If you were at our Cartoon Voices panel on Saturday at this year's Comic-Con, you saw/heard Jim Meskimen demonstrate his uncanny ability to sound like just about everyone you ever heard of. Here's another example…
Monthly Archives: October 2016
Recommended Reading
It seems like every Hillary supporter who watched the three presidential debates had some gripe that she missed the opportunity to say this or she could have mopped the floor with him if she'd only said that. I thought of a dozen one-liners that I wished I could have teleported into her mouth.
And I'm thinking now that we were…well, not wrong to think of those things but wrong to think she needed any assistance. History may well show that Secretary Clinton is the All-Time World Champion of Presidential Debates. Three fights, three knockouts. And as Ezra Klein notes, she did much of it by maintaining her composure, not allowing herself to flap, and goading Trump into his poor, wild man performance.
I would love to know how much of it was planned by Hillary and her advisors but clearly some of it was. They sure gauged their opponent's weak spots well.
Sunday Morning
I've decided Donald Trump would definitely get my vote if he promised the Death Penalty for people who call me at 7:10 on a Sunday Morning and say things like, "Mr. Evanier? This is Harry Shmendrake [or whatever] with Shmendrake Construction. I spoke to you last August about possible work on your home and you were so nice to me. You told me to call you back right now and you'd be ready for our free estimate which I can have done today…"
It's hard to believe that "you asked me to call you" fib works but I guess it must or so many of these phone solicitors wouldn't use it. If I did need a contractor — and I don't — I don't think I'd even waste my time with a total stranger who called me outta the blue and who is recommended by absolutely no one I know. And if I was dumb enough to fall for the "you asked me to call you" line — especially after dozens of other annoying callers had used it on me — I certainly wouldn't trust that company. Many apparently would.
My cable provider is Time-Warner Cable, which is slowly turning into Spectrum. When you call them up, as I had to the other day, they still don't seem sure what the company is called at the moment. And they weren't even really Time-Warner Cable the last year or two they were Time-Warner Cable because Time-Warner had sold them.
Whoever they are, they assure me that my e-mail problem has been fixed. If you sent me one the last few days, I may not have received it. This has happened before and it'll happen again.
Last night at the Improv, the Dodgers-Cubs game was on in the bar area and a lot of folks were watching with great fervor. The last decade or so, I described my interest in baseball thusly: "As far as I'm concerned, the Dodgers are Sandy Koufax, Maury Wills, Tommy Davis, Willie Davis, Frank Howard and the rest of those guys. When they're playing again, I'll watch again…though I do sometimes like to tune in and listen to Vin Scully. I have no interest in the game but it's comforting to see or hear someone doing their job as well as it can possibly be done."
Now I don't even have that. So I am officially through with current baseball.
Live Colorization
Hey, lemme tell you about The Black Version. The Black Version is an improv troupe that performs in various venues around Los Angeles. It's a band of ridiculously-skilled black actors who create an entire "movie" right before your eyes on stage.
What kind of movie? A black movie. The way it works is that their fine director, Karen Murayama, asks the audience to name iconic motion pictures that didn't have an all-black cast. A list is compiled and then the audience votes as to which one they'd like to see converted into a movie with an all-black cast. Then the one that gets the most votes is accordingly converted. The first time I saw them at work, it was Forrest Gump. Last night, it was Thelma and Louise.
Last night, they were at the Improv up on Melrose. The cast varies but last night, it consisted of — gee, I hope I get all these names right — Daniele Gaither, Nyima Funk, Gary Anthony Williams, Cedric Yarbrough, Jordan Black and Phil LaMarr. I know Phil real well and he'd told me they were real good but he didn't tell me they were this real good. They also have a great little band accompanying them and I apologize I don't know the musicians' names.
The not-all-black movie is hilariously transformed. Ms. Murayama is constantly asking the audience for suggestions as to what characters should be named and how the story should go…and every suggestion is instantly incorporated. Now and then, someone breaks into an improvised song that sounds like someone spent a week writing it.
As with all improv, it doesn't work to quote lines the next day. You have to be there. I will try to post here when I find out about their next performance because you have to be there.
Garfield News
As many of you know, I've been the Supervising Producer, Voice Director and Head Writer of The Garfield Show, a series which plays all over the world and which airs in the United States on the Boomerang Channel. Boomerang currently runs a half-hour containing two cartoons at 7:00 AM and another half-hour containing two cartoons at 7:30 AM. This happens Monday through Friday and the times I'm giving here are when they run on my cable feed. They might be different where you are.
