Monthly Archives: February 2017

We have here a 20-minute TED Talk with Norman Lear — a fascinating man indeed…

Dale Herbest wrote to ask…

How do you respond to career critics? And I'm not just talking about people who critique the work you do (i.e., a "The Garfield Show isn't funny" kind of thing). I'm talking about people who say to you that what you do for a living is not "real work" and not at all "useful?" I'm sure at least once, someone has come up to you and after you mention what you do for a living, they're like "Oh, writing's not a real job" or "Acting isn't a real job" and "Directing isn't a real job." I personally don't agree with this but what do you think?

I think no one's ever said that to me…at least I can't recall an instance. What I can recall are a few folks who, in a more baffled tone, tossed out the view that a writing job wasn't a "real job" because it was not permanent and maybe because I've done most of them from home. They think a "real job" is something where you go into a building, work 9 AM to 5 PM five days a week with holidays and scheduled vacation time off and then you get a guaranteed paycheck on Friday and the amount is no surprise.

Oh — and also, you stay at that company for years and years and years until you retire. That's sometimes part of it.

As someone who's been basically a freelancer for a few months shy of 48 years, I've heard that a few times but it's usually not a put-down. It's more like, "Well, uh, when are you going to stop screwing around and get something permanent?" 48 years of pretty continuous work sounds darn close to permanent to me but there have been times when I never knew quite what I'd be doing in six months.

But no one's ever said what I did was not "useful." I mean, it obviously isn't but you can say that about a lot of professions…probably everything in the field of entertainment. How necessary are all those Kardashians?

This article may be a little premature in declaring Stephen Colbert "the Most Popular Person in Late Night" — let's see how long his current ratings increase lasts — but it's true that he's doing well lately. And given the monster ratings on Saturday Night Live in recent times and how well Seth Meyers (arguably the best Trump-basher on TV) is doing, it's obvious that ridiculing the current president is popular with the American people. Then again, so was covering his campaign speeches.

Trump seems to have set a new record for how few days into an administration people would start asking, "What did the president know and when did he know it?" And they don't even seem to have their story straight with Kellyanne Conway running around today denying reports that Trump demanded Flynn's resignation and Paul Ryan insisting Trump did. If this had happened in a Democratic president's administration, Republicans would be launching impeachment proceedings right now. At the very least, they'd begin a string of hearings and investigations that would run longer than The Price is Right.

But to paraphrase D.J.T. himself, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and the House Oversight Committee would not look into it. They'd probably schedule a few more hearings on Benghazi instead. Here's some reading material…

• David Corn on why this whole Michael Flynn thing needs to be investigated.
• David Dayen on what Trump, who once promised to watchdog Wall Street, is planning to do. Basically, he's going to let them do any damned thing they want. I cannot fathom why anyone ever thought he would do anything else but apparently a lot of people did.
• And Joe Conason has more about Trump and Wall Street and why we're going to be seeing a lot of the word "bailout" in the future…which, of course, applies only to saving rich people who didn't make as much money as they wanted. The Trump Administration ain't bailing out anyone but Donald's buddies.

And I have a busy day so that's it for now. You can find plenty of other articles online about all this. Me, I'm going to post this and then go try to think about other things.

This runs 43 minutes but I'll bet some of you will watch the whole thing and enjoy it. It's a 1961 program about American musicals and the guest is Stephen Sondheim who at the time hadn't even composed the entire score yet for a produced Broadway show. He was "just" the lyricist for West Side Story and Gypsy. About 22 minutes in, Sondheim gets on the subject of what he didn't like about some of his work in West Side Story, which I find interesting…

To the surprise of zero human beings on this planet, Playboy has announced that they will be reinstating photos of nude women. Actually, they never went away. They got tamer…but every issue I've received has had a couple pix of women with no clothing on. Basically, they reverted to the kind of nudity they had in 1965.

I don't know anyone at that magazine anymore so this is not inside info…but it looks to me like what happened was that someone decided that if Playboy was going to survive, they had to get a big influx of advertising. That meant lowering the ad rates which were way high for its circulation. It also meant toning down the nudity which scared off some advertisers. And it also meant slashing the budget of the magazine.

