Monthly Archives: February 2018

Every once in a while, I like to watch a little of The Price is Right…and I'm one of those people (probably a minority) who thinks Drew Carey is a better host than Bob Barker. I couldn't take the show on a regular basis with either host but I usually feel it's harmless fun and I'm fascinated at the sheer skill on display with its production. This is a very difficult show to do in terms of getting the cameras and the prizes and models all in the right place here…and then having everything in a different place thirty seconds later.

I snuck into a few tapings years ago and if I had the connections to do so again, I think I'd go back for another visit because they keep making things faster and smoother…and boy, the show just goes like gangbusters even with the occasional tape stops. The director and the stage crew are all amazing.

Here's a segment from last May when a kid named Ryan set a new record playing Plinko. As you can see, Ryan is a tiny bit enthusiastic. The contestants who get called to "Come on down" from the audience are picked by the producers from the line outside and one of the skills on display in the show is the ability to pick interesting players. If you ever go to a "taping," try acting just like Ryan when the producers come down the line to talk to people. If you do it convincingly, or maybe even if you don't, you'll probably get picked.

One tiny thing I noticed watching this clip is that Ryan is wearing a wireless microphone. At the top of the show, four contestants are called out of the audience and of course, none of them are miked. We hear them because of the visible microphones on the edge of the stage. One wins and comes up on the stage and I'm guessing that if the first on-stage game involved the contestant moving around on stage or away from Drew Carey — as Ryan must do to drop his Plinko chips — they would stop tape and put a wireless mike on that contestant.

Then they put wireless mikes on the other contestants in case one of them gets up on stage and might stray from the range of Drew's handheld mike. The black lady who's added to Contestants' Row to start this segment isn't wearing a mike but I'm guessing she had one on by the next time she bid. I just like noticing little things like that.

Here's Ryan setting a new record for Plinko and screaming "Oh, my God" a lot. I think what I like about this is that it's absolutely honest. No one told the kid to act like that. His excitement is real. The audience reaction to him is real. You're actually watching what may be the high point in some person's life…

Busy day, starting with watching the news of the new indictments in the Russia hacking story. Everyone on the news seems to be saying Trump now has to abandon the argument that it's all a hoax and "Fake News." I kept hearing some version of, "Well, this establishes that there's a 'there' there!" I'm thinking this makes it a lot harder to get rid of Robert Mueller since you can't now say he's not doing his job (though some will, of course) and it will be awkward to abort his prosecution of the Russian Nationals he indicted. Which doesn't mean they won't try it.

And more sex scandals for Trump? And all this stuff about lax security clearances in the administration of a man who howled about how Hillary couldn't be trusted with state secrets? Not a good week to be Donald.

Let's see what else I have to write about. My buddy Rick Scheckman tells me he has a video on old Carson Tonight Show from '65 or '66 where Harry Von Zell fills in for Ed McMahon. I also remember Jack Lescoulie doing it as well as a couple of NBC booth announcers. Do we know if Bill Wendell or Don Pardo ever filled in for Ed?

Dick Van Dyke's show at the Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood on 2/27 sold out pretty fast. If my e-mail is any indication, I will know about half the people in the house that night.

Puppet Up!, a show I've raved about many times here, is doing one show in Green Bay, Wisconsin on March 9. Tickets are available on this page, probably not for long.

Speaking of shows I rave about, Frank Ferrante will be doing An Evening With Groucho on April 23 and 24 at the North Coast Rep Theater in Solana Beach, California. Go here to learn more and to order tix. I'll be at the Monday night performance.

And lastly for now: I'm looking forward to John Oliver's show returning to the air this Sunday…but what is he going to talk about? It's not like anything has happened in the world since he went on hiatus.

Here's a great interview with Lewis Black in which he talks about, among other topics, how little money there is in writing plays, what it's like to perform comedy in front of Dick Cheney, and how he got arrested for driving around New York with topless women.  Caution: Contains the kind of language you'd expect in an interview with Lewis Black.

