The late Herb Trimpe was a great guy who drew a lot of comic books that folks of my generation loved, including his long run on The Incredible Hulk.
Herb loved comics and he loved new talent. He spent many of his last years teaching and encouraging others, and now a scholarship has been set up in his name. Wanna honor Herb and help continue his find work? Here's a link to a GoFundMe page where you can donate, as I did, to this scholarship fund. It'll make you feel good all day.
Dick Van Dyke took time out recently from campaigning for Bernie Sanders and made a cameo appearance on the Disneyland 60 Anniversary Special. Here 'tis…
Jonathan Chait on why Jeb Bush's campaign collapsed. I agree that a lot of it was because of the surname. I think a lot of folks who claim they admire George W. Bush really don't…or at least wouldn't have hesitated to demand the impeachment (and execution by firing squad) of any Democratic president who racked up the same track record. But I also think Jeb just turned out to be a lousy campaigner who didn't inspire anyone that he could do any more than not be as looney as some of the alternatives.
Someone named Matt Walsh wrote a long open letter to Donald Trump supporters calling them idiots and liars and other bad things…and saying they must admire him because he's doing the kind of thing they admire in Trump. It's kind of an interesting viewpoint that I don't necessarily endorse but it might give you something to think about.
"Professional Carnivore" Nick Solares is the meat expert for the Eater websites. In this video, he extols the glories of the pastrami at Katz's Delicatessen in New York. People are always saying Katz's has the best pastrami in the world…or at least in New York, just as they say Langer's Delicatessen down on Alvarado Street has the best pastrami in the world…or at least in Los Angeles.
Me, I don't care about that contest since I think the corned beef at both places is better. But then I think corned beef is always better than pastrami so if you're a pastrami preferrer, don't listen to me.
This video points up the problem with all the deli sandwiches at Katz's. They're way too big for one person to eat and if you're a tourist in New York (or going there on your lunch hour while working in an office), there may not be an easy way to take half of it with you to eat later. And frankly, one of these hot sandwiches doesn't keep well.
I think a pastrami sandwich at Katz's is around seventeen bucks. If they put a proper amount of meat in one, it would be more like ten dollars — but they make more money selling $17.00 sandwiches than they would selling $10.00 sandwiches…
Dale Herbest posted this over there and I thought I'd answer it here…
I was reading one of those rejection essays on your blog and you mentioned that the main reason you became a writer was because it was (in your opinion) one of the few things you could potentially be good at. Was that the only reason for choosing your vocation? Does any personal joy or pleasure come from it or could it be seen like an addiction to a certain extent; you put words on the page simply because you have the need to?
Oh, no. I love writing. I'm doing some of it right this second. In fact, I never understood that famous quote from Dorothy Parker about how she hated writing but loved having written. I don't get why any human being would choose a profession that they hated doing.
I suppose I could understand it if the profession promised to be incredibly lucrative and stable…but if you're smart enough to become a successful writer, you're smart enough to know that very few writers make tons o' bucks and that the work is not easy to come by. Even if writing comes easy to you, selling it almost never does.
It's one of those professions where you can make a lotta dough but the odds are against it. If money is your main objective, you don't become a writer. You get into some other line of work.
Still, I love it enough that every morning, I write something within ten minutes of awakening. I write something just before bed. I write lots of things in-between. I certainly have not been doing this blog — which once I post this will have 22,780 posts on it — because I thought there was money to be made or because I didn't like writing. I do it because I enjoy it.
Now, that may have something to do with the fact that I think I do it decently. It would be no fun to have to get up each day and do something that you didn't think you were doing well, especially since that would lead to a lot of failure and stress and angst. I could write another 22,780 posts listing professions that would cause me to feel that way.
But even if I won the Powerball tomorrow and never had to worry about income for the rest of my life, I'd still write every day. In fact, I'll let you in on a secret: I'm writing at this very moment. Even as I type this, I'm writing…and I'm not even getting paid for it. If you want to call it an addiction, fine. I'd call it doing something I love.
Over a quarter billion dollars has been spent on the 2016 presidential campaigns of people who have dropped out of the race. Some of them even dropped out in 2015. Here's how the spending has been going. Did anyone really think that some of these people had a chance? Who the hell spent that kind of loot on Lindsey Graham? And how did Jeb Bush raise all that money and not do better?
Al Jaffee discusses Jewish humor in and around MAD magazine.
Gag cartoonist John Caldwell, best known for his work for National Lampoon, The New Yorker and MAD magazine, died at 1 AM this morning. He had been battling cancer for some time.
Caldwell was born in 1946 in Cohoes, an upstate town in New York. He claimed to be largely self-taught as a cartoonist, though he did take a few terms at an art institute, the Parsons School of Design. He worked as a short order cook, operated a machine that folded handkerchiefs and as a cartographer for the state of New York. It was while he was laboring at the last of these jobs that he worked up the courage to begin submitting gag cartoons to magazines. This was back when there were a lot of magazines that bought gag cartoons.
