Monthly Archives: October 2018

I was up 'til four or five A.M. — at that time o' day, an hour one way or the other doesn't matter — and now I'm back at the computer, determined to get a script done before four or five P.M. One of the benefits of writing comedy when you should be in bed is that after about 3:30 in the morning, everything is funny…then. After a few hours of sleep, you may look back at it and wonder, "Why did I think that was amusing?" But at least for a while there, you wrote the funniest joke in the world. If I could only get everyone who reads this manuscript to read it at four in the morning.

So for the next hour or two, I won't be writing. I'll be rewriting.

Speaking of things that aren't funny: I'm not going to link to one but I've noticed that YouTube is suddenly full of videos that are based on the idea, "Let's find some beautiful women who will let us shove pies in their faces!" And then in some, they hit them with a second pie and a third pie and sometimes a dozen and then they dump various colors of slime on them. Hitting someone in the face with a pie for comedic reasons usually involves the target being surprised or at least pretending to be surprised…but there seems to be a market out there that doesn't care about the comedic element. They just want to see attractive ladies covered in real or simulated food. This is another in the never-ending series of Things Mark Doesn't Understand.

That ever-expanding series of course now includes wondering why any female in this country would vote Republican, especially if they aren't really wealthy. But I think I'm going to have one of those "Don't think too much about politics" weeks.

Some time ago here, we posted some items about the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, a venerable institution in downtown L.A. carrying on the work of the late Bob Baker. It was such a happy place, inexorably linked to so many childhoods, that there was a battle to keep it from being demolished so someone could build a new Burger King or something equally necessary. In 2009, it seemed the battle was won when it was designated a historical cultural landmark but now it seems historical cultural landmark status ain't what it used to be. It's being torn down and the theater will reportedly relocate in some as-yet-undetermined location. I hope it actually does.

If you're thinking of attending the November 7 screening of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at the Arclight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, get your tickets now. They're almost gone. 11/7 will be 55 years since my favorite movie debuted at the Dome…and 55 years since the Dome opened. I just started to type "and it'll be the 55th time I've seen it" but I must have passed that milestone long ago.

And now, I have to go write. No, I have to go rewrite. (See? I'm even rewriting this paragraph!)

Will Vinton — the award-winning filmmaker and master of "Claymation" — died a few days ago at the age of 70. Obituaries like this one and this one will tell you the details of his amazing career better than I can. There is a great success story there about how he built a wonderful studio full of brilliant talent and ideas. There is also a very sad story of how he lost ownership and control of it.

I was fortunate to work with Will around 1989 and to visit that studio in Portland, Oregon when it was flourishing. Some folks at CBS put us together and we developed a couple of projects that, alas, never went the distance. One, oddly enough, was a prime-time special in which the Master Villain — and I am not making this up now — was a parody of Donald Trump. In 1989.

Will was a cheery, clever guy who struck me as quite unspoiled by his success. He'd fly down to L.A. for network meetings and when we went to CBS together, he would act a little stunned that he had gone from the humblest of beginnings making tiny, underfunded movies to driving through the guard gate at a big Hollywood studio. On two or three occasions when it was time for him to head back to Portland, I'd drive him to the airport and we'd stop for a bite to eat and then sit and talk at the airport (you could do that in 1989) while we waited for his flight to board. I have fond memories of those conversations.

I did not like everyone I worked with in those days but I liked Will. He was all about doing the projects right and when neither of them went forward — one for creative reasons, the other because of a business squabble — he was briefly disappointed and then he quickly stopped thinking about them and plunged wholeheartedly into several others. I tried to follow his example and the only lingering regret I had was that I was no longer working with Will…and eventually we lost touch. So sorry about that, so sorry he's gone.

Many a Friday afternoon, you'll find me lunching at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. I've been a member of the Academy of Magical Arts, which operates the Castle as its clubhouse, since 1980. It's mainly an evening place but on Fridays, there's a splendid lunch buffet for members and their guests. Mine yesterday were my friends, Shelly Goldstein and John Plunkett. We dined and then hurried down to the Close-Up Gallery to see a performance by Ryan Hayashi.

Who's Ryan Hayashi? If you ask that, you obviously haven't been watching Penn & Teller: Fool Us, the show were magicians attempt to baffle the tall loud one and the not-as-short-as-people-think-he-is quiet one. If you'd been watching last July, you would have seen Ryan's appearance. Here it is in full in case you didn't see it or want to see it again…

The trick Ryan did is called the Coin Matrix. It's an old, commonly-performed trick and I even did it — about one ten-thousandth as well as he did — back when I was a teen dabbling in magic. He's been at the Castle doing three shows a night every night all week and magicians are lining up to see him. Put simply: This man does this trick better than anyone else and he has added new twists and new angles and it really is a matter of someone managing to improve on a classic.

