Monthly Archives: December 2017

Bob Givens got out of high school in 1936. In 1937, he went to work for the Walt Disney Studio, mostly as animation checker on Donald Duck cartoons and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 1940, he moved over to the Warner Brothers cartoon studio where one of his first jobs was doing the redesign of a rabbit character who would henceforth be known as Bugs Bunny.

In 1942, he was drafted into the army and spent most of his tour of duty working on military training films with animation director Rudolph Ising. After the war, he returned to Warner Brothers working for all their directors but mainly as a layout artist for Robert McKimson and Chuck Jones. He also began moonlighting for Western Publishing, drawing for their childrens books and comic book line.

In the decades that followed, he worked on and off for Warners but could occasionally be found at the U.P.A. studio, Jack Kinney's studio, Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng, Filmation, Film Roman and maybe a few other places. He more or less retired from working in animation around the start of the twenty-first century but taught well into his nineties. As you can see, he had what may well be the most impressive résumé in the history of the cartoon business.

Robert Givens died yesterday less than three months before he would have celebrated his hundredth birthday. We lost not only an important figure in the world of animation but a much-loved, unanimously-respected man who was always willing to talk to anyone about his work and to encourage others.

I was honored to talk with him now and then when he worked on Garfield and Friends, and to be invited to participate in a gang interview of him on the Disney lot last April. He was an amazing man.

You all know about Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the theatrical charity that helps men, women and children across the nation coping with not just AIDS but a raft of other illnesses and problems. BC/EFA is a worthy cause and they also throw the best fund-raising events. One of the best makes me wish I was in New York the first week of each December. That's their Gypsy of the Year show where the casts of current and recent Broadway shows perform. Sometimes, they do lovely, serious numbers and sometimes, they spoof each other and themselves.

This year's ceremony was held December 4 and 5, and it raised a record-breaking $5,609,211 for the cause. One of the most popular presentations was by the cast of the Cats revival which closes New Year's Eve at the Neil Simon Theater. They did…well, here. I'll let you see what they did…

• Since Net Neutrality has been repealed, can we all pay our Internet Service Providers to slow down Donald Trump's tweets to, say, one a year?

• Since Net Neutrality has been repealed, can I pay extra to have my Internet Service Provider hurry up Roy Moore's concession speech?

• Since Net Neutrality has been repealed, your Internet Service Provider will be charging you triple to stream any movie that does not have Nicholas Cage in it. Could be a bargain.

• Since Net Neutrality has been repealed, your Internet Service Provider will be charging you $84 to read this tweet. Hope you think it's worth it.

If you go to shows in Manhattan, this might be a handy page to bookmark. It's the seating charts for all the theaters in the Broadway area.

The magazine known as MAD started at about the same time I did.  Maybe that's why I've always had a tremendous fondness for it.  I have a complete collection in the next room and it's one of the last things I would ever part with.

Its founding editor in 1952 was Harvey Kurtzman and he departed in 1956, replaced by Al Feldstein who ran things there until 1984.  For most of the time, he was aided by a clever gent named Nick Meglin.  As I became a world-class expert on the magazine, I came to realize that a lot of the sense of humor I loved in MAD during the Feldstein years was Nick Meglin's sense of humor.

When Feldstein retired, publisher William M. Gaines split the editor job between Meglin and assistant editor John Ficarra.  Meglin retired in 2004 and Ficarra has had the position all to himself since then.  Earlier this year, it was announced that after 65 years, MAD would no longer be edited out of an office in New York.  It would move, as the rest of DC Comics has, to Burbank, California, where it would have a new editorial staff headed by Bill Morrison.  I know (or knew) all these men and respect every one of them.

Morrison and his crew are assembling their first issue, which will be #551.  It will feature many of the longtime MAD contributors (Sergio Aragonés, Al Jaffee, Dick DeBartolo, et al) and many new folks.  Meanwhile in Manhattan, Ficarra and his staff are about to send #550 off to press, which they are doing this week even as they clean out their offices.  There's a certain sadness there but they've had a good run with much to be proud of.