I was just re-reading the piece before this, the one about mass shootings, and I decided I botched the ending. Asking "How do we put an end to mass shootings?" is the wrong question. It's like asking, "How do we make sure there are no more auto accidents or muggings on the street or bank robberies?" We are never going to totally eliminate such things so to ask those questions is to set ourselves up for impossible tasks and certain failure.

With government, the questions should all be in the form of "How do we lessen this or that awful thing?" A law accomplishes something if it leads to 50 people dying a year instead of 500. We've passed many laws that have reduced things like drunk driving or counterfeiting. Those are good laws even if they don't rid us of 100% of those crimes.

We will never stop all mass shootings but we can probably lessen them. This means opening the possibility of laws that might make it harder for someone like the kid in Florida to get his mitts on an AR-15. It probably means reinstituting the assault rifle ban and undoing laws like the recent one that made it easier for the mentally ill to obtain weapons.

I am not talking about confiscating all guns or grabbing them away from folks who are sane, know how to use them and may even need them. Gun Control is not Gun Elimination.

And to make any of that happen, we have to elect Senators and Governors and other officials, including a President, who are more worried about losing their offices because they're on the wrong side of the N.R.A. than if they're on the right side. That's it. Nothing's going to pass as long as they're more afraid of the N.R.A. and similar institutions than they are of voters who want the availability of guns controlled more.

I don't know if that can be changed. But like I said in the last post, we need to be pragmatic…and I think the pragmatic view is that that has to happen before anything can change. I am not saying it will; just that I'm not sure anything else is going to matter.

After a mass shooting is an emotional time, even for those of us who didn't know anyone anywhere near the massacre. The folks who don't want anything done that might inhibit their ability to have as many guns of any kind they want have to say largely-meaningless things like "our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families" and (of course) "Now is not the right time to discuss gun control." When they say the latter, they then have to dodge the question, "Well, when is the right time?" since they don't think any time is ever the right time.

Those of us who'd like to see something change have a problem, too. We have to come up with at least some idea of what to do and we're torn between big ideas involving gun confiscation and bans and little ideas like background checks. The trouble with the latter is that they won't do that much good and you can never really be sure how many mass murderers were discouraged by them. The trouble with the former is that they won't happen and even mentioning them causes a lot of folks to rush out and stock up on more guns.

But both sides do have one piece of common ground. We're all afraid of being shot. We who want to reduce the number of guns around have the same goal as those who feel they need more of them: Not being shot. Even most people who just love the idea of owning a dozen AR-15s do not want to be shot.

We hear that each year in this country, there are more than 100 gun deaths per million people…an awful number. But something like two-thirds of those are suicides. As my feeble, never-going-to-go-anywhere suggestion, I would like to toss out the idea that we need to separate those out and not lump the suicides in with the homicides.

It's not that the suicides by gun aren't tragic and awful and all that but there's a difference there. We who are afraid of being shot are not all that afraid of shooting ourselves. Most of us can say with 100% certainty that we are not going to shoot ourselves. And if someone who owns a gun is worried they might, they can seriously reduce the chance of that by getting rid of that gun. Even the most ardent N.R.A.-loving gun advocate will probably not deny you your right to not have a gun in your home. He might even buy yours off you.

I'm just wondering if in those cases — two-thirds of all gun deaths, remember — we don't focus too much on the gun and not enough on the person who might want to turn that gun on themselves. Maybe we need more counseling. Maybe we need to provide more alternatives to someone who is terminally depressed and/or in way too much trouble to get out of by themselves. I just feel like those are gun deaths we can reduce without going mano-a-mano with the "cold dead fingers" people.

It's not much but it's something…and that's usually better than nothing. For more on the third of all gun deaths which scare us, read what Dylan Matthews has to say. I don't have a scintilla of a clue as to how to deal with that but I think we need more pragmatism and the Matthews piece seems very pragmatic to me.

This has been "Today's Post About Yesterday's Mass Shooting." Stay tuned for the next installment of "Today's Post About Yesterday's Mass Shooting," coming way too soon to this blog!

