Yearly Archives: 2015

Here's this guy who likes to sing with himself singing with himself. This is "Good Morning," which you may remember from Singin' in the Rain. Words by Arthur Freed, music by Nacio Herb Brown…

I can only take so many articles about how if John McCain had his way, this country would (a) be bombing every country we could conceivably bomb and (b) never worry in the slightest about civilian casualties. If you're in the mood for one, click on Daniel Larison's name.

I posted this here on March 27, 2004. Everybody knows that these, like the Gold Key comics of The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Odd Couple and Gilligan's Island are all jokes, right? That I made them up? Apparently not. I've had a complaint from one of the folks behind The Grand Comics Database (A most excellent use of the Internet) that they keep getting questions why they haven't listed all these comics which must exist because Mark Evanier says they exist. Come on, people.

Here we go with two more looks at Gold Key Comics of the sixties and seventies based on then-popular TV shows. Don't spend a lot of time searching for these on eBay as they rarely turn up. Perhaps that's why they go largely unmentioned in most of the official comic book price guides.

The only issue of the WKRP in Cincinnati comic book received limited distribution due to the problems of Western Publishing, which by then had changed the name of its comic book line from Gold Key to Whitman. For a time, they published their comics under both imprints — that is, part of the press run would say "Gold Key" and part would have the "Whitman" insignia. The ones that had "Gold Key" in the upper left were for conventional newsstand distribution, whereas the "Whitman" titles were sold on a non-returnable basis to department and toy stores, the same way Western distributed its activity and coloring books. By 1980 when they did this one issue of WKRP, they had given up on newsstand outlets so no more Gold Key editions were being published, and many books that were written and drawn were not published at all, even under the Whitman logo. (A few, like the Disney titles, were printed overseas.) It's possible that subsequent issues of WKRP were drawn but never made it to press. The writer is unknown but the art was by J. Winslow Mortimer, who at one time was a main artist for Superman and Batman. He had done a long run for Gold Key on the Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids comic, and some others, and was then drawing Spidey Super Stories for Marvel. He did a nice job drawing "Blonde Ambition," in which Jennifer (the Loni Anderson character) goes on a TV show not unlike The Dating Game, little realizing that the unseen bachelors she must pick from are her co-workers, Johnny Fever, Les Nessman and Andy Travis. As she questions them, each fantasizes about marrying Jennifer and we see these daydreams acted out. The ending of the story is a bit of a cop-out as the unctuous game show host invokes a hitherto-unknown rule and claims the date with Jennifer for himself.

Somewhat better distribution was accorded the company's M*A*S*H comic book, which is not to say you'll be able to find a copy of it. The first issue (pictured above) was also produced out of the company's New York office and featured a script by Arnold Drake and art by Sal Trapani, though Trapani was apparently assisted on penciling by Charles Nicholas, whose work was usually seen in Charlton comics.  In it, the book-length story "Steckler the Stickler" tells of a young, by-the-book lieutenant who is transferred to the M*A*S*H unit and immediately begins causing trouble as he begins to parrot obscure regulations from army manuals and to report the tiniest infractions.  Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan and Frank Burns were both fierce about rules on the series but they were medical folks first and foremost, whereas Lt. Simon Steckler isn't a doctor nor is he particularly bothered when his demands that regulations be followed gets in the way of saving lives and treating patients.  For example, in one scene he insists that a vital shipment of supplies be returned to the issuing post because the forms accompanying it were filled out improperly.  Naturally, he butts heads constantly with Trapper and Hawkeye, especially because Hawkeye is working around the clock to save the life of an injured soldier who needs some of those supplies.  It gets so bad that Margaret and Frank join forces with Hawkeye and Trapper to entrap Steckler, tricking him into violating regulations and forcing him to report himself and demand his own transfer to another unit.