It didn't get a lot of attention because the big story was that Playboy was getting rid of nudity but what they really did was get rid of most of the budget. Say what you will but he used to do a very lush magazine with top writers and great photographers and the best-looking models and some of the best cartoonists in the business. They got rid of all that and wound up with a pretty crummy magazine which no one wanted to buy.

So now they're bringing back full nudity but I'm guessing they're not about to bring back the great writers and cartoonists and other expensive elements…so they'll still have a magazine that no one wants to buy. This is not going to end well.

• Hope there's video somewhere of Trump telling Michael Flynn, "You're fired!"

• I've decided that anyone who doesn't agree with me must be a paid protester. If you don't agree with me on that, you're definitely one.

Busy day. I may not find the time to post links to bad things Trump and his minions are doing…and let's remember that the problem isn't just him. It's all the people around him who are empowered by him including the Republicans in Congress.

John R. Hall reminds me that the song "Georgy Girl" was not the biggest hit from the group, the Seekers. "I'll Never Find Another You" was bigger, just as ABBA had bigger hits than "Mamma Mia."

I couldn't sit through the Grammy Awards but there are some fun clips online including what looks like a nice hosting job by James Corden. My impression of the Grammy Awards is that they give out so many of them that the top musical artists kind of expect to each get at least two or three and a "loss" is when someone only gets one, whereupon they fire their publicists.

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Saturday and Sunday, I will be down at the San Diego Comic Fest where I'll be moderating four panels, three of which will be about Jack Kirby. On one, I'll be interviewing my old friend, Mike Royer, who was one of the best of the many fine artists who inked Jack's pencil art over the years. Then there will be two panels where I talk with Mike and my partner from back then, Steve Sherman. We'll just tell stories about the amazing man we were privileged to know and work with. The fourth panel will be me interviewing another amazing man, Disney Legend Floyd Norman. If you can make it, all the details are here.

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Nice to have John Oliver back, though I thought the episode last night covered a lot of ground that others have covered before him. The great thing about Oliver's show usually is that they get there first.

Hey, here's an idea I wish someone would do. The word "lie" has been thrown around so much in politics — and often misapplied. Sometimes, when your opponent is just plain wrong about something, you lambaste him for lying…and, of course, since he lied about that, no one can trust anything he says about anything because he's a congenital, mentally-ill person incapable of telling the truth.

One of the reasons I think Trump gets away with it is that we've dumbed-down the word "lie" in politics such that it doesn't carry much sting anymore. We kind of all accept that all politicians lie and that our guy can be forgiven because (a) he lies for a good cause and (b) he has to lie a little to win against those evil liars.

I'd like to see someone assemble a montage of prominent politicians and pundits who were outraged when someone on "the other side" lied…and see those same folks change the subject or rationalize when confronted with their guy lying. Seems to me the contrast would be educational and you might be able to chart the growth in brazenness as candidate after candidate got away with it and went on to win.

Back later.

Here's the show Hamilton condensed down to seven minutes. Think how much money I just saved you — and these folks don't even need an orchestra…

One of the things that bugs a lot of people about Trumpism — and I'll bet it bugs a lot of people who still back the guy — is the idea that "the facts" can be whatever you want them to be if it helps you win an argument.

It serves Trump's purposes for the murder rate in this country ("the carnage") to never have been higher…so it's never been higher, no matter what the actual statistics say. In a year or so, he can point to the actual stats (even if they go up) and claim credit for bringing them down to that. It also serves his purposes for millions of illegal votes to have been cast for Hillary and for terrorism attacks to be so numerous that the press doesn't even report them.

My closest friend who is glad Trump won cringes at this kind of stuff because he thinks it, more so than anything Democrats are doing, de-legitimizes a presidency that he wants to see succeed, at least for certain of its goals.

