Monthly Archives: January 2017

• I'm tired of people who spent 8 years hating Obama and claiming he wasn't qualified to be president telling me, "Trump won. Get over it!"

Lately — with all the uncertainty and worry about the future of this country — a lot of folks have taken the time to debate the question, "Would the creator of Captain America have punched a Nazi in the face?" They mean Jack Kirby, the co-creator of the character along with Joe Simon. This has gone around the 'net enough that it's now become a Snopes article which quotes various sources, including my book on Jack.

The first thing that should be noted is that when Jack was in the Army, his main job was to kill Nazis and he was quite willing to do that. Generally speaking, if you're prepared to kill someone, you should have no problem with punching them in the face. You might be disappointed that you don't get to kill them also but I suspect my dear friend Jack would have settled for whatever he could get.

The second thing that should be noted is that that was in a time of honest-to-God, all-out declared war. As far as I know, Jack never harmed a Nazi after that. Yeah, he hated them but a lot of us hate Nazis and never punch one in the face. I don't think he would have shot one if he wasn't in a wartime context so maybe he wouldn't have punched one in the face either.

Then people tell the story that I heard many times from Jack. This was before he went off to war, when he and Joe were doing the early issues of Captain America…

On occasion the Timely office would get phone calls and letters from Nazi sympathizers threatening the creators of Captain America. Once, while Jack was in the Timely office, a call came from someone in the lobby. When Kirby answered, the caller threatened Jack with bodily harm if he showed his face. Kirby told the caller he would be right down, but by the time Jack reached street level, there was no one to be found.

For what it's worth, I don't think that story had as much to do with Jack's feeling towards Nazis as it did with his natural response to anyone — Nazi or otherwise — who threatened him. He was real big on standing up to threats of any kind. Then again, that incident would have happened in 1941 when Jack was 24. When I met him, he was 52 and the father of four. I can imagine a kid in his twenties being more willing to use his fists than he would be later in life.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't know for certain and you don't and we never will. There are certain "What would Jack have done?" questions that I feel pretty confident I can answer but a whole lot where I don't. He surprised a lot of us at times with the way his mind worked. It was a brilliant mind but it "saw" things that mere mortals cannot…often a much wider, larger picture. Still, I can't imagine the Jack Kirby I knew just punching anyone who posed no physical threat to him.

So my answer to the question "Would the creator of Captain America have punched a Nazi in the face?" is that it would depend on the situation but probably not.

And that whole question flows from an incident at the recent inauguration when a man clad in black ran up and socked Alt-Right leader Richard Spencer, who was being interviewed on camera and presumably at that moment, not pointing a gun at anyone or threatening to punch them first. I feel confident in saying that in that situation, Jack would never have hit anyone. What he might have done is gone home, taken his contempt for Spencer and used it to create a story that would have been more devastating than punching the guy in the face. I would have liked to have seen that.

Eric Levitz notes that only four days into the Trump Presidency, some of his closest aides are already leaking stories to press about how the man is outta control and they have to try and avert his gaze from news that will infuriate him. This is not a good sign.

It's John Cleese. Just click and watch it…

If you read only one thing about Donald Trump today, make it what Matt Yglesias has written about him. It's the most convincing analysis I've seen as to why Trump won and it has to do with too many Americans figuring Hillary had it in the bag so they could simply not vote or vote for someone else. They could even vote for a guy like Trump they didn't want. Yglesia drops a couple of intriguing (if true) statistics like…

[Trump] got 17 percent of the vote of people who said he wasn't qualified to serve as president, 19 percent of the vote of people who said he lacked the temperament to be president, and 23 percent of the vote of people who wanted the next president to be more liberal than Obama.

Yglesias also says Trump won the electoral votes of seven states in which he failed to capture a majority of the vote. Something's sure wrong there.

What intrigued me especially was when Yglesias noted that "[His] antics have taken Trump much further than anyone predicted they possibly could, and so he evidently has no intention of abandoning them." I've been thinking that Trump reminds me in many ways of a certain TV producer I worked for, once upon a time. This guy had built a very successful career — unlike Trump, out of nothing — by a string of petty, borderline illegal tricks. Some were not so borderline. They were ways of delaying payments to people, defaulting on some bills altogether, etc.