I have not been able to see a copy of the second and final issue which, insofar as I know, received limited distribution in the United States due to a contract dispute over rights between Twentieth-Century Fox and H. Richard Hornberger, the author of the original M*A*S*H novels (under the pen name of Richard Hooker) whose publisher argued that the contract for the movie and TV show did not extend to comic books.  Before Western's lawyers advised that the comic be suspended, several foreign editions were reportedly published as was a special English language press run that was distributed via military bases.  When I worked for Western, I did see a proof of the cover which advertised a story called "The King of Korea."  I don't know how or if the legal dispute was resolved but I was told that the first issue of the M*A*S*H comic book had sold poorly so it's likely Western just decided to drop the entire project.

More of these in a week or so.

My Aunt Dot was a very sweet, loving woman.  As I've related in past installments of this series, she was sometimes a bit ditsy but she was at heart a very happy, loving lady.  And she thought everything I did was adorable.  Everything.

When I was under the age of around ten, everything I did was especially adorable but it was adorable the way everything a cocker spaniel puppy does is adorable.  Once when I was six or so, I did a Jimmy Durante impression in her living room and you can just imagine how much I looked and sounded like that great entertainer.  Aunt Dot thought it was the single greatest moment in the history of show business.   For her, the top three were Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow," Harold Lloyd dangling from that clock face and her nephew doing Durante.  Not necessarily in that order.

Whenever I visited her home if there was anyone present who'd seen it fewer than five times, I had to perform it.  To her dying day, I think she felt I'd missed my true calling and should be touring in Durantemania.

As I got older, I grew weary of striding through my aunt's living room singing "Inka Dinka Doo" in the raspiest version of a voice which had yet to change.  Mostly, I was tired of being cute.  When you hit a certain age, you'd like to be treated as a person of that certain age.  I especially wanted her to stop laughing and telling everyone about The Watermelon.

As much as Aunt Dot loved my Durante, what she really thought was wonderful was me doing chores like a grown-up.  When my parents and I took her and Uncle Aaron to the airport, which we did a lot, she was in ecstasy if eight-year-old me carried her suitcase.  It was as cute as…well, as if a cocker spaniel puppy had carried her suitcase.  She kept laughing and saying, "Smash your baggage, sir?", which I guess was a line she'd heard someone say on TV once.

Then one day, I went to the market with her and it was somehow up to me to carry in The Watermelon —

— which I dropped right in the middle of her living room.

I can still hear the sound of it exploding.  If this were a Don Martin cartoon, it would go KA-PLOOOP!!  With two exclamation points and three Os.

Aunt Dot shrieked and moaned and threw herself to the floor with a sponge and some sort of cleaner she grabbed from the kitchen, making a desperate attempt to save her beloved wall-to-wall carpeting.  No luck.  The rug had a huge discoloration for the rest of its life — and it was right in the center so you couldn't walk into the apartment without noticing it.

I felt terrible…so awful that I momentarily wondered if the proper thing to do would have been to give up buying comic books until I'd saved enough money to get all new carpeting for Aunt Dot's apartment.  This was around 1960 and if I'd made that supreme sacrifice, I might have been able to resume my funnybook collecting in time to buy the first issue I wrote of Woody Woodpecker in 1971.

It also occurred to me that maybe most of the damage was actually done by Aunt Dot and her cleaning fluid — a suspicion partially confirmed on my next trip to the public library where I researched the staining capabilities of watermelon.  I never brought this up with Aunt Dot because she suddenly saw the entire blemish in a whole new light…

She decided it was adorable.  In fact, it was in some ways better than my Durante.  And you know by now how awesome my Durante was.

Thereafter when I went to Aunt Dot's and she had anyone else there (and she always had someone else there), we had a double feature: I had to do my Durante and stand there and listen to the hilarious story of how clumsy me had ruined her living room rug by dropping The Watermelon.