Kabir Bhatia has a question…

I figure you can answer this. When Johnny Carson was hosting The Tonight Show, what was the order of succession for people to fill in for Ed McMahon? I have it as:
Doc, Tommy Newsom, Ed Shaugnessy. What about beyond that? Was it different when the show was in New York?

When the show was in New York and Ed McMahon was out, they'd bring in a substitute announcer. Jack Lescoulie did it a few times as did a number of different staff guys at NBC.

Once they'd relocated to Burbank, Ed began getting a lot of outside offers and taking more and more nights off. Johnny decided it didn't work to put an outsider in that slot so they set up a simple rule. When Ed was out, Doc Severinsen would move over from bandleader to act as announcer while band member Tommy Newsom would serve as bandleader. If Ed was there and Doc wasn't, Tommy would serve as bandleader. If Doc was serving as announcer and Tommy was out, another band member — Shelly Cohen — would be the bandleader.

I don't recall Ed Shaugnessy, who was the Tonight Show drummer for a long time, ever announcing. I do have a vague memory of him being bandleader a few nights when both Doc and Tommy couldn't do it. And maybe one other guy from the band got to do it once or twice. But usually the line of succession for bandleader was Doc, Tommy and Shelly — in that order.

An old Tonight Show staff member told me the following. One night, both Ed and Doc were off and so Tommy Newsom was the announcer and Shelly Cohen led the band. I think this happened more than once and Johnny was very unhappy about it. Tommy was a great musician and arranger but he wasn't great as an announcer…and there were two other problems.

One was that part of the announcer's duty was to handle the audience warm-up and one night when Tommy announced and the audience didn't laugh a lot at Johnny, that was blamed on Tommy's limited ability as a warm-up guy. Also, whenever Tommy announced or was out in front of the band, it inevitably led to jokes about him being dull and boring. Johnny had decided that those bits with Tommy were getting dull and boring and that Tommy should no longer announce or front the band — or appear in sketches as he sometimes did.

Ed and Doc were told to knock off their extra-curricular activities and Ed (especially) had to be there any time Johnny was hosting. Ed moved all his outside gigs (Star Search, Budweiser, Publishers Clearing House, etc.) to the nights when guest hosts were there. Doc stopped taking nights off and when Ed wasn't present, Doc would serve as bandleader and announcer. Tommy Newsom — still in the band — could step in if Doc was out due to illness, which I'm not sure ever happened once these new rules were in place.

Before they got this system working, there were a few nights when they needed a fill-in announcer and they tried using Carol Wayne — which didn't work at all — and there was one night when producer Fred DeCordova was the announcer. And I guess it's safe to tell you that the person who told me most of this stuff was Fred DeCordova. After Leno took over, Freddie stayed on for a time as a consultant and he seemed to have nothing to do but tell stories to people like me who ran into him in the halls.

During Jay Leno's long run as substitute host, he occasionally had Ed McMahon there as his announcer but usually, it was Doc doing double duty as announcer and bandleader. I heard a story once — I can't vouch for its accuracy — that there was talk of adding someone else to the team who could serve as Jay's announcer-sidekick and possibly even be there if needed for a Carson night. Furthermore, the story goes, the main person mentioned for this position was Phil Hartman, who was then ready to leave Saturday Night Live.

Hartman, it is said, felt he'd gone as far as he could on that show and wanted to live full-time at his home in Los Angeles (out in Encino, actually) for personal reasons and also to get a film career going. This is one of those stories that made the rounds in two different versions and that always causes me to wonder if either is true.

In one version, it didn't happen because Lorne Michaels objected. Even if Hartman wanted to make the switch, Michaels didn't like the idea of another NBC late night show stealing away one of his key cast members. In the other version, the notion was killed because everyone at NBC was afraid it would piss off Michaels so it never became an issue. I would guess that if either version is true, it would have been the latter.