He collected many, many rejections before breaking in with Screw magazine. He told me when I interviewed him for my book MAD Art, "Just my luck. I made my first sale to a magazine so vile, I couldn't show it to my family." Eventually, he got into National Lampoon, where his work caught the eye of MAD editor Nick Meglin.
Meglin called Caldwell to offer praise…but not work since at the time, MAD had all the artists it could handle. But Caldwell — long a fan of the publication — parlayed the call into an invite to tour the MAD offices. But a few years later, Caldwell sold them an article and a few years later, he sold them a few more…and by the nineties, he was a regular contributor.
His work fitted perfectly into MAD since it was always a little off-center and bizarre. It was also very funny. We're all sad to lose a talented guy like that.
Here's the video montage of Pat Harrington's career that was shown at this afternoon's memorial. The early clips are from Pat's appearances on Steve Allen's programs. The last ones are from his long run on One Day at a Time. In-between, you'll be amazed at how much this man worked…and this is just a tiny fraction of what he did.
The video was assembled by Pat's family — Mike, Terry, and Tresa Harrington — along with Stu Shostak, and it was edited by Paul Bunnell.
Today, I attended a lovely (and often funny) memorial service for the late Pat Harrington Jr., who left us in early January. Pat was both a comic actor and a serious one who appeared in countless TV shows, movies and plays but was probably best known for playing Schneider, the building superintendent on the long-running situation comedy, One Day at a Time.
The hall was packed with industry folks for a long presentation expertly hosted by one of Pat's sons, Michael. To steal a joke from the great comedy writer Gary Belkin, I was the only person there I'd never heard of. Many of those who spoke were members of Pat's family but there were also speeches about him from — among others — director Howard Storm, producer Norman Lear, actor Ed Asner and the comedy team of Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall. Charlie and Mitzi, who were among Pat's dearest friends, were indecently funny and touching.
Actually, all the speeches were touching. Pat was loved the way everyone should be loved — by all the people around him and unconditionally. Especially inspiring were the tales from the later stages of his Alzheimer's. Pat was twice married and when his second wife Sally needed a break from the 24/7 caregiving he required, his first wife Marge stepped in to take over. The two ladies were very close friends — and how often does that happen? What extraordinary women.
As I said, the whole place was filled with show biz folks including, I believe, all the surviving cast members from One Day at a Time, as well as an awful lot of comedy writers.
Of all the stories told, my favorite was the one related by Michael Harrington. Pat's father was a popular entertainer who did not encourage his son to follow him into that business. Instead, Pat wound up in the advertising department at NBC where he often amused his co-workers with brilliant dialects and characters, almost always improvised on the spot. His most popular identity was as a great Italian golf pro named Guido Panzini.
One night, Pat and a co-worker were in a bar and they spotted Jonathan Winters, who was a pretty big star. The friend approached Winters and asked if he'd mind meeting this golfer he had never heard of. Somehow, this led to a half-hour of Pat — introduced as Guido — entertaining Jonathan with anecdotes and hilarious stories.
After a while though, Pat began to feel guilty about hoaxing Jonathan Winters that way and he finally dropped the accent and said, "Mr. Winters, I can't lie to you anymore. My name is Pat Harrington and Guido is just a character I do." Pat was momentarily afraid that Winters was going to be pissed and maybe slap him or something. Instead, Jonathan grabbed him by the lapels and said, "I'm guest-hosting the Tonight show this week while Jack Paar is off and I'm putting you on Thursday night's show."
That's how Pat Harrington, who'd barely performed before a real audience before, made his network television debut.
The man had guts and he had talent. And I guess we all knew he had a great family and a great circle of friends. It was a joy today to be among them, to feel a part of that family and those friends, and to remember a fine gentleman. That he was, that he was.
Groucho Marx did his quiz program, You Bet Your Life, on radio from October 27, 1947 until June 10, 1960 and on TV from October 4, 1950 until June 29, 1961. It was retitled The Groucho Show for its final season and it was called The Best of Groucho in reruns. The program started life on ABC radio, the moved to NBC radio and the televised version was on NBC.
Six months after the game show left NBC prime time, Groucho and most of the same staff were back at work. They were on CBS with a new series called Tell It to Groucho, which was basically the same show but with a fancier set and a different game, plus they'd replaced Groucho's old announcer George Fenneman with a former beauty queen (and You Bet Your Life contestant) named Patty Harmon. The show didn't attract an audience and it was gone in five months.
