Monthly Archives: February 2016

The Ford Motor folks recently commissioned three cartoonists — Al Jaffee, M.K. Brown and Bill Plympton — to write and design little animated spots on the topic of paying attention while you're driving. Supervising the project was animation producer and director J.J. Sedelmaier, whose company has been responsible for some of the best animation of the past twenty years. If you see a cartoon segment on a very funny TV show that is not otherwise animated, it's probably their work.

Here, J.J. chats with Al and at the end, you'll see the finished video that they created. Al is still at age 94 creating his MAD Fold-Ins (and occasionally other things) for MAD but he took time out from them to do his first-ever work in the field of animation…

A 10,000 square foot replica of the Haunted Mansion building at Disneyland. For that price, it ought to come with Paul Frees included.

As we just tweeted, Steve Martin performed stand-up comedy last night, the first time he's really done such a thing in 35 years. Here's a report.

• Steve Martin performed stand-up last night for the first time in 35 years. You'd think a big star like that could get a better agent.

Wanna go to Comic-Con in San Diego this July? Online registration is tomorrow. Here's a tutorial on how to do it…

Watching the third part of The People Vs. O.J. Simpson, I got to wondering: Are there people watching this who think Simpson wasn't the murderer of those two people? And if so, do these folks think that the case as presented in the mini-series is accurate or flawed?

Back when the case was current, I found myself debating Simpson's guilt at a few parties. In some cases, it was with one of those people — you know the kind — who always believes the opposite of what "most people" believe. It makes them feel smarter or superior, I guess. I met an awful lot of them back when I was a lot more interested in the Kennedy Assassination than I should have been.

These folks never seemed to have any real facts or logic. Usually, it was a matter of connections. They always knew people who could give them the real story, as opposed to the pablum fed to the masses. One told me that Simpson's Dream Team was sitting on incontrovertible proof as to who the "real killers" were. (It's always a grand conspiracy with these folks — one that involves hundreds if not thousands of conspirators, many of them very well-known, and it always ties into larger, seeming-unrelated matters. The revelations would "blow the roof off" matters of international intrigue.)

Anyway, despite his assurances, the incontrovertible proof of a world-wide conspiracy never emerged. You'd kinda think it would if there was such proof, wouldn't you?

Then there were the "O.J. is innocent" people who were operating from the premise that the L.A.P.D. was corrupt and you couldn't believe anything it said, especially when there was the chance to frame a black guy. I never bought the concept that Simpson was innocent but framed…or even, as many opined, that he was guilty but framed.

I thought some of the anomalies in the case were simply poor or inefficient police work, not treachery. For what it's worth, every contact I've ever had with the L.A.P.D. has left me with the sense that they're mostly honest and dedicated but horrendously understaffed and underfunded. (They still haven't done anything about those two separate caregivers who robbed my mother back in 2012. Our "open and shut case" is still, as far as I know, sitting in a very large pile in a detective's office at the West L.A. Division.)

And of course, there were those who thought O.J. didn't do it because they thought it was about time a black guy — which is kind of what O.J. was, in a way — beat the rap the way white guys so often do. This new mini-series started with the Rodney King Riots because in a way, the story of Simpson's trial did, too.

I did encounter a few folks who felt, as per a logical and factual argument, that Simpson was not guilty or maybe that there was a big part of the story missing — like Simpson's son had done the killings and O.J. was taking the rap for him. To think any of that though, you had to write off an awful lot of the evidence as bogus, contaminated, not to be trusted, etc., and then fill in with speculation. A lot of people clearly didn't want it to be true.

Articles about the mini-series said that its writers and producers chose to not take a position on whether O.J. dunnit but clearly so far, they think he did. The third part has his lawyers deciding to play the proverbial race card, not because they think it's valid but because it's all they've got…and boy, are those lawyers sleazy. I couldn't help but feel that this was the story of a man who viciously hacked two human beings to death with a knife — and he was not the worst human being in this drama.

I still don't buy Cuba Gooding as the Juice. I still think Nathan Lane is too nice a person to play F. Lee Bailey. I still don't know what the hell is up with John Travolta's performance or his makeup. I still like everybody and everything else. And I still may stop watching as we get deeper into the gross miscarriages of justice and the success of some really sinister, immoral lawyering. Hey, maybe this will do so well that they'll make a sequel about the civil trial. That would all add up to way too much O.J. Simpson but at least the second one has a happy ending.

A fine and much-loved magician, Tom Mullica, died earlier today at the age of 67. For a long time, Tom's specialty — which you'll see in the video embedded below — was cigarette magic. He'd smoke twenty at a time, take them all inside his mouth, seemingly swallow them all and other items, etc. It was really an amazing act — one he did all over the world and on TV shows including appearances with David Letterman and Penn & Teller.

