Monthly Archives: February 2016

Can nothing stop or wound Donald Trump? Well, according to David Cay Johnston, Trump's income tax records might. There seems to be a good chance they'd show that thanks to all the loopholes that have been set up for rich guys in the real estate business, Trump lives very well paying no income taxes. That might lose him an admirer or two.

• Wish I had a buck for every fat joke we're going to get about Chris Christie wanting to be Trump's running mate and "balancing the ticket."

• Chris Christie endorses Donald Trump. Also, Colonel Sanders, Burger King and Aunt Jemima.

Busy with a deadline…so not much posting here today and I didn't watch the Republican Debate last night. I probably wouldn't have watched it even if I'd had nothing to do because those things aren't debates. They're theater…and not very good theater at that. From all reports, it was all about Trump and I pretty much know what I think about Trump, including my belief that nothing he says now has any bearing on what he'd actually do in the White House, except maybe for the things that benefit people in his income bracket.

We're receiving lots of nominations for the Bill Finger Award, including quite a few for folks who are ineligible because they've already won…and three so far to give the "posthumous" award for writers who are ineligible for that one because of the silly technicality that they're still alive. Please understand that many are worthy and that each year, the judges aren't saying that only the chosen recipients are deserving. Especially with the posthumous one, it's usually a matter of which of many will get it this year and which ones will have to wait for another time.

I continue to get incessant, unsolicited phone calls from contractors — or in many cases I'm sure, people who know nothing about construction work or remodeling but are trying to earn some bucks making cold calls for contractors. I have developed a nice repertoire of fibs to tell these callers…fibs which seem to get rid of them faster than telling them, "No, I'm not interested." One calls me the other day and, since he has not only my phone number but my address, he tells me, "We'll be out on [name of my street] tomorrow because several of your neighbors have asked us for free estimates and we can swing by your place to give you one on any home improvements you have planned."

I laid one of my little lies on the guy and he laughed and said, "That's not true. Come on, gimme a chance to give you a bid on some work." I said, "Hey, you lied to me about being out on my street tomorrow because neighbors of mine wanted estimates from you." He said, "You're right" and hung up.

But now I have to get back to my script. I wonder if that contractor guy could build me a better second act.

Matt Taibbi says a lot of interesting things about that Trump guy.

And here's Taibbi writing about Trump's relationship with Joe Scarborough over on MSNBC. People keeping calling MSNBC the Liberal equivalent of Fox News but it really isn't. At best, it's that three or four hours a day. An awful lot of the time, it's apolitical documentaries, mostly about prison. And when Scarborough's show is on — which seems like always — it's a weak imitation of Fox News.

The American Conservative site ranks all the still-in-it presidential contenders on their foreign policy stances and comes to the conclusion that Bernie Sanders is the best.

If you're following that O.J. Simpson mini-series — and I still am — you might want to read what the real Marcia Clark has to say about racial issues in the courtroom. I'm still following the series but I'm more and more convinced that Nathan Lane and Cuba Gooding should have switched roles and that that isn't John Travolta playing Robert Shapiro. It's a large walk-around Muppet with Caroll Spinney inside it.

Producer Roger Corman — who got wealthy giving young filmmakers breaks instead of money — says he's been fighting to keep all that money.

As all we know, Antenna TV is running old Johnny Carson Tonight Show episodes. To promote this, they staged a panel discussion about the show at the Museum of Broadcast Communications back in January. Talking about Johnny were bandleader Doc Severinsen, Carson biographer Bill Zehme, frequent guest Tom Dreesen and Jeff Sotzing, who is Johnny's nephew and the proprietor of the Carson archives. If you're as fascinated by this show as I am, you'll want to watch…

Jacob Weisberg writes another one of those articles about how while the Republican party may profess to worship Ronald Reagan, they sure don't like most of the principles by which he ran his administration. Here's an excerpt…

Once in office, Reagan said that anytime he could get 70 percent of what he wanted from a legislature, he'd take it. Today's congressional Republicans won't settle even for 99 percent: Their mentality has shifted away from having policies and governing and toward a kind of bitter-end obstructionism.

In the early days of the presidency of Bill Clinton, congressional Republicans essentially went on strike, treating any legislative accomplishment as a Republican defeat, but they came to the table for a budget deal in 1997. With President Obama, they have largely refused to accept the basic legitimacy of a Democratic president. The tactical obstinacy of the 1990s has curdled into the belief that any compromise constitutes betrayal, a dynamic now playing out in the primaries.