If you like Big Macs at McDonald's (I don't) and if you like the regular hamburgers at Five Guys (I do), you might be interested in this how-to about how to get a Big Mac at Five Guys…

• There's a new app that many of our elected officials are using. Any time there's a mass shooting, it automatically sends out a statement offering "hopes and prayers." And that's all it does…or they do.

Scott King writes with a question about the fine comic book artist, Jim Aparo…

In a recent post, you mentioned that Aparo was very reliable and delivered 214 pages per year, every year.

Doesn't this mean that if he was on a title for a year he would end up one-two issues short? Most comics are/were 20-24 pages which is 240-288 per year, so the editor would have to find a fill in for part of that years run? Or was this the accepted price for having a skilled and reliable artist for the majority of the year.

Actually, Paul Levitz mentioned that Jim Aparo delivered 214 pages a year…but yes. When Aparo was doing the Batman and the Outsiders comic with Mike W. Barr, there were a few fill-in issues by other artists and I think in an issue or two, Aparo penciled but did not letter or ink.

There were also a couple of issues where they had a fifteen-page lead story drawn by Aparo and an eight-page featurette by another artist. I'm sure everyone involved with the comic thought that having Aparo as the regular artist was worth the occasional need to work around him.

This may interest someone. During that period, I was writing or sometimes writing-editing Blackhawk for DC Comics and it was drawn by Dan Spiegle. Dan was fast enough that he could easily have drawn every issue but The Powers That Were Then occasionally wanted him to draw a different book for them…like, I think he did a Sgt. Rock special and he did some educational comics that few people ever saw and a few other things.

They also liked the idea of guest artists in Blackhawk so we did a number of eight-page stories drawn by folks other than Dan, including Dave Cockrum, Alex Toth, John Severin, Howard Chaykin, Mike Sekowsky, Will Meugniot and Doug Wildey.

At the time, a DC comic book was 23 pages plus a cover and almost every story then being published there was twenty-three pages in length. So the following situation would happen again and again and again…

I would get a call from some other DC editor and he would say — and this is a real example — "Mark, I'm in a jam. I need to give Curt Swan a story to draw starting next Monday." This was because Curt had a contract that guaranteed him that when he handed in one assignment, he would immediately get another. It also happened sometimes because a freelancer had an informal understanding with the company or the editor to get work like that.

The editor — in this case, it was Julius Schwartz — wanted to give Curt the next issue of Superman to draw but the writer was running late and the script might not be in and ready for Curt by next Monday. Julie might have had another script to give Curt or some other editor down the hall might have had one but it would have been a twenty-three page script that wasn't needed as urgently as that next issue of Superman.

It would take Curt 2-3 weeks to draw that which would mean 2-3 weeks before Curt got to that next issue of Superman and that was not good for the schedule. Which is why Julie called me. At that moment, those Blackhawk eight-pagers I was doing were just about the only stories being done at DC that were less than 23 pages. If I had one (or could quickly write one) that could be given to Curt on Monday, that would keep him busy for a few days until the Superman script came in. You follow?

I, of course, would say "Sure" and if I didn't have one ready, I'd sit down and write an eight-page Blackhawk story for Mr. Swan to draw…and right after I finished it, Julie would call and say, "Never mind! The Superman script just came in!" And then a week later, a different DC editor would call and say, "I need a script to give Irv Novick next Monday!"

This happened at least, I would guess, eighteen times. The one I wrote for Swan wound up being drawn by Don Newton because a script for whatever comic he was drawing then — Batman, I think — might not be in on time. But before it went to Don, it was going to be busy work for Novick and later for Jim Aparo.

Not all the Blackhawk shorts were done this way. Sometimes, I actually hired the artist and he drew the script I wrote for him. Still, a lot of them were written as per this scenario — because some other script was running late and another editor might have needed it so he didn't have to give some artist a twenty-three pager. Another Secret Behind the Comics!

John Cleese shows you how to accept an award…

We haven't been Trump Dumping lately because, frankly, I've grown way too accustomed to waking up to him doing something that would have had Republicans howling for impeachment had it been done by Obama or Clinton.