We saw him perform it live. I was maybe ten feet from him. Shelly, who got selected as an involuntary volunteer, was seated at the table about twenty inches from where the coins appeared and disappeared. We were both astonished, as was John standing near me. (It was Standing Room Only in there because so many people wanted to see him.) As impressive as it is in the above video, it was even more stunning in person.

He also did some card tricks and some very funny patter, and I got to have a nice conversation with him after his performance. What a great guy — and trust me that the sentiments and emotions he displays in the video are absolutely genuine. I have been fortunate to see some of the greatest magicians of the last 38 years at the Castle. I have never seen anyone better than Ryan Hayashi.

I'm back. The script is in, though when I finish this, I have to start on another one that's gotta be in on Monday. The headaches have abated. Headaches are a big problem for me because when I have one, I'm still totally conscious that my thinking is not at its best and so I'm much more prone to do something foolish about…well, about anything in my world. Doing something foolish can lead to further headaches…and there's an endless circle you want to end before it begins.

My overall reaction to the whole Brett Kavanaugh thing is mostly one of sadness, as well as frustration that we keep doing this thing to ourselves. I keep remembering when prominent Republicans — Lindsey Graham, loudest of all — were damning Barack Obama as "the most divisive president of all time." Then as now, it seemed to me Obama's "crime" was not giving them every single thing they wanted. He was kind of stubbornly insisting on being President of the United States and to them, that was divisive.

You want to see "divisive?" Look at the guy we've got now. Obama may have had his flaws but saying whatever an angry mob wanted to hear, especially insulting his opponents and any reporter who didn't take dictation from him, was not among them. And now, folks like Jeffrey Toobin — who has a pretty good track record for this kind of thing — are saying Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned. Even if that doesn't happen, the battle over that one is going to make the Kavanaugh fight look like a polite difference of opinion.

One of these days, I'm going to write a piece here about abortion. It will be a very long piece, not something I can write now and still have that script done in 48 hours. But it'll be about an "adventure" I had 30+ years ago helping my then-current lady friend infiltrate an anti-abortion rally. It will also be about how some people want to ban abortion for moral issues and some only because it would be a victory for their side. I fear that's what politics in this country has come to be about: Not what is morally right for us and maybe not even what is good for us…but about who gets to drive the bus at the moment even if they don't know how to drive.

Imagine for a second a Supreme Court nominee who is not partisan; who would look at the laws and the facts of a case and would be a true "swing vote" every time. He or she would not be a reliable, predictable vote…and might well not side with the party of the president who'd appointed him or her. And imagine a Senate that would confirm that nominee unanimously. When I was much younger, that's what I understood a Justice of the Supreme Court was supposed to be.

I don't know how many of them were ever, really truly that or anything close to that…but I know we haven't had one lately and may not see another in my lifetime.

Remember when George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the High Court? There were howls and protests and objections…and not from Democrats. It all came from Republicans who felt that while, yes, she would be Republican, she wouldn't be Republican enough. She wasn't someone Democrats would hate so Bush was forced to withdraw he name and instead, he gave us Samuel Alito. (Sam Brownback — who's been busy destroying Kansas by trying to turn it into a Conservative Utopia — and ol' Lindsey Graham were the leading Republican Senators complaining that Miers' paper trail didn't indicate a desire to always slap down Liberals.)

So that's what our Supreme Court has become. Democrats don't like it now. Republicans won't like it when the next Democratic President nominates they youngest possible version of Bernie Sanders or Maxine Waters they can find. And it won't change because the people against it will always, by definition, be the ones out of power.

Two Mushroom Soup Days in a row!  I've been battling a script deadline, dealing with computer problems and coping with an intermittently-recurring headache that feels like Desi Arnaz is playing "Babalu" on my cerebral cortex.  All of these should be gone in the next day or so and things will normalize here.

I also now turn out to have an e-mail problem.  The server via which I receive your (mostly) lovely mail has decided that everything is not only Spam but apparently the kind that you Return to Sender, rather than just divert into a Spam folder.  On October 1, they changed how they process mail and things you may have sent me may have bounced back to you.  This is not because I don't exist any longer on the 'net but because they stopped allowing "catch-all" addresses — some of you know what those are — and that screwed up how my mail was routed to me.  It took me a couple days to notice because some of it was getting through but not all. If something you sent me bounced back to you, please resend it.