As with most cartoon shows, they run an episode once and then they run it again and again and again and again, etc. I do not pretend to understand the pattern but I do know that the first airing of each episode on Boomerang has usually always occurred long after it's been run several times in other parts of the world. Sometimes, several years after.
This coming Monday, they're airing a special two-hour block of The Garfield Show. It starts at 1 PM on my cable service. The second hour features episodes that they've run before here and which have themes relevant to Halloween.
The first hour will be filled by the four parts of "Rodent Rebellion," which I believe are the only episodes we've produced which haven't aired before on Boomerang. I call it to your attention because to the best of my knowledge, they comprise the final cartoons to feature voicework by the late, great Stan Freberg. He doesn't have a big part but he's in there, mainly in the second half. The rest of the voice cast consists of Frank Welker, Gregg Berger, Wally Wingert, Jason Marsden, Laraine Newman, Candi Milo, Corey Burton, Laura Summer and Jewel Shepard.
Freberg did his first cartoon work in 1945 for a Warner Brothers cartoon released in 1946. He did his last cartoon work in 2014 for a cartoon released in countries other than America in 2015 and now in this country in 2016. You can score that a couple of different ways but by any math, it's a career of around 70 years. Stan was a genius at making funny voices, funny records, funny radio shows and funny commercials…but how about a round of applause for sheer longevity?
Okay, the rest of this post is for the people who maintain the Episode Guide for The Garfield Show on Wikipedia. The rest of you can ignore what follows…
For complicated reasons that would bore the heck out of you, Season 5 of The Garfield Show consists only of the four episodes of "Rodent Rebellion." There are not nor will there ever be any more in Season 5. We may or may not do a Season 6 but that's still under discussion. Season 5 is just those four cartoons which air as two half-hours.
There's someone who likes to post phony episodes titles and descriptions of as-yet-unaired Garfield Show episodes on Wikipedia. This person — and it may be a team effort — is quite clever and has sometimes made up episodes vaguely similar to real ones we had in the works. But his or hers are bogus and I'm told some of them were posted for Season 5 and then deleted like all the other fake ones because they could not be verified. I am the best source you're going to find for this stuff — this blog has been running for sixteen years, guys and my name is on every episode of the series — and I hereby testify under oath that Season 5 is just those four episodes of "Rodent Rebellion." Thank you.
Child of the Fifties in His Seventies
In the early seventies, comedy changed a lot in America — and especially stand-up comedy. This is my view as one who watched it happen. The three who most seemed to me to be at the forefront of that change were, in alphabetical order: George Carlin, Robert Klein and Richard Pryor. I could name a hundred ways in which they revolutionized the field but here are two: They appeared in mainstream comedy venues but addressed a younger audience, talking about topics that interested people under the age of, say, forty. And they became role models for countless others who saw what they were doing, said "That's what I wanna do" and at least tried.
They all did different things. Carlin had the sharpest writing, Klein had the classiest delivery, Pryor was the one whose comedy came the most from his own personality. Not that others did not also contribute to the new sensibility but those three men really stood out in their day. And every new comedian I met between about 1975 and 1978 wanted to be one or all of them…or maybe Steve Martin, who came to prominence at almost the same time. Martin inspired a lot of guys and I'm not sure I can explain why I always put him in another category.
Anyway, forget about if it's the Top Three or the Top Four or whatever. My point here is that Robert Klein was very important and he's also the only one still alive and doing stand-up. He did it last night out in Thousand Oaks and I can't tell you how much I enjoyed seeing that he can still do it, just about as good as he ever could, at the age of Almost 75.
He looks older, of course. He dresses better. He moves at about 90% of his old speed but it was amazing how much he moved, pacing back and forth across the stage to make sure he neglected no one in the house. He even did some very funny physical bits.
He sang. He talked. Most of what he talked about was directed at older folks which was fine because most of those in the audience were that. He spoke of medical problems at his age, being asked for I.D. when he tried to buy a six-pack of beer in a supermarket, acting jobs that have him playing the father of the female star when he used to be cast as a boy friend, problems relating to "those kids today" and many other topics, including a fond look back at Watergate and Bill Clinton's impeachment. Yes, he played the harmonica and yes, he had trouble stopping his leg.