One of the arguably-good things Trump and the current partisanship overload has accomplished is to make me totally cynical about Republican Outrage.  I used to be at about 75% on that. I used to think there was some non-partisan component to Evangelicals and G.O.P. leaders who were offended by things like Obama not wearing his jacket in the Oval Office. Reagan, they liked to remind us, never took his off in there.

I'm not sure there's anything Trump could do in there — or anywhere — that would get more than token criticism from G.O.P. reps running for re-election in blue states.  Maybe if he did something that was fair to immigrants.

I also become more cynical about Democratic Outrage. It's not quite at 100% yet but it's getting there. The main difference between the Republican kind and the Democratic kind is that Democrats just aren't very good at outrage. Imagine what Republicans could do with even the rumor of a Democratic president paying hush money to cover up an extra-marital, condom-free affair with a porn star. Once when Barack Obama ordered a hamburger with dijon mustard, Sean Hannity made it sound more unAmerican than what the entire Democratic Party has been able to do with evidence that Trump may have conspired with Russia to rig our elections.

Oh, well. Here are some links that I think might be worth reading…

• Matt Taibbi calls Trump's musings about using nuclear weapons "insane and ignorant." It sounds like "incoherent" oughta be in there also.
• Ezra Klein explains why the Trump administration is in chaos. Key excerpt: "During the campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to 'hire the best people.'  But the best people want to work for the best bosses, in the best organizations, supported by the best cultures. Trump hasn't created anything of the kind. The Trump administration is a leaky, chaotic, dangerous place, where staffers operate under constant threat from Trump and each other…"
• Fred Kaplan, who might just be the only person in the country who actually reads military budgets, tells us what Trump would do to ours. It's the old belief that spending more money on defense makes you safer no matter what you spend it on. We've spent billions on planes that didn't fly but that didn't matter to a lot of people. The important thing for them was that we cared enough to spend the money.
• Jonathan Blitzer on how Trump's immigration policies are tearing families apart and creating misery. This is a lot of what the next election will be about. And the one after that and the one after that…
• John Cassidy on the White House's budget proposal. Time to haul out all the old quotes about fiscal responsibility that are no longer applicable.
• And lastly for now: Trump's answer to hunger in America? Get rid of food stamps and we'll assemble some crates of canned food and pass them out to poor people. He'll probably toss them into the crowds like rolls of paper towels. Eric Levitz has more.

As much as I love Stephen Colbert, I don't think I'll be a regular viewer of his new series, Our Cartoon President. It's well done but I'm starting to O.D. on Trump parodies. I need to limit them to two hours a day.  That includes the Trump parodies being done on a daily basis by Trump.

I don't have a lot to offer about comedian Marty Allen, who died a few hours ago in a Las Vegas rehab center.  He was 95 and had been suffering from complications related to pneumonia.

But I have that photo of me with him and I thought I oughta run it again and say that I always found the guy funny — not witty, not incisive, not innovative…just funny. In fact, he was funny with some of the worst material anyone ever took onto a stage. I think that's a compliment.

This obit and others online will give you the details of his life but I'll give you the quick summary. After Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis became the hottest act in show business and for many years after, every outta-work handsome male singer tried pairing up with some outta-work goofy comedian or vice-versa.

There were thousands of those teams and there were some comedians who tried hooking up with fifty different singers, just as there were singers who tried working with fifty different comics. If you leave aside Rowan and Martin — who didn't fit the singer/comedian role model — the only Martin/Lewis successors who ever had any real success was the duo of Marty Allen and Steve Rossi. Why did they make a go of it where so many others had failed? Well, it sure wasn't because of Steve Rossi.

Marty was just one of those guys who loved performing so much that no matter what he did on stage, you couldn't dislike him. During the few minutes I spent with him before and after the above photo, he was happier to meet the people who wanted his autograph and/or photo than they were to meet him…and most of them were pretty happy. And he made every one of us laugh.