In other news, I've found out that if Desi Arnaz is playing "Babalu" on any part of your body, a good way to stop it is to take a vacation from watching the news. I've only had a few peeks in the last twenty-four hours and I gather that (a) Mr. Kavanaugh is probably going to be confirmed, (b) even if he is, people will be campaigning against him and protesting for a long time and (c) if Republican officials are to be believed, the only opposition to him in this country that is not paid-for by George Soros is mine. Maybe George's e-mail offering to fund me bounced. Back soon.

Things must get written today and then this evening, I'm going up to U.C.L.A. to speak to a classroom of folks who aspire to be animation writers.  I will start by advising them not to become animation writers but instead to become professional writers who write many things including animation.  And then we'll see where it goes from there.

I've kind of given up following the battle over whether Brett Kavanaugh gets confirmed to the Supreme Court.  It doesn't seem to have all that much to do with whether he's qualified and everything to do with Republicans wanting to prove they're in charge.  I feel like we'd be having the same arguments if they'd decided to seat a parrot who'd been trained to say, "Whatever the Conservatives want is fine with me.  AWK!"

People ask why the G.O.P. is pushing this guy so hard, as opposed to someone else from the Federalist Society list who didn't have a history of heavy drinking and possible rape attempts.  There have to be a dozen names on that list who'd cast all the same votes on the High Court without Kavanaugh's shortcomings…and if he gets voted down, we'll probably get one of them.  One reason is Trump picked this guy and Trump is big on this "none dare defy me" stuff.  The other is that there's a large part of Trump's base that, given the choice of two nominees who'll vote the same but one will do a better job of pissing off Liberals, will opt for the Liberal Pisser-Offer.  It is, after all, why they voted for Donald.

I may or may not be back later today.  Gotta focus on finishing a script.

Eric Idle is everywhere these days promoting his new book. Here, he sits for a discussion of many of the characters he's played…

• I think Trump's new strategy is to rally his base against women who report sexual assaults. That'll get him off a number of hooks and then if Kavanaugh doesn't get confirmed, Trump can nominate Bill Cosby.

Some of you have been fretting about the fate of Andre's, that little Italian cafeteria in Los Angeles that I like so much.  Let us review…

Last July, I told you that the owners of the shopping mall wherein Andre's resides have big expansion plans.  What they want to do is tear down a rather decrepit Kmart when its lease runs out and erect a massive structure, variously described as between 19 and 26 floors and full of new retailers and housing units. It didn't look like there was room in their plans for Andre's.

Last August, a whole bunch of us appeared before the Mid City West Community Council to argue that the development should not be permitted.  I think a pretty strong case was made that evening — only a tiny bit of it by me — but it doesn't seem to have stopped anything.

Last September, it was announced that the Kmart is indeed closing.  Something else is going to go there and it looks like it's going to be that huge retail/housing building.

So here it is October and the Kmart is having a massive going-outta-business sale.  Everything in it is marked down somewhere between 30% and 60% and a sales clerk told me that prices will be going lower as they near their closing date, which is the last week in November.  I went in and bought a whole lotta cheap things and there's no need for you to be jealous.  If there's a Sears or Kmart (they're owned by the same company) near you, it'll probably be having one of these sales in the next year or so. They just announced even more closures.

But here's what's up with Andre's and it's not terrible.  The owners of the shopping center are reportedly impressed with the place and its loyal clientele so they've given them a lease extension to the end of 2019.  During this time, they'll be drawing up plans for the big new complex and trying to work out a way to incorporate my favorite place for cheap pasta into the layout.  It will almost certainly be necessary for Andre's to close during construction but there seems to be a good chance it will return and live on indefinitely.  So that's good news…not as good news as if they just left it the way it is but good news, nonetheless.

In the meantime, the owners of Andre's will be opening a new restaurant, regardless of what becomes of Andre's.  It'll be called the Grandi Italiani and it will be located in Canoga Park near the intersection of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Sherman Way.  It will have the same menu and cuisine as Andre's and, one hopes, close to the same prices.  I'll let you know here when they announce an opening date. It's too far from me but already a few of my friends who live out that way are happy and eager to get in line.

If you live or travel anywhere near The Grove, Farmers Market or CBS, you're close enough to Andre's that you oughta go get a meal there. Just in case.

Don Messick was an amazing talent…a guy who could sound like ten different people in a cartoon and carry on conversations with himself. I had the pleasure of working with him a few times and he was a joy. He got it right on every take and there wasn't much he couldn't do.