Every time I turn on a political show lately, I seem to find John Kasich being interviewed, talking about the kind of President he would be…like that's going to happen. He keeps claiming he can get things done because he knows how to work with Democrats — and maybe he does. I just wonder how he'd work with Democrats if they acted like Republicans. Also, his idea of working with the opposition party does sound a lot like, "Okay, I want to paint the wall red and you want to paint it blue. Let's work together and find creative solutions and compromise and paint it red!"

A battle has broken out in San Diego about future building. The San Diego Chargers are not going to move to Inglewood but they also don't want to relocate to a proposed new stadium in Mission Valley near the one in which they currently play. They want a new stadium in downtown San Diego — one which would be the cornerstone of a huge multi-use entertainment facility.

Their statement says in part that what they are proposing would "ideally be a permanent home for Comic-Con and a Comic-Con museum" but what they don't say is that it would also limit all expansion of the convention center. The Comic-Con folks have issued a statement saying they aren't too keen about this idea…

We have had no discussions with the Chargers and were surprised to be mentioned in their recent statement. We hope the public is aware, and we would like to reiterate our ongoing belief that a contiguous convention center expansion is the preferable solution to the limits on current convention center space. Comic-Con has doubts that a multi-use facility would serve the best interests of potential conventions hoping to exhibit in San Diego.

The Comic-Con people aren't saying "we might move to another city" but it will be read as that. In the meantime, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts have both said that they believe what the Chargers are demanding would "…increase costs by hundreds of millions of dollars and take years longer to complete."

I have no idea how this will play out. I know how it should play out. Sports teams like the Chargers which are run for profit should pay for their own damned stadiums and the city should not be paying for any of this, nor should they be using "eminent domain" to displace property owners for such stadiums. Some of the land on which the Chargers' dream facility would be built is not owned by the team or the city.

But then I have zero interest in sports. There are people who do — including some who think it is immoral to use government funds to help the sick and aged — who think wealthy team owners should get everything they want to keep the local teams local. This Welfare-for-the-Super-Rich scam was covered not long ago by the eminent social critic, John Oliver…

This is one of those things that will probably never change. Local elected officials are terrified of voter wrath if they let a beloved team move away. In the case of San Diego though, the battle is not presently about the Chargers going to another city but about where they'll play and how much the city will spend on it. Demanding a stadium downtown might be the owners' way of escalating what would be spent on the new Mission Valley facility.

Like I said, I don't know where the Chargers will wind up playing but I'll bet it'll be San Diego and I'll bet it'll cost the city a helluva lot of money and make the Chargers' wealthy owners much wealthier. And if anything can drive Comic-Con to another town, a downtown stadium might be it.

David Wasserman discusses what it will take to stop Donald Trump from winning the Republican nomination. Basically, it would take Marco Rubio suddenly winning a lot of primaries…and I personally don't see that happening. He ain't won one yet, nor has he impressed a lot of us as the kind of candidate that people can rally behind. Trump may owe Chris Christie a nice gift…or a position in the Trump administration. As I look at the polls, it doesn't appear as if Ted Cruz has much more of a chance than Kasich or Carson or Spongebob Squarepants.

Friends keep asking me how I feel about the election. I think my attitude was well-summarized by Doris Day when she sang, "Que Sera, Sera / Whatever will be, will be / The future's not ours, to see / Que Sera, Sera." I don't have much of a preference between Trump and Rubio. Both seemed pledged to all sorts of right-wing wish-dreams that I think would be bad for this country, especially for the poor and non-white. Nor do I have a huge preference between Sanders and Clinton.

I know, I know. I have a blog that discusses (occasionally) politics. I'm supposed to have firm opinions and to write in absolutes and say that one candidate is flawless and the other will end life as we know it on this planet. I am presently unable to get more absolute than I absolutely don't want a president who will destroy Obamacare, shit on immigrants, get us into pointless wars and torture people to show how tough we are, shred the social safety net to slash taxes for the Koch brothers and the rest of the 1% and appoint more Scalias to the Supreme Court. So either Hillary or Bernie would be fine with me and anyone on the G.O.P. side would not be.

(At one point, I thought Trump at least had a goal of replacing Obamacare with something better and "incredible." But he tends to say things that sound like not quite what other Republicans are pledging and then later "clarify" his positions into pretty much the party line. I don't trust the guy not to just be more a clone of George W. Bush than Jeb would have been.)

And I still have the feeling that there will be revelations and new issues and events that will alter the course of this election in ways no one can foresee. The death of Antonin "Get over it" Scalia changed what it's all about. Call it a hunch or the likely extension of the volatility we see before us…but I think there will be a dozen game-changers like that. Maybe Spongebob will stand a chance after all.

