Yearly Archives: 2015

Here's a short video interview with Jack Kirby's son Neal about his father's involvement with S.H.I.E.L.D. What's most interesting about this is that it was done by and for Marvel…and there's no mention of Stan Lee in it. Make of that what you will…

Matt Taibbi on how politicians can now say just about anything that makes their supporters cheer and then, if the facts suggest they're wrong, double-down on the claim and blame a biased media. It must be wonderful to live in a world where the truth is whatever you want it to be at the moment.

Why is Black Friday called Black Friday? Let Kevin Drum explain it to you as much as it can be explained.

I posted this here on Thanksgiving Day of 2004, extolling the joys of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce. I assume Ocean Spray cranberry sauce is still as superior as it's ever been but around 2007 — a year or so after my Gastric Bypass Surgery and big weight loss — I experienced an inexplicable seismic shift in my taste buds. My sweet tooth disappeared and I no longer like or enjoy cakes, cookies, fruit, pastry, pudding or anything with a lot of sugar in it. That does not include roast turkey (still my fave) but it does include cranberry sauce. Here though is how I felt about the stuff in '04…

I'm a big turkey eater and it doesn't even have to be Thanksgiving. 365 days a year, I'm quite happy with a plate of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and cranberry sauce. I don't even mind when they arrange the slices like a little tent atop the dressing to make it look like you're getting more turkey than you really are. I expect deceptive advertising on my plate and it doesn't bother me, just so long as the turkey is carved off a freshly-cooked bird and the cranberry sauce is jellied-style Ocean Spray or the store-brand clones they sell in some markets.

One of the reasons I like buffets in Las Vegas is that at even the crummiest of them, it's usually possible to get all these things.  (Wait: I take that back. I don't think they have freshly-carved turkey — or any other kind, or even anything that's fresh — at the absolute worst buffet in that town, which is at the Boardwalk Hotel and Casino on the Strip. Want to see a buffet that would cause the Tasmanian Devil to say, "I'm not that hungry"? That would disgust Mr. Creosote? That makes your old high school cafeteria look like the Four Seasons at Sunday brunch? Then leave your taste buds home and hurry to the Boardwalk — and do it soon because as a public service, they're razing the whole building some time next year. It will take 300 tons of highly-explosive jet fuel to bring down the hotel and 400 to implode the macaroni and cheese in the buffet.)

I have eaten roast turkey with all the trimmings in many fine restaurants across this great nation of ours and earlier today, we Thanksgivinged at a renowned eatery on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. I had great turkey, great mashed potatoes, great gravy, great carrots, decent stuffing and dreadful, inedible cranberry sauce. I don't know what was it in it except maybe — and I wouldn't swear to this — cranberries. It was some concoction they apparently made on the premises because it would have been beneath the dignity and cuisine of an upscale eating establishment to just open a tin of Ocean Spray…but, you know, they should have. In many of the places where I've dined on turkey, the folks in the kitchen try to whip up something better and they always fail miserably. It's especially futile when they cross-pollinate and give us "cranberry-mango relish" or "cranberry-apple compote" or some other aberration of the form. That's nonsense. Plain ol' canned cranberry sauce is one of those things you just can't improve on. They'd have better luck trying to come up with a new recipe for salt.

So to the chefs of the world, I say: Give up. Those of you who think you can make a better cranberry sauce are making ridiculous fools of yourselves. Put all that marvelous culinary invention into making the veal parmesan not taste exactly like the chicken parmesan. Spend the time inventing a creme brulee that won't have pulled away from the edge of the dish by the time it's served to us. Work on perfecting that marvelous trick of making the food too cold to eat even while it's residing on a plate that's too hot to touch. But forget about reinventing cranberry sauce. You're not going to beat the Ocean Spray people at their own game so just admit you've failed and open the damned can.

While we're at it: What's with this semi-berry cranberry sauce? There are two basic categories of cranberry sauce — the jellied kind and the one that contains the whole berry. The whole berry variety has but one purpose: It's to be eaten if and only if they're absolutely out of the real kind, the kind any decent human being favors. Cranberry sauce should be jellied through and through, and with no skins or seeds in it. Everyone knows that.