It's also just really, really uncomfy for him to support Trump when people like me are saying to him, "Hey, you said Al Gore was a congenital liar when he said [summary of inconsequential Gore distortion of facts]. How do you feel about your boy Trump saying [summary of consequential Trump lie]?" It's bad enough that he has to defend/overlook the "pussy" talk or his candidate's marital and business track records.

I guess I should have been better prepared for this because I've spent a lot of time on Internet message boards and forums where, encouraged by distance and often anonymity and/or alcohol, people say some real stupid, untrue things. When such forums work — when people remain civil and relatively factual — some wonderful, enlightening discussions can occur. I've enjoyed many and learned from many.

But then every so often, along comes someone who's really mad at about something and/or committed to some personal agenda…and they just make things so unpleasant that the sane people prove their sanity by going elsewhere. These disruptors usually proclaim success but when I look at them, what I think is: "This person is really, really committed to winning arguments here because he or she is not winning anything very often in real life."

That may be unfair but in at least a few cases, I'm sure it's true. I know it's true.

Often, they remind me of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who may be the all-time greatest literary analogy ever for someone who loses and loses and loses and still thinks that he's winning if he doesn't admit defeat — to himself or anyone. King Arthur lops off the Knight's arms and legs off and the Knight's still clinging to some fairy tale bromide about how a man who won't be beaten can't be beaten. (When people quote that to me as if it's oh so true, I usually ask them what happens when one man who won't be beaten battles another man who won't be beaten…)

It's so bizarre to me at times to find people defending beliefs of microscopic importance to the death. I'm sure it happens on discussion forums of all topics but it never seems so petty as the comic book chat venues, where people — many of them alleged grown-ups — are arguing over who's stronger, The Thing or The Hulk, or who drew the best Batman. And hey, do you think Archie should marry Betty or Veronica?

I care about many, many aspects of the comic book world, especially those that impact the lives and appreciation of its great creative talents…but when you find yourself jousting online with a Black Knight about which writer's version of The Joker was definitive, all you can do is click your mouse and go find a better place to be. This is something you need to do before you get stuck playing their game for very long.

No one can win their game. You can't and they can't, though that won't stop them from deciding they did and taking victory laps. All they can really do is waste your time, energy and attention.

I argue occasionally with those who spread misinformation but try to not to get into debates over opinions because, well, they're opinions. We're not supposed to all like all the same stuff for all the same reasons. It's sometimes hard to find the dividing line though when you're dealing with people who think their opinions are facts; that the answer to "Who was Jack Kirby's best inker" is just as evident and inarguable as the answer to "What's 2+2?"

Over the years, I've learned to avoid certain individuals on the 'net because they're like that. Last year at Comic-Con in San Diego, one of them sought me out to talk…and I'll say this for the guy: He was a much nicer, saner human being than I would ever have imagined based on his online posts. I think we forget this sometimes. Some people, and I think I'm one of them, write pretty much as they are. If you don't like me from what I write here, don't bother trying to meet me. I don't get any better in person.

But some people aren't the same guy, possibly because they aren't all that facile with words and don't express themselves well. When all you have to go on about a person is how and what they write, it's hard not to formulate an overall view of them based on that. When I was in my early teens and reading mimeographed and ditto "fanzines," I kind of assumed that if someone's writings had a lot of typos in them, if you'd met that individual in person, they'd have a corresponding speech impediment. Or if they typed in elite type instead of pica, which is larger, they'd have a very soft voice.

Anyway, this guy at San Diego seemed intelligent and decent in person, which had not always been the case with his Internet postings. He had sensed over the years that I was avoiding him and wanted to know why. I told him as nicely as I could that online, I thought he was a maniac who was sloppy with his facts…and since there was no reasoning with him, why bother? He said he understood that, he apologized for being too strident and unwilling to concede error…

…and then he said, by way of explanation and not as an excuse, "I was having a rough time in my life back then." I think I always sensed that. I didn't know anything about the fellow but his arguments didn't always seem to be about what they were about. He was stressing over things in his world that weren't working out the way he wanted them to so he became a little more crazed to see them work out his way on this forum where we discussed comic books.