Allen and Rossi both wound up where old acts go to die — in Las Vegas, occasionally reteaming to create an "event" that nobody thought was much of one. I wrote about seeing them individually and together over in this post after Mr. Rossi died. Pretty much everything I have to say about either man is in that post…

…except for this: Right now, some cartoonist somewhere is drawing Rossi in Heaven wearing an angel suit complete with halo, standing there with a look of delighted surprise as Marty Allen (also in an angel suit) enters through them Pearly Gates saying, "Hello Dere!" If they really are meeting up there, it's about their seventeenth — and last — reunion.

As you may know, I have been the co-maker of Groo the Wanderer comic books, along with my best buddy Sergio Aragonés, for several decades now. So you can probably believe me when I tell you the following facts about the two drawings of Groo seen above…

1. They are (or were) for sale on eBay from a seller with many sales to his or her name and 100% Positive Feedback.
2. They were put up as "Original authentic" drawings by Sergio Aragonés.
3. They are absolute, total forgeries not done by Sergio but done instead by a very poor forger.
4. The seller has other sketches allegedly by other artists for sale and says he or she does not accept returns.

The Groo drawing on the left is listed as selling for its minimum bid of $149.  The one on the right is currently offered for a minimum bid of $149 with, as of this writing, no takers.

In the past when I've seen stuff like this, I've written to the sellers and politely informed them that they're selling fakes.  Often, that makes the offering disappear, at least for a while.  Sometimes, I get back a note that says something like, "Oh, thanks.  I didn't know.  I'll look into it."  I am unconvinced any of these sellers were innocent dupes.  What they didn't know was that someone with some authority could notice.  At best, this probably doesn't mean they won't sell the phony drawing.  They just might not sell it on eBay where I can see.

Take a look at those drawings.  If you're the kind of person who might someday like an original Sergio drawing and you can't tell that those aren't original Sergio drawings, perhaps you shouldn't buy an original Sergio drawing from anyone but Sergio.

From "Volare" comes this easily-answered question…

In comic books, I keep hearing the term "splash page."  Just what is a "splash page?"

It's one of those terms that has been corrupted from its original meaning and now has a fuzzy definition. The original meaning dates back to the days when comics were sold exclusively on newsstands and publishers believed that folks browsing those racks made their purchasing selections based on if a story premise or situation grabbed them.

Mort Weisinger, who was the editor of the Superman titles, was considered the master of putting some intriguing scene on the cover which would cause browsers to say, "Wow! I've got to buy this so I can read it and find out what happens!" But the practice pre-dated him.

It was also usually applied to the first panel of any story. They would show some interesting moment from later in the tale as a kind of flash-forward teaser, again to snare the person standing at the newsrack, flipping through the comics before deciding which one to buy. The actual story would then start in Panel 2.

If the first panel was one of these flash-forward teasers, it would be referred to as a Splash Panel. Sometimes, it would be a panel that took up two-thirds (or thereabouts) of the first page. Sometimes, especially on a longer story, it would be a full-page panel. If it was a full-page panel, it would sometimes be called a Splash Page. The idea, I guess, was that you were opening the story by making a big splash.

Over the years, stories in comics got longer and it became rarer to see Splash Panels that weren't full pages…so the term was used less and less. Also, more and more comics began to start the story with that first, full-page scene. This was a trend that Marvel popularized in the sixties, along with longer and even continued stories.

One of the "whose idea was this?" issues where Stan Lee and Jack Kirby concurred was that it was Jack's idea to start stories on page one instead of flashing-forward to preview an interesting scene from later in the narrative. Jack felt that any creative person should be able to come up with an interesting way to start a story without resorting to that and, in effect, wasting a page. Jack also had a lot to do with the practice of having a full-page panel (or even a double-spread) in the middle of a story. People began to refer to any full-page panel, even one in continuity, as a Splash Page.

So what that term once meant was a panel that previewed a scene from later in the story. And what it now refers to is any a full-page panel, regardless of content. Original art dealers also have had a lot to do with changing the meaning because "Splash Page" sounds more important (and therefore, desired) than "full-page panel."