One night I had a dream: I cure a dread disease or abolish war or achieve my lifelong goal of eradicating cole slaw in our lifetimes.  Whatever it is, it's big and very heroic and the world press rushes to Aunt Dot to ask her how she feels about her nephew winning the Nobel Prize.  Standing before every microphone on the planet, she says, "He was always such a bright boy…but let me tell you about the time he dropped The Watermelon.  Oh, and make sure he does Jimmy Durante for you.  Now, that's impressive!"

Greg Hadley is a popular Internet Personality in Australia for his cooking videos, plus he also has a series in which he gives gardening tips. From his kitchen in Brisbane, he teaches you how to prepare simple items. In most cases, it's as easy as one-two-three…

1. Be real enthusiastic about every ingredient and of course the final product…
2. Make sure you burn your fingers at every opportunity by forgetting something may be hot and…
3. Add loads of butter to everything you make.

I find him funny and sometimes even informative. Here he is teaching you how to make a Garlic Crack Bread. I like his crazed style and how he does everything the easy way (like in this case, letting someone else bake the bread) and makes it look like anyone can do it…

For some reason, I watched a little of yesterday's Congressional Hearings on Planned Parenthood. Remember when Congressional Hearings were sometimes not about the party in power trying to gin up scandals for political purposes?  This one seemed especially bogus as Republican Congressguy Jason Chaffetz tossed accusation after accusation at Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards and tried real hard not to let her respond.

The Grand Finale was, as Kevin Drum explains, a chart Chaffetz unveiled which asserted that Planned Parenthood was seriously increasing its abortions and seriously decreasing other health services. Chaffetz claimed he'd compiled the chart from info in Planned Parenthood's own reports but that was, to use a term most folks reading this will understand, a lie. It was actually designed by a notorious anti-abortion group that…well, Mr. Drum explains how misleading their graphics people can be.

This whole attack on Planned Parenthood is an incredible sham.  For years, no one had a problem with fetal tissue transfer.  It was thought to be a good thing which aided researchers. Then someone got the idea that Planned Parenthood could be slimed by passing it off as "selling baby body parts" and the modest transfer reimbursement costs could be made to look like profiteering. I'm surprised someone isn't going after cornea and heart transplants as the barbaric selling of adult body parts.

Tomorrow (Wednesday), Stu's Show is back from its summer hiatus and your host Stu Shostak has lined himself up a helluva guest — Bob Barker! Bob, of course, hosted The Price is Right for seven centuries but Stu, being Stu, won't be spending a lot of time on that. Almost no one has ever interviewed Barker about his early career and all the other shows he's hosted, especially Truth or Consequences, which he emceed for something like eighteen years. (Imagine: That was his second-longest gig!) So it oughta be a terrific program. And joining in the conversation will be Price is Right producer Roger Dobkowitz.

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. Plinko chips not accepted!

Knowing you, you're probably wondering what I thought of the first installment of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.  I think I didn't see it. I have a good excuse but I can't tell you what it is just now. But Mr. Noah's debut is safe on my TiVo and I'll get to it soon.

I did watch both Colbert and Corden last night. Colbert had a pre-recorded bit about personality tests that was as good as anything he did on his Report and the rest of the show was pretty decent. They still have a lot of bugs to exterminate but already I like this show more than anything I've seen from Fallon, Kimmel or even O'Brien since he took up residence on that cable channel you never heard of before he was on it. I also like Colbert's Late Show more than anything Dave or Jay did in that time slot the last few years they had it. I look forward to Colbert getting better but I'm satisfied with what he's giving us now.

I really want to like James Corden. I think the problem with his show is that it doesn't have an organic feel to it. Colbert's program looks like someone (Colbert, most likely) sat down, looked at his personal strengths and designed a show around them. Corden's feels like they decided what elements should comprise the show in that time slot, went out and found someone more excitable and lovable than Jimmy Fallon and stuck him in that format. As talented as he is at some things, stand-up and the kind of remote bits Letterman and Leno used to do just don't flow naturally from Mr. Corden. He also gushes an awful lot about guests he doesn't seem to have known of before someone booked them for his program.