He conned and swindled people until he had a few hits of such awesome success that he became very, very rich. When I was working for him, he was probably making $100,000 a week. That's right: I said "a week." But he was still doing all the old tricks to cheat a messenger service out of $20 or to set up dummy companies to run up bills and then disappear. You'd think that once he owned three homes, he would stop doing that kind of penny-ante con job but no.

One of his business associates and I discussed it one time and the associate said, "He's afraid to give up the two-bit swindles because he's convinced they're what made him successful. When I tell him to knock it off with the petty larceny, he says 'Hey, that petty larceny got me where I am today.' Last week in a 7-Eleven store, I saw him shoplift a Hershey bar apparently because he's done that all his life."

The analogy of that guy to Trump only goes so far but our new prez does seem to me like a guy who can't believe his act has succeeded and he's afraid to change anything about it. Which explains why his inauguration speech sounded just like one of his campaign speeches. I was surprised he didn't take a moment during it to call Rosie O'Donnell a fat pig.

Anyway, I think Yglesias is right. Most presidents seem to come into office and be surprised at how much they can't do. Trump seems more surprised than most. He thought he was elected Absolute Monarch…and with the marches against him and the press reporting that which he thinks should not be mentioned, he's finding out otherwise.

In tribute to the late Debbie Reynolds, three extremely talented Broadway performers re-create the "Good Morning" dance number from Singin' in the Rain. They are Christopher Rice (The Book of Mormon), Clay Thomson (Newsies, Matilda) and Eloise Kropp (Cats, Dames at Sea)…and boy, do they do it well. Stay tuned for some outtakes at the end…and it wouldn't surprise me if they had a lot fewer of them than Gene, Donald and Debbie…

• Trump's next excuse for not releasing his taxes: "You wouldn't be able to understand them anyway. All the amounts are in rubles."

Jonathan Chait, who has become my favorite keep-an-eye-on-Trump guy, explains what's up with the elusive Republican plan to replace Obamacare with nothing…or as Donald calls it, "Something terrific."

When I was twelve or so, it was suddenly my Aunt Dot's birthday and I had neglected to get or even make a present for her. So I lied and told her I'd ordered "something terrific" and that they hadn't delivered it yet. In this case, I later managed to come up with something terrific enough that she was pleased. I suspect the G.O.P. will wind up doing what I did then. I gave Aunt Dot a sampler pack of Planter's Salted Nuts. The Republicans will probably send everyone cashews in lieu of health insurance.

A friend called to quarrel with my statement that Trump spokesfibber Kellyanne Conway doesn't believe the stuff she says on her boss's behalf. This is not worth a whole lotta debate time. Maybe she does. But look at her history and look at the way she has her spins prepared…and I can't help but think that if I could offer her the same salary and exposure, she'd be out there insisting that Groo the Wanderer was by all means the greatest, most popular comic book ever published.

Let's all remember this woman's job description. It's to go out and sell the idea that Trump is darn close to Jesus Christ in perfection, integrity and success, and that anyone who says otherwise about anything is a lying liar in the act of lying. The underlying premise is that the press must be discredited in advance of those moments when they'll be reporting that Donald has looted the U.S. Treasury, sold the states that didn't go for him to Russia and applied Liquid Paper to the original copy of the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives so he could add in some things about him having the job for life.

Meanwhile, a lot of folks on the 'net have said that the outfit Ms. Conway wore to the inauguration reminded them of Woody Woodpecker. As a one-time writer of Mr. Woodpecker's comic book, I don't see the similarity. When I saw how she was dressed, the first thing that came to mind was how they dress the people who work in the mall at the Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick stand. It's a shame Kellyanne couldn't pass the test to work at one of those because she'll need a job once Trump needs a scapegoat to blame for his lies…and she already kinda has the uniform.

I've been on hold with the mail order company that fills my prescriptions. Well, I've been writing something during that hour but I've also been on hold…thankfully not hearing a recording over and over that tells me how important my call is to them.

I got to someone almost immediately, explained the problem and he said, "May I place you on hold while I look into this?" I said that was fine. He then went away for 24 minutes.