But apparently, some restaurateurs think you can compromise on the necessities of life. So you say, "May I have some cranberry sauce to go with my turkey?" and the bus boy brings you a little cup of semi-gelatinous, dark purple ambivalence. It's halfway between jellied and berry, with disemboweled cranberry pieces throughout…like real cranberry sauce that they didn't finish making. Having worked in network television, I am way too familiar with the thought process at work here. Some clown who clearly doesn't belong in the food service industry says to himself, "This is great. We can satisfy those who like their cranberry sauce jellied and those who prefer it to contain the whole berry." This would be a brilliant idea except that nobody prefers it to contain the whole berry. Nobody! Do you hear me?

Don't write and tell me you do. You're lying.

All right. That's all I have to say about cranberry sauce. Next time I'm in this mood, I'll tell off these snotty places that when you ask for ketchup, they don't bring you a bottle…they bring you a little, insufficient dish of the stuff and you have to spoon it onto your fries or burger, then ask for another and probably another. They think it's classier but we know they're just too friggin' cheap to buy a couple of cases of Heinz. Thank you.

MAD Magazine asks the leading presidential candidates: "Would you pardon the Thanksgiving turkey?"

Hey, here's some footage of the 1940 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, complete with the Superman balloon that made its debut in that procession. Not bad for a comic book character who'd only been around for two years…

If your Turkey Day would be incomplete without a viewing of the famous Thanksgiving episode of WKRP in Cincinnnati, you can view it, thanks to Hulu, at this 2008 link on this blog. How many TV shows have there ever been that did their most memorable episode as Show #7 of their first season?

Various friends tell me of the horrors of Thanksgiving (or other family gatherings) with relatives who are politically stupid and stubborn. I never had this problem. My family didn't talk politics much and to the extent we did, we were all on roughly the same page. There was a period in the late sixties when I skewed much more Conservative than readers of this blog might ever imagine. Even then though, I had zero interest in discussing my views with my relatives and they had zero interest in discussing theirs with me.

For some reason, the dominant topic at the dinner table when a lot of us ate together was food. My father, his brother and his sister would argue about the way their mother cooked certain items as opposed to the way my mother had cooked comparable items upon which we were feasting. My mother's cooking usually came off well in the comparison but it still annoyed her a little that it was even being discussed…and discussed over and over.

Now, I avoid family dinners altogether. You can do that when you have almost no family left. My closest relative — David, author of this fine book — lives in Brooklyn with his peachy wife. Even if we were in the same state on some holiday, I don't think David and I disagree on much of anything.

Oh, yeah. I like some Woody Allen movies he doesn't and vice-versa. That's certainly not enough to ruin a meal.

As I've written here before, I had a very happy childhood with parents who yelled or quarreled about once every two years and never for long. I also had no siblings and have never for one second regretted that. Friends tell me how wonderful it was to have these brothers or those sisters and I don't doubt that for a moment. But I felt no void in my life because I did not and I was glad I didn't have to share my room, my comic books or my parents' affection.

By coincidence as I was composing this, I received an e-mail from someone asking if I had any tips about discussing politics with politically-different relatives at Thanksgiving. Well, I've never had to do that but, yes, I have a tip: Don't try it. It doesn't matter if your uncle thinks Donald Trump is a great man who will bring peace to the world by shutting up and/or nuking everyone who disagrees with him. It especially doesn't matter if your uncle resides in a state other than the few swing ones that will decide the 2016 Presidential Election…but it also doesn't matter because you're not going to change his mind. Just as he's not going to change yours.

So just remind him of that and ask him to pass the cranberry sauce. Happy Thanksgiving.

Jonathan Chait on Donald Trump and terrorism. I am still not worried about Trump becoming President of the United States or even the Republican nominee for the job. Is it possible? Sure. So are a lot of other scenarios that involve him getting so hysterical with his rhetoric and discredited "facts" that he becomes an obvious turn-off to swing voters…and therefore to Republicans who above all want to win next November. As he more and more becomes a caricature of himself, he's really starting to look like a guy who has Applause Lines but no workable policies.