Like I said, I want to like him but it ain't easy. I'm now watching whenever he has on a guest I like. Last night, it was Carol Burnett and she was great every time he talked to her. When he was talking to his other guests, she looked pretty bored with the proceedings. That's the problem with bringing them all out at once.

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: Popeye the Sailor Man.

Other Notable Roles: Felix the Cat (and all major roles) in the 1959-1960 Felix the Cat cartoons, various supporting roles in the Popeye cartoons, various characters in other Max Fleischer cartoons like the Superman series and Gulliver's Travels.

What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: Mercer started out as an apprentice animator at the Fleischer Studios, then switched to the writing/gag departments and did a lot of writing, both for cartoons featuring his voice and many that didn't.

Why He's On This List: Popeye is one of the five-or-so greatest cartoon characters of all time and his voice had an awful lot to do with that. Jack Mercer was neither the first voice of Popeye nor the last but the consensus seems darn near unanimous that he was the best. In the earlier cartoon, his muttered asides — mostly ad-libbed during recording sessions — were a special joy.

Fun Fact: In the early thirties Mercer was a gag 'n' storyman at Fleischer's and like others on the staff, he was occasionally tapped to do a few voices in a cartoon. In 1935, William "Red Pepper Sam" Costello was the voice of Popeye and more trouble than the Fleischers thought he was worth. When he was fired, the studio turned to Mercer, who'd been imitating the Popeye voice around the office. He had trouble at first but once he got the hang of it, he became the official voice of Popeye. Others did it while Mercer was away for military service and occasionally someone else did it for merchandise such as a kids' record…but Mercer was Popeye for just shy of half a century.

Additional Fun Fact: Mercer keeps getting credited for a voice in Disney's Pinocchio but it ain't him. The one cited — the Rough House attraction statue in the Pleasure Island sequence — was probably Clarence Nash. Mercer did voices for New York cartoons and during the years the Fleischer Studio relocated to Florida, he relocated with them, then moved back to New York when the studio did. But he never did a cartoon voice in Hollywood until 1979-1980 when Hanna-Barbera brought him out for a Popeye series that studio was producing for television. And he even did some of his work on that series from New York.

Since I wrote here the other day about my local Albertsons Market turning into a Haggen — and the Haggen chain pulling out of this area less than a year later — I've heard from a lot of you. Quite a few people told me reasons that were not evident to me.

They said Haggen jacked up prices. I'm not sure they did at the one I've visited, at least on the items I buy — but yeah, there's a good way to drive a business into the ground. If you change essentially nothing about your market except to make it more expensive to shop there, customers will feel gouged.

Years ago, I had a long talk at a party with an exec who was with the Ralphs Market chain, aka Kroger. We got to talking on a subject that is of some interest to me: How market chains are increasingly becoming identical in what they stock. There's a sign I used to see in markets that said something like, "If there's an item you want that we don't carry, please let us know and we'll special-order if for you."

I learned that those signs were outright lies. I tried on a few occasions to special-order things I wanted and the reaction was always like, "What? We don't do that!" One supermarket manager said essentially that to me standing right in front of the sign. When I pointed to it, he shrugged and said — I forget his precise words but they were like, "I don't care what the sign says. We don't do that." The decision of what they stock is made on a high corporate level and it's made for all their stores across a region, sometimes across the entire chain.

(And yes, I tried smaller markets. What I discovered was that smaller markets simply didn't have the network and supply lines to obtain most items they weren't already carrying.)

The Ralphs guy gave me a long, impossible-to-replicate-here explanation of how the decisions are made as to what they carry and what they don't, and even how they determine which sizes of some items to carry. There was absolutely no room in the process to service individual customers and their desires. He admitted to me that as food chains merge, diversity on the shelves will only suffer. He said, "When you had ten completely separate chains, you had ten separate buying departments deciding what to stock. When we get down to two or three chains, we'll only have two or three."