When he returned, he apologized profusely and said everything seems to be in order. The prescription is in. The "prior authorization" is in. My insurance company has okayed it all. (I do not have Obamacare in any form, by the way. This is just a private insurance company.) But my page on their website and his computer still do not say that they are going to actually ship the medicine to me, which would be a nice thing for them to do.

Once again, he asked if he could put me on hold while he checked into that. Once again, I foolishly told him he could and he went away. When I typed the subject line of this message, it was an hour. Now, it's an hour and seventeen minutes. More to come.

UPDATE, after another nine minutes: Okay, he apologizes and says they'll send it out, though my page on the website may not say so 'til tomorrow morn. We shall see. We shall see.

It must be tough to be a spokesperson for Donald Trump. His ego demands that his inauguration be the biggest, most spectacular, terrific one ever so when it isn't, he sends you out to lie and insist that it wasn't. Kellyanne Conway — who has yet to convince me she really believes a smidgen of the spin she has to spin — said that the Trump machine was presenting "alternative facts." Hey, there's a self-refuting phrase we're going to hear for a while.

You can still believe in the stated missions of Donald Trump but you have to be leery of folks who offer "alternative facts" — as opposed to, say, ones they can defend as true. It's like, "If the real facts you're hearing bother you, we have some lovely alternative ones you can believe instead."

Yesterday's protests were truly impressive. I usually think marches and mass demonstrations accomplish little except to make the marchers feel like they're doing something. But these swarms of angry humanity established — within 24 hours of Trump simultaneously taking the oath and breaking it — that there's a huge part of this country that is not going to roll over and be Trumped. I feel more hopeful than I have in months.

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I still get way too many unsolicited sales calls from contractors who claim I talked to them months ago about doing work on my house and I asked them to call back about now because I'd probably be ready for their free estimate and blah blah blah. Lately though, the contractors are being outnumbered by companies that do solar-related installations and, since I turn 65 shortly, folks who want to assist me with signing up for Medicare.

I'm not sure but yesterday around 10 AM, I swiftly got rid of one of the solar salespeople and then, just after Noon, I think the same person called to try and sell me on some sort of Medicare Advantage plan.

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The management here needs to remind readers of this site that when someone you've heard of dies and I don't post an obit and some anecdotes, it doesn't mean that I didn't like that person or care about him or her. It means I just have nothing to say about them beyond the obvious. I somehow managed to be around Miguel Ferrer on many occasions without ever actually meeting the man or exchanging two words with him. That's surely my loss since the many mutual acquaintances we have always spoke very highly of him. Many of them are remembering him lovingly on social media and you should seek out what they have to say. The act of remembrance belongs to them.

There's even a live touring version of Numberwang…

Jonathan Chait thinks Trump is already making Democrats — and probably a lot of people who aren't Democrats but think Trump is a horrible man — rise up and come together into a very potent, powerful opposition. Hope so.

In other news, Trump clearly had a tepid turnout for his inauguration but he threw a fit and sent his press secretary out to say, "This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period. Both in person and around the globe." You know, I don't think everyone who supported this man is stupid…but he sure does.

This is a series of articles I've written about writing, specifically about the problems faced by (a) the new writer who isn't selling enough work yet to make a living or (b) the older writer who isn't selling as much as they used to. To read other installments, click here.

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The previous installment in this series was about meeting deadlines. Since I wrote it, I've had some more random thoughts about that challenge so here they are in no particular order, starting with a bit of advice…

Let's say someone calls up and wants to hire you for a writing job. He says, "I need an article written in a hurry. I have a file here with all the necessary research and I will FedEx it to you because it's too large to scan and e-mail. What I need is for someone to read it all over and distill it down to the main points in clear English." He tells you more about it, you agree on your compensation, and then he turns to the pressing question of how soon you can get it done.

It's May 1. Based on what you've heard, you think it ought to take you a week to do it. So you say to him, "I can write it and e-mail it to you on May 7."

If you do that, you have made a very big mistake, my friend. Naming any date is a mistake.

Why? Because you can't start writing until you receive the file and he has to ship it to you. What if he can't get it to FedEx until tomorrow? Assuming FedEx doesn't screw up and assuming no Sunday intervenes, you won't have it until May 3…so you'll have five days instead of the seven you expected. But he may just consider it late if he doesn't have it on May 7.