Before you ask: No, he did not die from a smoking-related disease. He had gone into a hospital for what was described as a fairly-routine hernia operation. There were unexpected complications due to blood clots leading to multiple strokes.

Tom had actually given up the smoking routine many years ago, focusing instead on other kinds of magic, a ventriloquist act and his main source of income during the last decade…his Red Skelton tribute show.

Once upon a time, Tom did his magic (cigarette and otherwise) at a nightclub he owned in Atlanta called Tom-Foolery. He was often more comedian than magician, sometimes taking 20-30 minutes to locate a spectator's chosen card and keeping the crowd in hysterics as he snuck up on it. Red Skelton, who often played a local concert hall, was occasionally in that audience, which led to Red and Tom becoming good friends.

When Tom talked about doing a little Skelton impersonation in his act, Skelton encouraged him and gave him permission to use some of his material. In recent years, Tom was very proud to proclaim that of all the Red Skelton impersonators out there — there are several — he was the only one to be personally endorsed by Skelton and to have received permission from the great clown's estate. The act played all over the continent with a long residence in Branson, MO.

I was privileged to see Tom on several occasions. He was quite entertaining and in performance, joyously mad — as this video of his old cigarette act will prove. And yes, I posted this here before, long ago…

What happens on Jeopardy! when there's a tie or no winner? Hey, let's go to the rule book.

In case you're sitting up nights worrying about Kanye West's finances, Jordan Weissmann says they aren't that bad. Which makes the performer's public appeals for money all the more ridiculous.

In 1955 and 1956, Johnny Carson starred in The Johnny Carson Show, a CBS prime time series that was not successful. Carson blamed its failure on him ceding too much control to the various producers who came and went before the show was finally axed. His career, for a time, suffered as a result of it all.

Some say that Johnny's whole life thereafter became a quest to get another shot in prime time; that he then did game shows and even The Tonight Show as a way or re-establishing his stardom. It was all to lead to a new Johnny Carson Show in the evening hours — one he would control and do properly. If one follows this theory, one then believes that at some point in the seventies, Johnny finally abandoned that mission, deciding instead that The Tonight Show was too good (and lucrative and safe) to give up and that a prime-time series would be a lot more work and risk.

Here's ten minutes from the '55 show, commencing with a sketch in which June Foray plays Johnny's wife. June had been on Carson's earlier, local CBS show a few times. It was not long after this that she began devoting her time almost wholly to voiceover and became the busiest female in that line of work. She was already doing cartoons for Warner Brothers, Disney and other studios and would begin playing Rocky, Natasha and others on Rocky and His Friends in 1959. Rocky and His Friends, of course, begat Rocky and Bullwinkle.

At the end of this video, there are two clips from other segments of Johnny's series featuring actors who did a lot of cartoon voice work. Sara Berner was heard in many Warner Brothers cartoons. She was the flea in An Itch in Time and she voiced Beaky Buzzard's mother in a couple of films, among other roles.

Then there's a clip with John Stephenson, who at the time was a busy announcer and on-camera actor. A few years later, his would be one of the most-heard voices in Hanna-Barbera cartoons…

At Comic-Con this July in San Diego, badges will have something new added. Read all about it.

A reader of this site who asked to have his name withheld sent me this…

You and I are very much alike when it comes to how we view death, or at least I believe we are by how you described your feelings dealing with the passing of your mother. I'm not a religious person at all — despite having just used the word "passing." Death comes to all of us and is unavoidable. Life is too short to be mired in grief for a long period. Yes, I would be sad and miss the person, just as I imagine that you miss your mom, but like you I don't think it will affect me in the profound ways I see it affect others — and certainly not for the length of time.

I received bad news today that my mom now has cancer for a fourth time. This time, there may not be much that can be done. I'm not looking for pity. It is what it is. I refuse to call it terminal since anything can happen but I am prepared for the worst. Sure, I am angry and sad, and all the other stages of grief but I am also accepting of the fact that time could be short.

What I don't remember seeing in your posts was anything about guilt. Did you ever feel guilty because you have the ability to move on faster than others?

Personally, I am sitting here feeling bad not because I will lose my mom but because I don't feel like what is considered the norm. I know others that if they were to hear the same news about their loved one, they would be in tears and have a sleepless night.

I, on the other hand, am upset with myself because I'm not more broken up over the news. I'm upset with myself knowing that when the inevitable does happen that I won't handle the situation like "everyone else."

At one time, you said "No law says you have to feel the way you think you're supposed to feel." I'm wondering if you ever dealt with guilt from thinking that way.