The writing especially has been very sharp the last decade or so, hindered mainly by a basic reality of production.  Humor in this country has grown more topical and immediate in the Internet Age.  When something happens in the news at Noon, we can start reading jokes about it on Twitter well before 12:15 and we can see more that night on Colbert, Meyers, Fallon, The Daily Show, etc.  MAD can post something on its website rapidly (and does) but the actual magazine takes weeks to print and distribute.  Thus, the topical humor in it just ain't that topical.

That's hurt sales as has the simple deterioration of the magazine marketplace.  I wonder if there's a single periodical that's been around 20+ years that's selling anything close to what it did back then.  Playboy, TV Guide, Newsweek…they're all way, way down from their old circulation figures and there are fewer and fewer newsracks around.

One of the few upticks in sales came when they began targeting Donald J. Trump, who is becoming as much their cover boy as Alfred E. Neuman.  Just as Trump-bashing upped the tune-in for late night TV and Stephen Colbert especially, ridiculing Donald has helped MAD tremendously.

But that of course is a short-term boost.  I don't know what the new masters of MAD have in mind for it except surely it involves finding ways to exploit its name and style of humor in multimedia ways.  I love it as a magazine but I don't see that as a bad thing at all.  I also know Bill Morrison well.  He's a bright, talented guy with a great track record for working with others, and a deep understanding and knowledge of the institution's heritage.

I'm just sorry to see Ficarra and his Usual Gang of Idiots — Sam Viviano, Ryan Flanders, Joe Raiola, Patty Dwyer, Charlie Kadau, Dave Croatto, Jacob Lambert and all the rest — outside the MAD loop. I like John tremendously but I told him long ago that MAD is precious to me in many ways. If I ever thought he was not doing maintaining its high standards, I would rip him a new one on this blog and elsewhere, treating him even worse than he treats Trump. I am so glad that was never necessary. Kurtzman, Feldstein, Meglin and Ficarra all kept MAD the best humor magazine that's ever existed and I'm sure Bill Morrison will, too.

Because if he doesn't, he's in a lot of trouble.

In the words of Donald Trump, let's go to the links…

• USA Today says Trump is "not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush."
• Matt Yglesias has a takeaway from the election last night: "The GOP agenda is toxically unpopular." He also notes that "Trump's net approval rating is lower today than it was for any previous president on record at this point in his term, and, remarkably, that's been true for every day of his presidency."
• But Ezra Klein feels the way I do; that it's frightening how close Moore came to becoming a Senator and that so many Americans will disbelieve or ignore evidence if their gut tells them to vote for a guy.
• Ron Faucheux has seven lessons that can be learned from last night. I agree with all seven.
• Nate Silver thinks what happened last night is not a fluke. And he draws some interesting comparisons between Democrat Doug Jones grabbing Jeff Sessions' Senate seat in Alabama and when Republican Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts.
• Jonathan Chait believes the Mueller investigation is in serious danger.
• But Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux believes that even if Trump fires Meuller, it will not stop the investigation. We link, you decide.

If Roy Moore had triumphed last night, he'd be all over the place today saying it was God's will, God had mandated his win, God wanted his agenda to succeed. Apparently, the opposite is not true.

A lot of Democrats are turning cartwheels tonight over the victory Doug Jones scored over Roy Moore for the Senate seat for Alabama. And it's true Democrats have hit on a strategy for winning elections but, alas, it hinges on Republicans nominating men with perverse sexual histories that are exposed, and then the Republican has to give lame, contradictory accounts of what really happened. I don't know how often they can count on that happening.

• Roy Moore just said, "I would have won if they'd lowered the voting age to twelve!" #FAKENEWS

I often rave here about the show my buddy Frank Ferrante does. I loved it from the moment I first saw this happen: Frank comes out on stage as himself and talks about the impact that Groucho Marx had on his life. As he's talking, he sits down at a little make-up table and begins applying grease paint to his face and rearranging his hair…and at some point, there comes a moment when the Italian kid completely disappears and there in his place is Julius "Groucho" Marx. For the next 90 minutes or so, there's a most reasonable facsimile of the guy singing, telling stories and bantering with the audience.