I always liked this man. There were at least two things he did better than any of his contemporaries. One was that he was a terrific actor and when he delivers a line he's uttered a thousand times on stage, it still feels like he's improvising on the spot. The other is that he was one of the first stand-up comedians who looked like he could get laid. All the ones before him seemed to be (a) complaining about their wives, (b) immersed in self-deprecation or (c) kind of odd and/or neurotic and/or standoffish. You laughed at them you sure didn't want to be one of them or even hang out with them.
But Klein was handsome and funny and he could sing and he could really connect with an audience. He wasn't a mess of anxiety like Pryor. He wasn't a scold like Carlin could be at times. He wasn't putting on a character like Steve Martin or from another planet like Robin Williams or Andy Kaufman. Klein was just the funniest guy at the party. Unless you were alienated by his politics, he was impossible to dislike. The audience last night sure adored him.
And one other thing: I'm 64. I'm on a search now for role models to remind me that you can get older without getting old. That alone was worth the drive to Thousand Oaks.
Today's Video Link
Kevin Meaney always made me laugh…
Saturday Morning
I had a great time last night seeing Robert Klein perform. More on this later today or maybe tomorrow. The guy's still got it.
I've been getting lots of entries in our contest to guess how many electoral votes Hillary Clinton will receive. A few folks do not seem to grasp that I'm asking how many you think she'll get, not how many you hope she'll get. A few folks also seem to not have read the part where I asked that you put your predicted vote total in the Subject line of your e-mail.
We have a few complaints that I didn't give you an opportunity to predict how many electoral votes Evan McMullin will win. McMullin is on the ballot in eleven states: Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia but his campaign seems to only have a pulse in Utah. So it wouldn't be much of a game to guess how many electoral votes he's going to receive. He's either going to get six or zero.
No one complained my game doesn't have you predict how many electoral votes Gary Johnson and Jill Stein will win. I'd say they're each going to get somewhere between zero and zero.
Donald Trump says that if elected, he'd block the proposed merger of AT&T and Time-Warner. Y'know, if I thought he'd actually do it, that would be a point in his favor with me. So it would be like 1 in his favor and 378 against. If he banned cole slaw, it would be 2 and 377. If he banned candy corn, 3 and 376. If he made it a felony for contractors to call me up and hustle me for work, 4 and 375. If he made Jon Stewart go back to the Daily Show…
What I'm saying is that Trump still has a chance to get my vote. Or would if I hadn't already sent in my ballot.
In other news, he is listing the important, vital deeds he will do with his first 100 days in office. These include repealing Obamacare, securing our nation's borders and suing all the women who have come forth to say he did exactly what he said in that video that he like to do. He continues his policy of accusing others of what he himself is guilty of when he complains that with these women, there was "no fact-checking."
More later, including a rave for Robert Klein.
Kevin Meaney, R.I.P.
Real sad to hear about the death of comedian Kevin Meaney at age 60. His agent announced he was found dead in his home and no one seems to know yet what the cause was. But he was around sixty and he was a very funny man on stage. I thought he was great in short spots on programs like The Tonight Show but you had to see him live doing an hour or so to realize how good and how versatile he was. In five minute hunks, he did a lot of catch phrases and funny faces…but there was so much more to the guy.
I build a recurring character around his "scolding" voice on Garfield and Friends. He would have recurred more but he was in such demand as a stand-up comic that he was usually outta town somewhere. Whenever we could get him though, he livened up the shows and the recording sessions…and he always seemed to show up with some incredible story of what was going on his life.
One time, he told us he'd gone to Vegas, had way too much to drink and woke up married to a woman he barely knew. Another time was right after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake in Southern California. We recorded a few days later and Kevin told us all a harrowing tale of being on the freeway when the quake occurred and finding himself trapped between two overpasses that had fallen, blocking off any route off the freeway. We never knew how much to believe his tales but they were always very tragic and very funny at the same time.
At one point, I believe he gave up stand-up for a time and appeared on Broadway and elsewhere in the musical Hairspray. Not long after, he came out as gay, telling all that his experiences working with openly gay people in the theater had given him the courage to do that. I heard him on some cable talk show discussing it and, again, it was very tragic and very funny. A fascinating, gifted guy…and he never failed to make me laugh.
