Monthly Archives: March 2018

Some cartoonist I never heard of reflects on the history of Comic-Con. I think Sergio's first one was the third one, which was the first one held at the old El Cortez Hotel. The El Cortez is still there but it's now condominiums, as everything in the world will eventually be…

It's getting late and I'm weary of the eternal birthday question: "So what's it feel like to be [YOUR AGE]?" In my case, it's officially 66 today and no one's buying what feels to me like the right answer. In terms of physical conditions — knees that hurt, hands that occasionally ache, etc. — it's okay. It's not great but it's okay. In terms of mental spirit and attitude, I have no idea how it feels to be 66 because I'm convinced I'm 24. Since I was 24, I've always felt like I was 24.

24 was the age when I moved out of my parents' house, got my own apartment and began to feel like I had total control of my own life. My parents were as good as any kid could ever hope for…but I kind of had to eat when they wanted to eat and I kind of had to sleep when they wanted to sleep and I couldn't have a girl over. Once I had my own place, I could configure everything around me to my own needs. My second or third night in that apartment, I stayed up writing 'til dawn and went to sleep around 7 AM. Just because I could.

It was around then that I stopped thinking a whole lot about age. I'm going to work on staying that way.

I have a friend who is a comic actor in his eighties. Many of you would know his name but I'm not going to mention it. Since he hit the big eight-oh, he's become obsessed with his age. I don't think he's aware of it but all his friends have noticed how he can't utter three sentences without one of them containing some phrase like "Not bad for an old guy" or "In the years I have left…" or my least favorite, "You won't have me around much longer…" It's easy to tell what's constantly on his mind and I think it's making him older.

This morning, I was saying some of this to a friend who called to wish me H.B. and to ask how it feels to be 66. When I told him what I just told you about being 24, he said, "That could be dangerous. You don't want to forget you're 66 and go hang-gliding or para-sailing." I said, "There's nothing to fear. I didn't go hang-gliding or para-sailing when I was 24."

He said, "What did you do?" I said, "I sat around and wrote comic book scripts all day."

He said, "And what are you going to do today?" I said, "I'm going to sit around and write comic book scripts all day."

He thought about if for a second and said, "Okay…that might work for you."

Thanks for all the nice wishes today in my e-mail, on Twitter, on Facebook and I even got a couple of actual cards. Yes, they still make them. I started to answer a few, intending to at least acknowledge the gesture and say howdy but then I realized how many of them there were. Even just writing "Thanks" would take me until the wishes for next year started rolling in and I began getting calls from all the people who called today to ask me how it felt to be 66, calling to ask how it felt to be 67. But I do appreciate the thoughts.

Many folks have told me how much they loved the video of the show Dick Van Dyke and Company did Tuesday night at the Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood. I embedded it in this posting here. Some of you have informed me that it won't play in your browsers. If so, see if you can't watch it on this Facebook page.

And Steve Brumbaugh informs me that there are Sweet Tomatoes restaurants in Oregon. Good for Oregon!

This will interest a lot of you. It's an incomplete short subject from 1950 called "Famous Cartoonists." It shows a lot of famous cartoonists — a few of whom still are famous — at some sort of National Cartoonists Society gathering. You get to see a few of them drawing and most of them sitting around eating, smoking or gabbing. Still, it's kind of fun to see these guys and I wish we had the whole short…

You'd think that if we all learned nothing else from the Internet, we'd get that there's a pretty wide range of opinions out there about…well, anything. No matter what book, movie, TV show, play, pizza or other work of art out there you thought was stupendous, there's someone out there who thinks it was incontrovertible dreck…and usually, there are several someones who feel that way. That matters because if you can point to even one other person who shares your opinion on something, you can argue that most of the other people on the planet do, too.

I'm getting so tired of people who want to argue that their opinions are inarguable. They might just as well come right out and say, "You're not entitled to your opinion because it doesn't match mine." I used to make the mistake of questioning such folks just because they insisted their positions were unquestionable. I slip now and then but for the most part, my attitude now is that I'm fine with someone liking something I don't like. Often, I'd like to hear more about what they liked about it because I'm curious about what, if anything, I'm missing.

What I'm really getting tired of are comments of the "it's crap" variety. I keep remembering a conversation I had once with a writer friend about a new comic book. I didn't particularly care for it but this guy was angry that it had been published and very, very bothered that I didn't share his outrage. The discussion went something like this…

HIM: But it's crap. Pure, unadulterated crap.

ME: What didn't you like about it?

HIM: I didn't like that it was crap. I don't like crap. You don't like crap, do you?

ME: Not as a rule but it doesn't usually affect me. I have developed this odd ability to not read it from now on. Why are you so upset about this one book?

HIM: Because I read it and believe me, I know crap when I see it. I think I was three pages into it when my Crap Alarm went off and I said to myself, "Hey, I think this could be crap" and four or five pages later, I knew. Yep, crap. You read it! Didn't you see it was crap from the start?

ME: I wasn't wild about it but you're still not telling me what it was about the work that you didn't like…

HIM: I didn't like that it was crap. I hate crap. Look, if a dog takes a shit on your lawn, you don't need to get a forensic scientist out to analyze the specimen. You know it's shit. Well, the same way, I know if something's crap.

And it went on from there but didn't get any deeper. He wouldn't or maybe couldn't say why he didn't like it. If I had to guess, I'd guess it was because it was fairly successful and he hadn't written it. But in truth, he doesn't need an intelligible reason to not like something. "I don't like the taste of it" is a perfectly valid reason for not eating tofu. He just needs a reason for not liking a creative work if he wants to discuss it with me because more and more, I'm absenting myself from that kind of exchange.

As I get older — I hit double-sixes tomorrow — I'm getting increasingly less tolerant of gratuitous negativity — especially of the overemotional variety, especially about things that don't really matter. Last week, a friend called in sky-high dudgeon to tell me how much he hates the way another friend of ours has been flooding Facebook with self-promotion. If I listed all the wrongs of the world, that would not make my top billion.

If you want to talk to me about something important — something that genuinely impacts lives (especially mine) or something we can and should do something about — fine. If it's anything we both care about, let's discuss it. But it isn't necessary to have an opinion about absolutely everything in the world and it sure isn't necessary to tell me every one of those opinions, especially the angry, negative ones. You have every right to have those views and to express them but I have every right to not listen to you.

A discussion is one thing. I love discussing things, exchanging insights and perspectives on most topics, especially when there isn't a discusser involved who has his or her ego all wrapped up in "winning" in some awkwardly-defined way. I'm just getting increasingly weary of rants, especially hysterical rants where the emotion is way out of proportion to the alleged crime. I'll listen if something constructive might come out of it and, hey, I'll probably listen if it's funny. If it's neither of those things, please do it where I can avoid it. Thanks.