At the moment, Frank is doing his show at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, which of course is in Ohio. Here's how he makes that amazing transformation…

Today is the special election in Alabama between Roy Moore and Doug Jones for the U.S. Senate seat and the polling is all over the place. They all pretty much cancel each other out and we're left guessing how the vote will go. You can probably guess what I'm hoping…and it isn't even because of the charges of pedophilia against Moore. I thought he was a bad man before any of that came out.

In other news: Politifact has chosen as its Lie of the Year — and it had to beat out a lot of worthy contenders — Donald Trump's oft-repeated insistence that "This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story." The fact-checking site is dubious that Russian meddling gave Trump his victory but says there is no doubt that there the meddling occurred and Donald is fibbing to argue it didn't.

I like most of the fact-checking websites even when they tell me something I wish wasn't so. A few of them seem to have trouble differentiating between a deliberate lie and an understandable or innocent mistake but I have little problem with their assessments of what's true or false. And one might note that a lot of the false statements have the same birthing process. Someone was thinking, "Gee, what will get people to click on a link of mine?" If that's your goal, you can tell people you've got the secret to making millions, entrancing the opposite sex or penis enlargement. Or you can tell them that there's proof that Hillary's going to prison or Trump is resigning. There's a lot of wish-fulfillment going on.

It's particularly bad today because a claim that Roy Moore's accusers have all been exposed as liars doesn't have to stand any test of time. It just has to be believed while folks in Alabama are going in and casting their votes.

There's a saying that everyone is entitled to their opinion but not to their own facts. I think that's changing. I think a lot of people feel they're entitled to their own facts and we might as well all get on board. If tonight, Moore wins with 55% and Jones gets 45%, I think we should just declare that 45% is higher than 55% and that Jones won. Because you know that if Jones does win, a lot of Moore supporters are going to insist that he couldn't possibly have gotten more votes so it had to be rigged.

Bill Jodele sent me the question I thought was most worthy of being the 25,000th post on this blog. For it, he receives a nice gift and the answer that follows. But first, here's what he asked me…

So how does one get to 25,000 posts on one's blog?

Well, it helps if you love to write and I really do. I have no particular opinion on whether I do it well. Years ago, I developed the belief that it's harmful to a writer to have a high estimation of his or her own ability. It's usually harmful to the work and if you go around saying it, it can be harmful to your employment. Most people who hire writers are of the opinion that if someone tells you how great they are, it's because they figure you won't come to that conclusion if you read their work.

In my case, I only know these two things: I enjoy it and there's a very long list of things I'm worse at. If I couldn't support myself writing, I'd probably spend a large part of every week writing just for myself. I'd put in my nine-to-five at Subway making six-inch meatball subs on Italian bread, then I'd go home and write all night.

July of 2019 will mark a half-century of me being a professional writer and unless things take a drastic plunge between now and then, I will log fifty years of never having once thought, "Maybe I should do something else with my life." That is not necessarily a brag. I know people who'd say it shows a lack of courage or a lack of sufficiently-high dreaming…but in this world, we do what works for us and that's what works for me.

What I like about blogging is (a) it's writing and (b) it's writing for me. Some wise person will someday say, "An artist is never so free as when he draws for his own enjoyment." Perhaps one already has. Either way, it's fun to spend some of my time at this keyboard putting down whatever's on my mind, unfettered by concerns that some editor won't like this or some producer doesn't want that.

I have friends who started weblogs because they thought it would help them professionally. Someone, they figured, would read their blogs and say, "Hey, I wanna get that guy for this high-paying job I have." If my experiences are typical, that does not happen often and the offers that do materialize are usually to write for the same rate the blog pays — i.e., nothing.

(Full Disclosure: My Amazon links have lately been netting me somewhere between $300 and $700 a month, though they've occasionally sparked much higher. If that sounds like a huge windfall to you, subtract the $2500 a year I spend on hosting, estimate the number of hours I put in and then reconsider. Fortunately, I have been able to do almost all the design and tech work myself, and I have friends like Josh Jones and Glenn Hauman who pitch in when a software problem is above my non-existent pay grade, as so many are.)

It does bring me work because people who see my writing in more professional venues have an easy way to contact me but that's not why I do it. I think part of my longevity at this is that I've never expected it to lead to anything.