Getting back to Haggen: Some of my correspondents said that some of their newly-acquired stores fired longtime employees with a special emphasis on those who were in some way disabled. If that's so, there's a great way to create ill will in the community where you're trying to establish yourself. Here's a message I received from Chuck Huber…

Santa Barbara was one of the areas of overlap of Vons and Albertsons stores where Haggen acquired some now superfluous outlets. In some cases, Albertsons kept a smaller, older store and gave up a larger, shinier one; presumably they kept the more profitable location.

In any event, Haggen got some very bad press in this area when, shortly after taking over, they fired a number of employees who were mentally-challenged but had been working for the previous Vons or Albertsons quite satisfactorily for a number of years. That did not sit well with lots of potential customers, myself included. Combine that with higher prices for no perceptible improvement in quality, and no one was really surprised when they went belly up.

Indeed. Well, I wonder what will become of all those soon-to-be-empty markets. There was one Albertsons out in Marina Del Rey that didn't become a Haggen. Haggen didn't want it, I guess. It shares a shopping center with a Costco and now I hear that Costco is buying it and planning some sort of expansion. Since the Costco there is already as large as any Costco, I'm curious what they have in mind. I'm hoping it's more ladies in hairnets giving out free samples.

Oh, also: A number of you wrote in to tell me where I might be able to purchase those Hormel chicken and turkey entrees that I like. There is still an Albertsons that I'm sometimes near so as long as they remain an Albertsons and carry them, I'm covered.

The turkey ones (only) are stocked at Target stores. The Stater Brothers chain in Southern California and WalMart carries both but I'm almost never near any of their outlets. The nearest Walmart to me is like ten miles. The nearest Stater Brothers is more like twenty and by the time I could get to it, that whole chain will probably be acquired by Ralphs-Kroger or Albertsons-Safeway.

When I was a kid, one of the reasons we were taught that Communism was bad was that since there was no competition, there was no choice. The markets all sold the same kind of bread and the same kind of canned beans and the same kind of salad dressing…and if you didn't like it, too bad. You couldn't go to another store and find an alternative. For some reasons, people who think Communism is the greatest evil on the planet cheer on big companies getting bigger even though it leads us in the same direction.

That's the free market operating, they say, and it's always for the better, even when some guy can buy the only source of a drug and raise the price from $13.50 a pill to $750. (Okay, so he's been Internet-shamed into lowering his profit margin somewhat. But other pharmaceutical companies continue to do that kind of thing, slowly but surely and with more grace.) I have the feeling that one day, we'll wake up and Time-Warner will own half the businesses in America and Disney will own the other half…

…and then one will acquire the other or they'll merge — and the markets will all sell the same kind of bread and the same kind of canned beans and the same kind of salad dressing…all at whatever price they want.

The soup can, as any fool can plainly see, is up. For those of you who don't know, the soup can is the symbol that I won't be posting much, if anything, today on this here blog. Usually, the mere posting of the soup can gives you more new content than most blogs but we have a high standard here for putting new goodies up here on newsfromme.com. In case anyone's interested, there are now close to 23,000 postings on this site, less than 100 of which are reruns.

I'm taking today off from it so I can devote all my attention to a special project which I may be able to tell you about later this week. Most of you will not be interested but you don't get to 23,000 without putting up a lot of real trivia. (When people ask me how I get to that total I tell them the secret: Make every fifth post a plug for Frank Ferrante.)

I would like to thank those of you who write me when you find typos on this blog. If you haven't spotted many, that may be because a few of my volunteer proofreaders are so fast that most of them are found n' fixed within twenty minutes of their posting. I don't acknowledge them all because usually, eleven people write in all at once but the fastest has got to be Mark Thorson. Ron Bauerle deserves special mention because he keeps catching errors in old posts, meaning that they were there for a while and no one noticed or reported them. Thanks to you all.