And what about external sources of guilt? Did anyone ever seem to be angry with you simply because you were not sad, or not sad enough? Was it enough to say to yourself, "There is no law…?"

No, no guilt, no anger. I did get a burst of fury from a distant friend of my mother who was upset that I hadn't notified her when it happened but I felt no guilt about that, either. My mother had left a list of people to notify, this person's name was not on the list and I simply didn't know they were still occasionally in touch.

So no, no one seemed angry with me for getting over my mother's death so quickly. I suppose if someone had, I would have discounted their anger because such a person could not possibly have been close enough to the situation to understand it.

My mother did not die suddenly. She died slowly, over about ten years during which she had a horrendous amount of suffering, many wishes that it would all end, and no hope that things would ever get better for her. The emotions I felt over losing here were more or less serialized over those years as I felt I was losing her, piece by piece. Each time she came out of that hospital — and she must have been in there thirty times — there was a little bit less of her remaining.

Moreover, I knew my mother. I knew her a lot better than all the onlookers and external forces combined. I knew how much she wanted me to get on with my life; how she felt enormous guilt over how much of it was being spent caring for her, being awakened in the middle of the night, foregoing outta-town trips so I wouldn't be far from her, etc.

Shortly after my father died, when my mother was still in relatively good health, she asked me to find her a lawyer. She said, "I want to take care of everything in advance so that when I go, you don't have to." I saw nothing wrong with that so I found an attorney, my mother went to see him and a few weeks later, she handed me a sealed manila envelope and said, "Here. When I die, open this. You should be able to handle everything in fifteen minutes."

She had put everything she owned into a trust with me as the sole beneficiary. She had prepaid for what they call in those commercials, "final expenses" — in this case, her cremation and the scattering of her ashes at sea. There were instructions about what to do, who to call, everything. Does that sound like a woman who would have wanted my life to come to a screeching halt when she died? Or is it a woman who wanted me to be as unaffected as possible by it?

I will suggest to you that most people feel that way towards their loved ones even if they don't have the wisdom and foresight to arrange things like that. They don't want to cause their loved ones trouble and pain when they're around and they certainly don't want to cause it when they're gone. I saw no reason to feel guilty about honoring her intent.

As it turned out, it took a little longer than fifteen minutes to handle everything once I opened that envelope. She had lived so long after the papers were drawn up that a lot of her life — like newly-opened bank accounts — was not covered by her advance planning. But she made it a lot easier for me than it otherwise would have been. (My mother outlived the lawyer who drew up the paperwork for her. She also outlived the mortuary that had sold her the cremation. It had gone out of business but fortunately, its obligations had been assumed by another outfit.)

Sure, I miss her. Every so often around 5:30 in the afternoon, I'll have that odd feeling that there was something I was supposed to do that I haven't done…and then I'll realize what it is: I always called her around 5 PM. But I see no reason for guilt, nor would I even care if someone was assholish enough to have an opinion as to whether I'd mourned sufficiently.

These things are just between you and the Deceased. And since the Deceased can't express an opinion, they're really just between you and yourself. If you're at peace with it, no one else should matter.

An infinite number of monkeys can eventually type all the great books and Donald Trump can sometimes say things that are true. Time for Seth Meyers to take A Closer Look…

This article is about followers of Ayn Rand and it starts with a quote from a student who says "Her writings freed me. They taught me to rely on no one but myself." That's a good thing and if that's all people got out of Atlas Shrugged and other Randian fairy tales, I'd applaud her books. Alas, what too many get is a way to pass personal selfishness off as some sort of principled stand. And as the piece notes, a good way to destroy what was once a very successful company.

Ross May sent me this and I thought I'd answer it here…

Perhaps you, or one of your knowledgeable friends can help me answer a question. I'm a younger man and feel I have a good handle on most Looney Tunes jokes that reference pop culture from previous decades. Sometimes a character, especially Daffy, will exclaim "Aaaaaagony!" and feign anguish or even dying. It shows up enough I can tell it's a catch phrase or some reference, but I can't find out from where. I thought this would be up your alley of expertise.

Sadly, it is. At the studio where the cartoons were made, there was a gentleman named Smokey Garner who was a film editor and a projectionist. When he was given a difficult job to do, he would usually moan, "Aaaaagony, aaaaagony!" It became a catch phrase around the studio and it found its way into a number of cartoons. (So did his name. In What's Cookin', Doc?, Bugs calls to the off-camera projectionist and says, "Okay, Smokey! Roll 'em!")

Whether Mr. Garner got the phrase from somewhere else, no one knows. But that's where the gag men got it from.