So today, your host Stu Shostak welcomes my good friend Ken Levine, Ken's daughter Annie Levine and Annie's partner/fiancé Jonathan Emerson. Ken, as you know, is a top writer and director of comedy, among other things. Annie is continuing that family tradition. She and Jonathan have been working on Instant Mom and other TV projects, so there's ample opportunity there to discuss how the business has changed since Ken and his partner David Isaacs worked on shows like M*A*S*H and Cheers. Should be a good look into the whole process of producing situation comedies and maybe Annie will tell us what it's like to have a comedy writer and part-time sportscaster as a father.

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 can even download today's show and listen to it again and again to prepare yourself for that moment in your life when you realize your daughter is more successful than you are.

A funny piece from James Corden's show the other night…

Fred Kaplan on why closing Guantanamo is a good idea and the arguments against it are specious. I think they should keep it open as a place to put unreasoning obstructionist members of the House and Senate.

For reasons too technical for me to explain, several off-site links on recent items here were misconfigured. I believe they are all now right…so if you clicked one and wound up in the wrong hemisphere of the Internet, try clicking again. My apologies for leading any of you astray.

Years ago, a wonderful man named Jerry Robinson inaugurated the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing — an honor to be presented each year at the Comic-Con International in San Diego. The award recognizes a writer of comics who produced a splendid body of work but who did not receive proper recognition and/or financial reward. What Jerry had in mind was to publicize the name and fate of his friend Bill Finger, who wrote the key early Batman stories and who at least co-created the character and his wonderful, rich mythology.

In the last year, that injustice has been somewhat rectified. Bill Finger is now acknowledged for his contributions to his most important work…but since others are not, we're going to keep on giving out the award. This is the annual announcement that as its Administrator, I am now open to receive nominations and suggestions as to who might be worthy of it.

As you may know, each year we give out two of them. Okay, so one year we splurged and gave out three…but we'll probably give out two in 2016. One is a posthumous award. The other is for someone who is happily alive and who can (we hope) be there to receive it in person.

If in the past you nominated someone who is alive, you do not have to submit that name again. I have all the past nominations of alive people and they will all be considered this year. No need to send them in again but new names are quite welcome.

If in the past you nominated a deceased person, they will also be considered but there is a way you can perhaps boost their chances. Send me their name again but do it in accord with our new Bullet Point #5, which you can read below.

1. This is an award for a body of work as a comic book writer. Every year, a couple of folks nominate their favorite artist. Sometimes, they don't get that "writer" part and sometimes, they argue that their nominee qualifies because their favorite artist was in the field so long, he must have written an issue of something at some time so we can give him this trophy. No, no and no. A body of work as a comic book writer. Why is that so difficult to understand? Also, "a body of work" is not one or two comics you liked written by someone relatively new to the field.
2. Bill Finger in his lifetime received almost no credit for his work and nowhere near a respectable share of the revenue it generated. This award is for a writer who has received insufficient reward for his or her splendid body of work. It can be insufficient in terms of recognition or insufficient in terms of legal tender or it can, of course, be both. But this is not just an award for writing good comic books.
3. And it's for writing comic books, not comic strips. We stretch that definition far enough to include MAD but that's about as far as we'll stretch it.
4. To date, this award has gone to Arnold Drake, Alvin Schwartz, George Gladir, Larry Lieber, Frank Jacobs, Gary Friedrich, Del Connell, Steve Skeates, Don Rosa, Jerry Siegel, Harvey Kurtzman, Gardner Fox, Archie Goodwin, John Broome, Otto Binder, Bob Haney, Frank Doyle, Steve Gerber, Robert Kanigher, Bill Mantlo, Jack Mendelsohn, John Stanley and Don McGregor. Those folks are therefore ineligible. One cannot win twice.
5. New point, just added: If you nominate someone for the posthumous award, it would help if you also suggested an appropriate person to accept on that person's behalf. Ideally, it would be a relative, preferably a spouse, child or grandchild. It could also be a person who worked with the nominee or — last resort — a friend or historian who can speak about them and their work. And if it's not a relative, we would also welcome suggestions as to an appropriate place for the plaque to reside — say, a museum or with someone who was close to the honoree.

Would you like to nominate someone? Or re-nominate a deceased writer you already nominated with a suggestion of who could accept? If so, my address is on this page. Nominations will be accepted until April 1 and then any reasonable suggestion will be placed before our Blue Ribbon Judging Committee. Their selections will be announced some time in May and the presentations will be made at the Eisner Awards ceremony, which is Friday evening at Comic-Con. This may well be the sanest election in this country in all of 2016.

Yes, I know about this new article on Stan Lee. I'm even quoted in it. It seems to me a very fair, even-handed look at a complex situation. I will have a lot more to say about that situation in the book about Jack Kirby that I'm now working to finish.