most of those countries, there was more demand for Disney comics than there was in this country. Western didn't produce enough material to fill the demand so a division on the Disney lot in Burbank bought scripts and art for additional material that was only published overseas. George Sherman was one of the editors in that division.
Mike Royer had been asked to write for them but he couldn't because he'd just landed a dream position. He was taking over as the inker on Jack Kirby's books for DC Comics, a job that I had a lot to do with. To thank me for my help, Mike arranged for me to submit material to George who liked what I did and encouraged me to write more. I did. Lots more.
I wrote scripts for George for a while and it was slow-going because he was out for weeks at a time due to the illness that took his life but a few years later — in 1974. Before that sad event, he'd come back from medical leave and find his desk piled high with Evanier submissions.
I joke that he referred me to Chase just to get rid of that drain on his health but the truth is, I'm sure, that he felt guilty about his slow response time on every script. One day, he was talking to Chase about perhaps improving the quality of the material Western was producing and Chase lamented that a couple of his best writers had left him or were burning out. George said something like, "Hey, I've got a kid here you oughta know about," and he sent Chase copies of scripts I had done for him.
So it was that on one day outta the clear blue sky, Chase Craig called me and asked, "Can you write Super Goof stories for me the way you write them for George Sherman?" Well, I could sure try.
I sold him a few, then he had me write an emergency, had-to-be-done-almost-overnight issue of The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan. After I handed it in, there came this extraordinary (for me) moment in the office depicted above. He leaned back in his chair and said, "You know, if you were able to write four or five comics a month for me, I could probably use them."
Then there was a pause — and I really remember that pause because of what came after — and he said, "I could really use you on Bugs Bunny."
This will all mean nothing to most of you and perhaps it shouldn't. But somewhere out there, there's a fellow professional writer who'll identify. He or she will recall the instant when they thought, "Hey, I really may be able to make a living in this business." That was mine.
For Chase, I wrote Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Porky Pig and Beep Beep the Road Runner and Woody Woodpecker and Scooby Doo and many others. I largely moved away from the Disney titles, which was financially foolish on my part. Chase occasionally rejected a script — usually because I didn't have an idea but I wrote it anyway. If he bounced a Daffy Duck script, it went into my filing cabinet and I never got paid for it. If he bounced a Donald Duck script, I could sometimes turn around and sell it to George Sherman. But I didn't think that way. I just felt more comfy with Daffy than Donald.
He was a very good editor. I knew that then and later, when I had some very bad ones, I appreciated Chase even more. He played no power games. He never changed a word to show he was in charge, only when he thought it had to be changed and he was usually right. When I screwed up — and I did, many a time — he explained why to me in a polite, respectful manner.
We discussed matters like adults and I could sometimes talk him into my point of view. All in all, it was probably a more pleasant experience to have Chase reject one of my scripts, as he occasionally had to do, than to have certain other editors I've had buy one.
Chase retired around 1974. Soon after, he came out of retirement to edit a new line of comics for Hanna-Barbera. In one of the most amazing moments of my life — I wrote about it here — he hired me to write them. He did it for a while, got bored and then retired again, passing the whole job on to me.
Early in my new responsibility, I went to my filing cabinet and hauled out the pile of scripts he had rejected back at Western. It wasn't a huge stack but I figured there had to be some good ideas in there that I could use on the H-B comics. There were two Scooby Doo scripts that Chase had bought but which had never been published or even drawn because Western lost the rights to do Scooby Doo comics. In my capacity as editor, I immediately purchased them from myself. But among the scripts Chase had rejected, I didn't find a single plot, joke or line of dialogue I could recycle. That was how good an editor Chase was.
In the last few years, I've become very sparing in the use of words like "mentor" and "protégé" when I write about my years with Jack, Chase and a few other talented folks who I've been blessed to have in my proximity. While those nouns might apply in some senses, I see them frequently used by a "new kid," consciously or not, trying to claim a piece of someone else's greatness. Not always but too often, it's like "Hire me because I was that guy's protégé so I'm therefore in his league."
Nope. One thing I did learn from both Jack and Chase is that your work is your work. It stands or falls on its own merits, if any, and who you know or knew doesn't make it one iota better. When I write a joke, no one laughs at it because I've worked with a lot of funny people. (Sometimes, no one laughs at it at all but that's a separate matter…)
I write a lot about Jack Kirby and from the reaction I get, I don't think it's humanly possible to write too much about Jack Kirby. But Chase was very important to me too and from now on, every August 28 when I write about Jack, I'm also going to write about Chase. I don't believe they ever met but they had these things in common…
They were both responsible for some of the best and most popular comic books ever published. They were both very nice men. They were both born on August 28th. They both employed Mike Royer and thought he was one of the best, most professional and reliable artists in the business. And they both helped me an awful lot towards whatever kind of career I've had since I got out of high school.
That last thing-in-common may not matter in the slightest to you. You may even see it as the greatest failings of each. But it sure matters to me.