If you start blogging because you think it's going to bolster your career, you can get real disappointed quickly and lose interest. Over the years, a few writer-acquaintances started blogs and immediately wrote to ask me to plug them and link to them. I often wrote back, "I'll link to you after you get your tenth post up" and the link never happened because they never made it that far.

Here is a bit of advice for anyone who's thinking of starting a blog. Don't start by trying to figure out software and hosting and web design. Start by verifying that you can keep the thing filled because very few people will follow a blog that goes weeks without a new entry. See if you can write twelve posts of a non-time-sensitive nature in one month, three a week. That would be twelve posts of more than a few sentences…twelve posts with which you're satisfied. If you can't do that, don't waste your time setting up a blog.

If you can, then get the thing up and running — and don't be surprised if it feels like you have a new puppy in the house. It has to be fed on a regular basis and every so often, it will make a mess on your carpet…in the case of the blog, by crashing. This blog is hosted by an expensive but utterly reliable hosting company. Before I went to them, it cost me a lot less in money but a lot more in time and tsuris.

Then once it's up and running, try to see how long you can manage to get new content up there every few days before you have to use one of those twelve warm-up posts you did. As long as possible, save them for those inevitable moments when you can't spare ten minutes to blog but feel the need/responsibility to post something.

What should you post? Well, the great thing about blogging — and really, really make sure you appreciate this — is that it's wholly up to you. You will not experience a freedom like that in many other portions of your life. I would politely suggest though that only a small percentage be devoted to your career and general self-promotion. I am assuming here you want some sort of readership and most people won't read a blog that just says, "Here's what I have coming out that you can buy next week."

I am pleased and feel like I'm doing it right when one of my publishers e-mails me to ask, "How come you haven't written on your page about that new book you did for us?" People will tolerate commercials but they expect a fair amount of program between them.

And then enjoy blogging for the sake of blogging. It's hard work at times but so are a lot of things that are worth doing. The benefits? You'll hear from some friends you haven't heard from in some time. You'll make new friends. No matter how innocuous your posts are, you'll hear from someone who thinks you're a friggin', uninformed idiot. You'll get a lot of requests to promote other folks' projects. I enjoy a large, smart readership so I have only to ask a question and I get dozens of answers, many of them even correct.

But none of this will happen if you don't enjoy writing. I do and I've never understood people who do it voluntarily but constantly complain how much work it is. There's a quote attributed to various folks but mostly Dorothy Parker: "I hate writing but I love having written." To me, that's like saying, "I hate hitting myself over the head with a ball-peen hammer but I love how it feels when I stop."

If that's how you feel about writing, don't blog. I mean, think about it. There must be something else you can do to not make any money.

A touring company of Hamilton is up at the Pantages in Hollywood through the end of the year and I managed to score two great seats for last night for $200 each. So now first, you ask yourself if the show could be worth $400 plus the $20 I paid to park. Then you note that online "ticket resellers" (nicer term than "scalpers") are asking $700 apiece for seats in that area and you have to ask if the show could be worth foregoing a possible $1000 profit.

It's a switch on the old Groucho and Chico Marx exchange — "How much do you get for playing? How much do you get for not playing?" In this case, it's how much do you get for not going to see Hamilton?

Amber and I went and felt it was very much worth the $400. I don't know about the $1000 but we both thought it was a terrific show, well worth the accolades and fuss. I expect to enjoy it even more when I have time to play the cast album, something I usually avoid doing until I've seen a show for the first time. There were plenty of lyrics I missed and would like to hear.

I don't think I liked any one song or one aspect of the show more than another. Its cohesive properties were impressive — the way the narrative unfolded, weaving in and out of various styles and levels of seriousness.

Playing Alexander Hamilton was a gent named Michael Luwoye who I gather played the part on Broadway for a while. It's hard to imagine anyone doing more with the role but that was true of most members of the cast. A gent who was walking out before us was telling his companions he'd seen the original cast in New York and what we got out here was every bit as good. I can believe that.

Not much more to add except to say that in the past when I've gone to see the big smash hit that everyone was raving about, I've been disappointed. It was nice to not be disappointed in the least this time.

And now you may be wondering what's going to be in Post #25,000. Well, as they say in Hamilton, just you wait. Just you wait.