This isn't the greatest interview of him. I think that's Bill Tush, who was usually pretty good at this kind of thing but he didn't seem to know what to ask Don. Nevertheless, I think you can get the idea of how the voices just came out of him like magic.

I wrote a cartoon special once where we needed to find two voices — a cat and a dog who were very much opposites and who'd be bickering for most of the show. Dozens of actors auditioned for each of the parts. They were recorded and the voices were numbered so that when the folks who made the final selections listened to the tapes, they had no idea who was who. Looking for the perfect contrast, they finally settled on the 9th guy who'd auditioned for the cat and the 14th guy who'd auditioned for the dog.

And when someone went to look up the actors' names and book them, they discovered that both of them were Don Messick.

The Vice-President at the network didn't believe that both of those voices came out of the same guy. They were so totally different. Finally, they decided — don't ask me why — to not hire Don to do either. Here's a few minutes of conversation with this lovely man…

That's right: It's 287 days until Comic-Con International convenes in San Diego. Time to start planning for it again. I haven't even bought what I won't be giving out this Halloween to trick-or-treaters because none of them ever show up at my house but here we are in early October, looking ahead to the Brigadoon of my life, Comic-Con International. This will be a very special Comic-Con because it's #50. It'll be the fiftieth they've had down there and the fiftieth I've attended.

And yes, I still enjoy them very much — last year, maybe more than ever. There was a brief period in their history when I felt the fun diminishing and I started thinking of skipping every other year or just going for a day…but that mindset reversed itself before I missed a year. At some point in the next 286 days, I'll write a blog post explaining about my brief disenchantment. For now, I'll just tell you it had everything to do with me and nothing to do with the convention itself. Once I performed an Attitude Adjustment on myself, the joy came roaring back, bigger than ever.

So now some of you need to begin thinking about next year's because Returning Registration happens on Saturday, October 13. This is for folks who were there for the 2018 con (the one you haven't unpacked from yet) and who were general attendees — not professionals, not volunteers, not press, etc. On 10/13, you have a chance to become a general attendee in 2019. Read all about it here. Later on, those of you who weren't there this past year will get your shot.

By the way: The 2019 Comic-Con International runs July 18-21 with a Preview Night on July 17. I do not know why there's a Preview Night and they don't just say the thing opens at 6 PM on the 17th but there's probably a very good reason for that.

I smiled when I saw on the convention website what I suppose is the first of several logos they'll be using for the 50th con. The one above is a slight modification of one that was designed by my old pal and collaborator, John Pound — a popular cartoonist who was involved in the early days of the convention. Somewhere in my house, I'm pretty sure I have my 1980 badge with that logo. The con went through several names before becoming Comic-Con International. To this day, a lot of people still refer to it that way or as S.D.C.C.

If you can't wait 287 days, by the way, the same skilled-at-convention-staging folks put on WonderCon in Anaheim and in 2019, it'll run March 29-31 with no Preview Night. It's not as big as the San Diego affair but it's more than big enough to keep you busy for three days…and tickets will be easier to procure whenever they go on sale. I don't yet know when that will be so keep an eye on this page. Last year, they began hawking them just before Thanksgiving.

• Mitch McConnell, who was proud of the endless delay and obstruction of Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court, is furious about (in his own words), the "endless delay and obstruction" of Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Raising baby pandas ain't easy…

Some of you have been wondering what's up with one of my favorite producers of musicals in L.A., the Reprise! Theater Company. So was I. First, the word was that they were closing down and would not even be staging the third and final show on their current subscription season, which was to be Grand Hotel with Hal Linden and Sharon Lawrence. Then we heard that that is not so. Now, official word from Reprise! is that Grand Hotel is being delayed. It will not open on October 24 as planned but they're expecting donor funding which will enable them to reschedule and stage the production. Hope so. We need them in this town.

Also: As I mentioned here, my favorite movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World will have it's 55th anniversary screening the evening of Wednesday, November 7 at the Arclight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. That's 55 years to the day since the movie premiered and 55 years to the day since the Cinerama Dome opened. Tickets are disappearing at a brisk clip so if you want to be there, get your seats pronto at this link. Looks like the house is about 75% sold with over a month to go.

If you can't wait 'til then or you can't get to Hollywood that night, the film is being screened this coming Sunday at 5 PM at the Warner Grand Theater. That in San Pedro, a town where several scenes from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World were filmed. This presentation is the closing event of the San Pedro International Film Festival and details are available here. See how informative this blog can be?