Friday Evening
On my way to see one of my favorite comedians. It's this guy…
E-Mail Outage
I shouldn't have made fun of my cable provider in a tweet. Since about the time I posted that, some (not all) e-mails sent to my personal address have been bouncing or otherwise not getting to me. The folks who are supposed to fix this will fix this as soon as they figure out how to fix this. Might be some time year after next.
My Latest Tweet
- My cell is AT&T and my home internet connection is Time-Warner. They may merge so if I want to send any e-mails, I'd better send them now.
Recommended Reading
Benjamin Wallace-Wells discusses how much of Trump's rhetoric reveals the mind of a man who really, deep down, doesn't believe in Democracy.
Contest! Contest! Contest!
We did this back in 2008 and it was fun and I don't know why I didn't do it in 2012. We're going to have a contest to predict the outcome of the presidential race next week! The prize will be absolutely nothing but you'll be congratulated on this blog and that's worth a couple of Trump Steaks.
How many electoral votes will Hillary Clinton receive? Take your best guess, put the number down as the subject in an e-mail and send it to…
I'm obviously presuming Secretary Clinton has this in the ag-bay but if you think Trump's going to win, you can still play. Just send in a guess for Hillary below 270.
Only numerical guesses in the subject line will be counted. You can leave the body of the message blank except give me the name you want me to announce as the winner if it's not your handle. I may or may not announce some runners-up but you just never know what I'm going to do.
You can enter as many times as you want but only one guess per e-mail and only your last e-mail will be counted. So if you send a guess on Friday and you change your mind later and send another one on Sunday, only your Sunday guess will count. All entries must be in our special e-mailbox by 1:00 AM (Pacific Time) on Tuesday morning, November 8. The winner will be the earliest vote received with the correct total…or the closest guess if no one hits it on the button.
I will declare a winner whenever I think the final electoral total is official and unlikely to change. This may not correspond to when Donald J. Trump thinks that.
Since it's my contest, I get to go first. My guess is 350.
Today's Video Link
Not long after the Iran-Contra hearings, the great comedy writer Larry Gelbart decided to try and see if he could top that absurdity and the use therein of the English language to deceive. He wrote Mastergate, a play that had a brief Broadway run of 69 performances but which has lived on via regional productions. There was also a radio drama version that starred Walter Matthau, Ed Asner, Harold Gould, Hector Elizondo and Charles Durning, plus there was a 1992 Showtime TV-Movie version which also had a helluva cast.
It presents to us the television news coverage of a series of Congressional hearings. On the spot is a soldier named Major Manley Battle who, not unlike Oliver North, arranges for some U.S. weapons to go someplace they weren't supposed to go — in this case to guerilla forces in Central America, ostensibly to use in filming a war movie.
But it's not just a parody of what went on with Iran-Contra but also of Watergate and the Joe McCarthy inquisition and every time our legislators sit before TV cameras pretending to seek some important truth from witnesses who do their best to reply without actually saying anything. Indeed, it even parodies hearings that have occurred since Gelbart wrote it. As the L.A. Times noted when the Showtime version was released…
"I feel that these kinds of situations are going to be with us forever with government, the military and business being as big as they are," said Gelbart, whose long list of credits includes creator of TV's M*A*S*H and Tony-winning writer of City of Angels. "But first and foremost, Mastergate is a play about the language. It's not for me to discover that politicians are corrupt or full of hot air. It's really about what they and television have done to the way we speak and the way we listen."
The dialogue is amazing…and difficult. Broadway singers have been known to say that the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim are wonderful but very, very challenging for the performer who has to perform them. The speeches, many of them lengthy that Gelbart wrote for Mastergate present the same challenge.
Wanna see it? Well, you can. Today, the video of the 1992 video version becomes available again. My buddy David Jablin who produced it has arranged for it to viewable for a small fee on Vimeo's On Demand service.
As I mentioned, it has an incredible cast that includes James Coburn, Robert Guillaume, Dennis Weaver, Bruno Kirby, Ed Begley Jr., Marcia Strassman, Darren McGavin, Henry Jones, Pat Morita, Tim Reid, Buck Henry, Jerry Ohrbach, Richard Kiley, David Ogden Stiers, Paul Winfield, Ken Howard and Ben Stein. Here's a preview that will make you want to see the whole thing…
You can view it on this page for $1.99 for a one-week streaming period or $9.95 for unlimited streaming. All proceeds go to Norman Lear's People For The American Way Foundation in memory of Larry Gelbart, who was a big supporter. It's 90 minutes of pure Gelbart wit.