That's not just my "take" on the situation. It was his, as well. I think a lot of arguments on the 'net are in the same category.

It helps to remember that some people don't always manage to write that they mean by way of tone and often, substance. It also helps to remember that those who post under handles may feel no responsibility for what they post under that phony name and also that the Internet is a place of immediate reaction.

In the old days, something might get you furious and you'd sit down and dash off an angry, outraged letter — what a friend of mine used to a call a "Dear Mr. Asshole" letter — and then the mere act of writing it would take half the fury out of your soul. Then a half-hour later, the other half would evaporate and instead of sending the letter, you'd decide to save a stamp and your reputation so you'd tear it up.

Today, you finish it, you hit "send" and there it is for all the world to see, possibly forever.

When you read the Internet in this era of Trump, you see a lot of stuff that makes you think people are insane, which of course some are. You and I may disagree as to who the insane people are but I'll bet we agree that they're there on the Internet, just like porn, spam, clickbait, overhyped headlines, piano-playing cats, Nigerian scams, Kardashian photos and more porn. Being aware of the crazy people is important because you can't avoid them if you don't remember that they're there.

It's probably also important because we all have our bubbles and we need to remember that those bubbles are never as large as we like to think they are. Sadly though, the more you browse the web, the more you may become convinced we live in a world where we're outnumbered by crazies.

And maybe we are. But maybe some of those crazies aren't as crazy as they seem. Maybe they're stressing over something else, something largely unrelated to whatever they're being crazy about on some forum or comment section.

Or maybe they're coming across crazier than they really are because they're not very good writers. Remember that…and while you're at it, have a little sympathy for those who've lost and are so out of touch with reality that they just don't know it. You can usually spot them lying there with their arms and legs cut off, and they're offering magnanimously to declare the battle a draw.

A couple of the folks behind the very successful musical Mamma Mia are trying to replicate its box office with Georgy Girl (The Seekers Musical), which I don't think has played America yet but will probably get here eventually. Mamma Mia was built around the songs of ABBA. This one is about The Seekers, and its title is the title of their biggest record. Here's a performance of that number…

This is where I try to post all my links 'n' thots about the guy in the Oval Office so I don't have to think as much about him the rest of the day.

• Trump is supposed to be this superstar negotiator in the business world…though I'm not sure he's considered that by very many people who are actually in the business world. It looks more to me like he's a great negotiator the same way Doctors Phil and Oz are great doctors. Anyway, Trump was bragging about how he'd make a great deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping in exchange for reaffirming the One China policy. Well, he just reaffirmed it and according to Fred Kaplan, what Trump got in exchange was…absolutely nothing. Hey, I could have made that deal.
• Out on the campaign trail, Trump promised whatever would make the folks at his rallies cheer…and it seemed obvious to most of us that he had no idea if those things were possible or even desirable.  But in his world, you say whatever you have to to make the sale.  Now, he's stuck with having to keep at least some of those promises just because he made them.  As Kevin Drum notes, the ones concerning Israel are already proving to be kinda difficult to keep.
• Most Americans' idea of how to balance the federal budget is pretty simple. They don't phrase it this way but it basically comes down to "Just get rid of all the expenditures that don't directly benefit me." It ain't that easy as James Surowiecki explains.
• It will not surprise you that Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services takes a lot of money from tobacco companies, has investments in some and is all for rolling back laws that make it more difficult for such companies to prosper and reel in new customers.  If there's any coherent motto of this administration it's that government must never get in the way of large companies making larger amounts.  Patrick Caldwell has more on this.
• Just about everyone I think is funny is vehemently anti-Trump. As Jeet Heer notes, attacks on Donald by comedians won't destroy him but they might make him really, really angry. And now that I think of it, the madder Trump gets, the more likely he is to destroy himself.

And speaking of comedians, I wrote somewhere here not long ago that I was disappointed with Stephen Colbert's show. Well, not lately and especially not the first 15 minutes or so of all the episodes this week.  His ratings are notably up, too.  Hope he sends D.J.T. a nice thank-you note.