It's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and an annual tradition on Stu's Show is that he invites on his two resident TV critic-experts, Steve Beverly and Wesley Hyatt, for a long conversation on the state of the tube.  Stu's website says, "We'll discuss CBS' new Star Trek series that will premiere over the air and then only be available through their online pay streaming service. We'll also run the latest cord-cutting numbers…something the satellite and cable companies need to start addressing fast. Other topics will include Colbert doing a 'live' show following the next Super Bowl, why the Buzzr digi-network continues to air the same eight weeks of programs over and over, why shows that are tanking in the ratings are not getting cancelled as fast as they did in seasons prior, and a new NBC Rant from Wes that will demonstrate once more why this network is in desperate need of some creative infusion."

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond.  Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three.  You won't find a better deal on Black Friday…or any color Friday for that matter.

There are few things I enjoy watching as much as Buster Keaton in his prime. This little look at his staging of gags reminds me why. I don't get a couple of the music choices in this but the visuals are a thing of beauty…

Here's a list of U.S. Senators telling us just how popular each is in his or her own state. The most popular — and by a wide margin — is Bernie Sanders. In Vermont, he has an 83% Approval rating versus 13% Disapproval. This is not based on a huge sample but I think it explains a lot as to why Sanders is so unafraid to advocate for positions that others might consider "unsafe."

The least popular? In Kentucky, Mitch McConnell has a 38% Approval rating and a 52% Disapproval rating. That's only slightly better than cold sores. I assume though that McConnell's problem is that he hasn't delivered on a lot of things that Republican voters feel he should have made happen.

My two Senators — Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein — are both around the 50% Approval mark and around 34% Disapproval. I have no particular feeling about either because I almost never hear anything about what they're doing or how any of their votes have mattered. California currently has around 44% Democratic registration and 29% Republican and I suspect that has more to do with the two Senators' current ratings than their actual job performance.

Hey, I should remind everyone in the L.A. area that tickets are still available for Frank Ferrante's run with his Groucho show at the Pasadena Playhouse, January 9-10. We in this area don't often get to see him perform his wonderful performance.

Usually, he tours America (and has a run in Australia ahead) and he ventures nowhere near where I dwell. Anyway, if you've never seen Frank, here's how it works. You go see his show. He comes out as Frank Ferrante and tells you of his love of Groucho Marx. As he tells you, he applies make-up and right before your eyes, the Italian kid disappears and you're staring at The One, The Only…

You blink and there he is, cavorting on stage and bringing one of the world's great comic talents back from the hereafter for 90 minutes of Marx Madness. I've never been fond of impersonator shows but this one works. If you can get to Pasadena when he's there, you'll see how well.

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.

Most Famous Role: Junior Bear.

Other Notable Roles: Pete Puma, The Beaver (in Lady and the Tramp), half of the Goofy Gophers (Mac & Tosh), half of Hubie & Bertie, many more.

What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: What didn't he do? Puppeteering (Cecil the Seasick Serpent and Dishonest John on Time for Beany), dozens of best-selling comedy records, acting for movies and television, hundreds of popular commercials produced by his advertising company, etc.

Why He's On This List: Stan was the other, unbilled voice in dozens of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, holding his own alongside Mel Blanc. Even after he was the highest-paid talent in the advertising business, he always made time for any cartoon voice job that came along.  He was one of the best comic actors to ever lend his voice to an animated cartoon.

Fun Fact: Stan got his first voice job in 1945 — a Warner Brothers cartoon — only weeks after getting out of high school. Stan passed away in April of 2015 but before he did, he did his last voice job for an episode of The Garfield Show that is scheduled to air in 2016.  That's a span of 71 years and a longevity record that will never be broken.

Daniel Larison is sick 'n' tired of guys like John McCain and Lindsey Graham scurrying about, moaning that the world has never been more dangerous, that nuclear conflict is imminent, that Earth's days may be numbered, etc. We have problems, sez Larison, but nothing like we've had in the past.