A number of you have written in to ask about the history of the memorable and covinous Dick Van Dyke Show comic books published by Gold Key in the sixties. I have updated my original article, expanding it, correcting some erroneous information and incorporating some better scans of the covers and you can see it right here.

Got this the other day from Elliott Kalan…

Long-long-long-time reader of your blog and your work, and I felt a foolish need to respond to something you said on Sunday in your review of this year's Emmys. I definitely agreed with your main point that this year's ceremony was as good as they ever manage to get, because most years it's pretty less-than-mediocre. But you parenthetically mentioned a trend among winners talking about how great the other nominees are and wondering if that's a way of bragging about how good the winner is because they managed to beat all these other supposedly great shows. So as the guy who accepted the Outstanding Variety Writing award for The Daily Show this year, in whose acceptance speech I mentioned how great the other nominees were, I want to clear my own name of bragging-through-compliment.

This year, for the first time in who knows how many that I can remember, I really felt like every nominee in the Variety Writing category had a strong shot at the title. Usually there's one or two nominees where I think, "If they beat us, I'm going to be pissed." But this year I wouldn't have had that consolation — if any of them had beaten us I would have had to admit, "Yup, they had a great year doing a great show and they earned it." It made me feel better about our winning that it came in a year when the other nominees were uniformly excellent, and I wanted to touch on that once I realized I was supposed to talk for the writers. Unconsciously, maybe it was a way for us to brag (my ego's just big enough to allow it), I'm no psychologist. But that wasn't my intended motive. I wanted the other nominees to recognize that we recognized how strong they all were. As for the actors, though, I can't speak for them.

And now having said my piece, I'll say keep up the great work with all of your work and thanks and I'll go!

You're quite right that this year's nominees were all outstanding. Feel flattered that I disagree with you that the others had a strong shot at the trophy. It's like the year two friends of mine were up for the writing Tony Award against The Book of Mormon. Everybody in the place knew long before it was opened what it was going to say in the envelope.

As I mentioned, I don't know how I feel about this kind of thing. There are times when a winner gets up at one of these shows and goes on and on about "what a great honor this is," and all they seem to be doing is inflating the importance of the award they just won. Other times, they seem honestly overwhelmed and grateful. I guess there's a humble way to praise the other nominees and a non-humble one and for what it's worth, Elliott, your speech sounded genuine and humble.

Speaking of genuine and humble: I thought it was kinda classy of Mr. Stewart to let a full-time writer accept the writing award on behalf of the staff, rather than to appoint himself spokesperson. Perhaps he had a premonition he'd be back up there to accept for Outstanding Variety Talk Series, as he was, but a star of greater ego and less consideration might not have taken that chance. I hope working with that guy was really as good as it appeared from afar.

They're saying Ben Carson is now tied with Donald Trump in some polls. That makes me even less likely to think Trump will be the nominee because I know it won't be Carson…and if he's doing as well as Trump, that means Trump's high polling numbers must really be meaningless.

Carson's running for the same reason Herman Cain (who at one time was the front-runner) was running last time. And why was Herman Cain running? Because none of us would have any idea who he was if he hadn't. It's just like Rick Santorum keeps running so we know who he is. He can't possibly think he has a chance to be the Republican nominee. He just wants people to know who he is so they won't Google his name to find out.

I have no idea who'll be the Republican nominee. If you forced me to predict right now, I'd say Rubio…but not that long ago, I would have said Scott Walker.

Not that I'm comfortable agreeing with Karl Rove but recently, he said — on Fox News, of course — "Let's just remember, we are at the beginning of this process. As of now, in 2012, Rick Perry was ahead at 29.9 percent, and we had seven more leads before it finally settled on Mitt Romney on Feb. 28 of 2012." He further said there might not be a nominee until March or April. Isn't it about time for Newt to get into this race?