A few days ago, I stopped into a market to pick up about a dozen items. I was in the Canned Meats aisle when it occurred to me that I oughta hit the Men's Room before I left. I didn't have to go right that second but I sensed that I would before I got home.

The men's room had a combination lock on the door. You had to ask someone who worked there for the code. So I asked someone there for the code and they didn't know. So I asked someone else there for the code and they didn't know. So I asked someone else there for the code and they didn't know. So I asked someone else there for the code and they didn't know but they said, "You'd better ask the manager" and they told me where to find him.

I found the manager and he said he was sorry but he didn't know the code to the men's room either. I said, "Well, someone must know it." The manager kind of half-chuckled and said, "Louie knows it but he doesn't work here anymore."

Then he explained to me. They had an assistant manager named Louie. Louie was a problem and they told him he was fired. Louie was pissed about this. He left but before he left, he reprogrammed the doors to the public men's room and ladies' room, just to cause trouble. I said, "There must be some sort of master back-up code for them."

The manager said, "There is…but he changed that, too." I asked how long ago this was done and he said it was going on ten days. "I've phoned him a couple of times and demanded he give us the new codes but he said if we want them, we have to hire him back."

By now, I was way deeper into this story than I cared to be but I was also needing the men's room more and more. I asked, "What about the key? There's a key lock on those doors, too." The manager said, "Yeah, well, nobody here seems to know where the key is. We didn't use it much…once or twice a year when some homeless person would lock themselves in there for an hour or two. I've searched and I'm not sure Louie didn't take all the keys, too."

I asked if I could use whatever men's room the employees there used and he said sure and walked me back into the "authorized personnel only" section to show me where it was. On the way, he told me, "I've called the company that installed the locks and they're going to send someone out with a master key. They say once they get the doors open, they can reprogram the locks.

"I think they're coming tomorrow. I hope so because I have to do the final January accounting and I can't finish without one ledger that I don't have. It disappeared the same time Louie left and I called him and asked here the hell it was. He said it was in the ladies' room along with a couple crates of FatBoy ice cream sandwiches."

Oscar Levant (1906-1972) was an actor and pianist who is probably best remembered as a witty guest on talk shows, Jack Paar's especially.  He was in some good movies — An American in Paris and The Band Wagon, to name two — and on a whole lot of radio shows but America couldn't get enough of him on with Paar, bashing celebrities and celebrating his own illnesses. He was also a friend and confidante of George Gershwin and a protector of the man's legacy.

And for a year or so, he was a freeloader in the home of Harpo Marx…a notion that intrigued my pal Dan Castellaneta when he read of it in a book on Harpo. The whole notion — dour, sarcastic Levant rooming with zany, lovable Marx caught Dan's fancy and he starting thinking of a different Odd Couple: Oscar and Harpo instead of Oscar and Felix. This led to the play For Piano and Harpo written by Dan and starring him as Levant.

It's now playing through March 5 at Garry Marshall's Falcon Theater out in Burbank. It was directed by Stefan Novinski and it also stars J.D. Cullum, Deb Lacusta, Gail Matthius, Phil Proctor, and Jonathan Stark. You can order tickets here.

If you do, you'll note that at the performances on three Thursdays — 2/16, 2/23 and 3/2 — the play will be followed by a half-hour "talkback" on stage, discussing the work and the men. On February 23, which is the night I'm going to see it, I'll be moderating the talkback.

No, I haven't see it yet so this can't be much of a recommendation. On the other hand, I know Dan and I know that as wonderful as he is as Homer Simpson and other yellow people, that represents about 30% of what he can do. He's a fine actor and a very smart man…and I was just about to spend my own money for tickets when they asked me to host the talkback…so I'm sure looking forward to it.

P.S. The following Thursday, March 2, I'm the moderator for another event out in Burbank that will be of great interest to folks interested in animation and especially in animation voices. As soon as the folks running it make the formal announcement, I'll tell you about it here.