This is an error I made a lot before I wised up. The correct answer to when he'll have your draft would have been, "I will finish one week from when I get the research." Remember that when you receive the necessary material is out of your control.  You should only commit to the part of the process that is within your control.

How I wised up on this: On one project, I agreed to a date and then the editor (or his assistant, whom he blamed) took ten days to get me the material I needed before I could start writing. I got it done in fewer days than I'd told him it would take but it did get there after the date I'd originally promised to have it in.  The editor agreed that the lateness was his fault but around the office, all anyone heard was, "Evanier was supposed to have had this in last week."  And there was that extra pressure on me to get it done quickly because of his mistake.

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I'm thinking now of a writer whose career has been harmed by a reputation for missing deadlines.  I may have written about this guy before. He always has a good excuse for being late…but really, he doesn't.  This is the kind of thing that always seems to happen with him…

He gets an assignment with a deadline.  They give him three weeks but he knows he can write the thing in two or three days, no sweat…so he puts it off.  He goes to movies.  He goes to the beach.  If the Lakers are playing, he goes to see the Lakers.  There's nothing stopping him from starting on the script other than he'd have to miss something he wants to do.  If you were to suggest he not wait 'til the last minute, he'd say, "Naah…I got plenty o' time."

Then a few days before it has to be in — when he's just starting or just about to start — something happens. He gets the flu. A relative dies. His computer breaks. He gets in a car accident. Whatever. The script is going to be late.

He has a good excuse…"I'm sorry but my grandmother died!" He always has a good excuse why he's not at fault…but like I said: Really, he doesn't. That's because he has no good excuse for why he waited until he only had three days, thereby setting up a situation where a last minute problem would make him late.

If he'd started right off and then his computer broke or he got a bad cold, he could have recovered from the problem and gotten the script done on time. If I'd been his editor, I wouldn't have excused him for putting it off. Not even for a dead grandmother.

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Writers have been known to exploit deadlines. "Gee, I'm sorry I can't make your party, Phil, but I have a deadline…" That's a great excuse when you don't want to go to Phil's crummy party.

I stopped by a writer-friend's home one time and heard an exchange between him and his wife. She complained that he hadn't put the trash cans out like he was supposed to. He replied, "I can't be taking out trash cans. I'm on a deadline, remember?"

And he wasn't claiming he couldn't spare the six minutes it would take to put the trash cans out. His argument was that drudge work like that would put him in the wrong frame of mind to write his script. Yeah, right.

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One good reason for a writer to live on the West Coast is that it often gives you an extra, phantom day if you're working for someone on the East Coast. Suppose your script is due on Monday. Monday afternoon at 1:00 Pacific Time, you call your editor in New York. Now, remember: You're not late yet. You said you'd have it on Monday and it's still Monday.

It's 4 PM where your editor is. He or she says, "I really need it." You say, "It's done. I just want to give it a little more polish…go over it a few more times. But really, it's done."

Your editor probably wants to go home at five so he or she will probably say, "Okay, fine. Just have it in my e-mailbox when I get in tomorrow morning at nine." That means you have until around 5:30 in morning (your time) to finish it and send it off. No one would ever consider you late.

But don't count on this too often. It's one of the reasons, as I explained in the previous chapter, that you need to learn the difference between a soft deadline — where you can get a few more days if you need them — and a hard deadline when you can't. If it's a hard deadline, your editor may just say, "Okay, do as much as you can in the next hour because I'm going to stay here and wait for it."

So suddenly, you go from having seventeen and a half more hours to having one. Type fast.

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Some editors and producers don't mind you being a little late if when it does show up, it's perfect or close to it. Obviously, they're better off if you hand in a really good manuscript two or three days late, as opposed to being on time with something that's going to need a week or two of editing and rewriting by them or you. But don't presume that you can be late because you know it'll be wonderful. For one thing, just because you think it will be doesn't mean they'll think it is.