I think it went off for the same reason as its predecessor: Audiences had just grown weary of the same old same old. Also, I think it had become pretty obvious that very little that was said on either show was truly ad-libbed. Between that and the obvious editing, some of the shows have a kind of phony air. Groucho was still funnier than all other game show hosts but he was still far from his best.
Ms. Harmon, by the way, changed her stage name to Joy Harmon and enjoyed some modest success with her acting career. She was the lady who provocatively and memorably washed the car in Cool Hand Luke. Oh — and the off-camera announcer was Johnny Jacobs, who announced zillions of TV programs, including almost all of the Chuck Barris game shows.
Here's a truncated version of an episode of Tell It to Groucho with special guest Rod Serling. This is from April 2, 1962…
Now that Antonin Scalia has been buried, genuine criticisms of the man and his impact can begin. People who thought he was a horrible, politically-motivated jurist no longer have to hold their tongues, lest they be accused of insensitivity to his friends and family.
Jeffrey Toobin summarizes what is probably a widely-held view of Scalia. Scalia claimed to be an "originalist," ruling according to what the framers of our Constitution intended. I don't think interpreting the Constitution that way is what those framers intended. That's why they made ample provision for amendments, started amending the document themselves even as it was being ratified, and left many phrases — like what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" — for each assemblage of the Supreme Court to define based on current mores.
But even if "originalism" is what they wanted, it's not what we need. Those guys didn't think women or minorities were human beings. It's also not what is practiced by most (maybe all) of those who claim to be applying originalism as their standard. Certainly, Scalia did not.
What he was doing was finding ways to argue that what James Madison had in mind was exactly what he, Antonin Scalia, wanted the law to say. Like a con artist claiming to be conversing and therefore speaking with God, Scalia insisted his rulings came from a higher source no one could question. And don't tell me that isn't the way Scalia was because Ben Franklin told me and he oughta know.
Work to do, work to do. I won't be paying much attention to this blog and even less to primaries and caucuses. I'm especially not going to read political articles online.
One arguably-nice thing about the Internet is that on it, you can almost always find an authoritative-sounding article to confirm that which you wish to believe. So if you want to believe that there's no way on Earth that Bernie Sanders can get the Democratic nomination, let alone win the White House, there are pundits who will tell you that's so. And if you want to believe he not only can but definitely will, it won't take much Googling to have someone tell you that's so. Same with any other candidate.
I sometimes think I know where all this is headed but then I remind myself that there's no way I would have expected some of them — Sanders and Trump in particular — to be where they are today…and there's a long way to November with plenty of twists 'n' turns ahead. If Marco Rubio could do as much damage to his political future with one poor debate performance as he did, who's to say tomorrow Bernie or Donald (or Hillary or Ted or any of 'em) won't suddenly self-destruct — or have someone help them do that? One wrong tweet sent public instead of private can do a lot of damage…or maybe not. A lot of things Trump had said to cheering crowds are things which not so long ago would have torpedoed a campaign.
I do think some folks have tremendous advantages and others never had a chance. Still, it wouldn't amaze me that much if come Inauguration Day, we see the new President of the United States, Lena Dunham, being sworn in by Chief Justice Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
In other news: Membership badges for Comic-Con International 2016 sold out in a little under an hour, I'm told. There's usually another brief on-sale period later on as they offer badges that were for one reason or another returned for refunds. If you wanna go and can't get one that way, your best bet is probably an exhibitor. Those who rent booths in the hall get a supply of badges and don't always need them all. Whatever you do though, don't write me. I can do nothing to help you.
Haven't watched Craig Ferguson's new show yet but the first two episodes are among the thirty-or-so hours of unviewed programming on my TiVo. I liked Stephen Colbert a lot this past week and caught some of Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show, which was broadcasting from out here — from the studio on the Universal lot which was made over for Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show.
Wednesday night, they did a bit they did once before in New York. Fallon started the monologue, then feigned an injury and had to ask someone to "tag in" for him and finish it — and Jay Leno walked in and took over. The audience loved it and it reminded me how I always thought Leno was the best monologist in late night…not coincidentally because he's one of the few who ever did stand-up outside a talk show situation.
Jay did the balance of the monologue, then left to go home. Later in the episode, a scheduled guest (Snoop Dogg) didn't show so Jay was hustled back out to be the guest for one segment. He said the producer caught him at the gate and got him to return. It seemed genuinely spontaneous because Fallon had no questions for him. Jay just came out, sat down and began telling stories, filling the time quite nicely with Fallon barely participating. But then Fallon rarely has much to do in his interviews even when he's sitting there with pre-written questions on a card in front of him.
If you want to watch the monologue segment, it's here. And part of Leno's sitdown with Fallon is here. Notice that Jay doesn't wait for Jimmy to ask him something that might lead to a funny anecdote. He plays it safe and just starts telling one and manages to tie it in with something that went before. You too can host The Tonight Show if your guests can all do that.