But also there's a certain professional courtesy here. Editors and producers can get real nervous if they thought they were going to have your script on Wednesday and then Wednesday comes and goes with no script and no word from you. I've had producers and editors send me off on my assignment with the plea, "If you can't make the deadline, for God's sake, call me." One told me a story about a writer who'd turned in a script weeks late and had been incommunicado until he was done with it. The producer said, "People in the office kept asking me, 'Isn't that script in yet?' and I looked like a real ass when I had to say I had no idea when or if we'd get it."

So don't disappear. Don't hide. Don't make your editor worry about the problems he's going to have if you hand it in late. He may already be worried about the problems he'll have if when you do hand it in, it's awful and he has to pitch it and find someone else to write it overnight.

Don't make him look like a real ass.

Also, sometimes you think it's a soft deadline but it isn't…or it turned into a hard deadline unexpectedly. On one of my first comic book writing assignments, I delivered the script right on time. Delivering on time is always good form but it matters especially when you're in a new situation and need to prove reliability. There was an old pulp writer I knew casually named Frank Gruber. When I was starting out, he said to me, "Don't get a reputation for being unreliable. You will never lose it!" Wise words.

In this case, the editor was especially jubilant. When he'd assigned it to me, he thought it wasn't going to go into production immediately but then another script fell out and mine suddenly had to take its place on the schedule.

One of the ways to endear yourself to an editor or producer is to come to their rescue when they get into a bind. That editor gave me a lot of work after that.

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Don't be afraid of deadlines…and especially don't let fear of missing the deadline make you so anxious that it's difficult to work. That guy who went to Lakers games instead of starting on his script had a little bit of the right idea. He just went too far with it.

Unless it's one of those "we need it yesterday" jobs, you probably don't need to start immediately. If you have any experience at all, you should have some sense of how long you need to do the job right. Personally, I need to feel like I'm not a prisoner of my assignment; that I'm working on it when I feel like it, not because I'm manacled to my keyboard and doom is imminent if I don't torture myself a little. I want to pace myself so I feel I'm in control and also so I can stop and put it aside for a little while if I feel it might be going awry.

If you can afford to take a brief vacation from a script…well, that can be a great way to figure out where and when you made a wrong turn. Let it sit for a few days if you can, then go back to it. Read over what you wrote, not as the guy who has to pick up where he left off and continue but more like another person reading it for the first time.

You may solve some problem more easily then. I almost always find at least a few places where I could have phrased something better. Sometimes, I get a better feel of what it is I'm writing. Sometimes, I realize I took a very bad wrong turn on page 14.

This is another reason for not waiting until the last possible minute to start writing. You forego your vacation time. You may even lose your ability to toss out everything you wrote after page 14 and take a different approach.

I must admit not everyone works like this. I used to have this great friend named Steve Gerber and we talked about this a lot. I can write with or without a looming deadline. Steve always had to turn it into a crisis, going with little or no sleep, chain-smoking incessantly, putting a symbolic gun to his own head. I am not faulting him for this. He believed he did his best work that way and his best work was pretty damned good.

But at least try it my way before you try it his way.

And I have one final thing to say here: There is such a thing as an impossible deadline. Once in a while, you do need to say no. There may be a temptation to be a big hero and agree to write more than you can write in the time they have for you to write it. The money may be an even greater temptation.

You should have a sense of what you can and cannot do, and you should not commit to do what you cannot do. Being able to meet your deadlines starts with only accepting the ones that are humanly possible. If you want those who buy your work to treat you as a human being, you have to start by not pretending you're a machine.

William Saletan discusses Trump's speech at today's inauguration. It was so devoid of compassion and poetry that I can believe Trump wrote or at least edited it. Harry Shearer tweeted, "To be fair, it did sound like a speech written with a Sharpie."

A comment I'm seeing/hearing today — I think someone even said it on Bill Maher's show — is that it's time to face reality. The presidency is not ennobling this man. Not campaigning for office anymore isn't, either. He is not turning into anything that he wasn't all last year, picking petty feuds, describing a false reality and making it clear that in his world, "we need to work together" means "everyone has to kiss my ass and do what I say."

I dunno if they can be separated in most folks' minds but I'd be curious to know what percentage of those who are raising Trump's disapproval rating are more bothered by what they fear he'll do or simply who he is.