Monthly Archives: December 2018

The jury in the trial of White Nationalist James Alex Fields Jr. has recommended a sentence for his crime, which you probably recall was driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters at a "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017. He killed one and injured many others, in some cases leaving permanent disabilities.

The jury's recommendation was that Fields be sentenced to prison for the remainder of his life plus 419 years. I'm thinking a good lawyer ought to be able to get that cut in half. There's also $480,000 in fines, which I'm sure the killer will be able to pay easily. Maybe he can charge it on his NaziCard®. That's NaziCard® — the credit card that guarantees your finances will never be in the red or the black.

I was wondering where they got the 419 years figure. According to the A.P., it's "70 years for each of five malicious wounding charges, 20 for each of three malicious wounding charges, and nine years on one charge of leaving the scene of an accident." Do you think he heard that and thought, "Oh, if only I hadn't left the scene of the accident"? I also read in one article…

The jury reached its verdict after deliberating for about four hours over two days. Judges in Virginia often impose the sentence recommended by juries. Under state law, they can impose lower sentences than what the jury recommends, but cannot increase them.

I guess Fields is lucky the judge can't raise his sentence to, say, 519 afterlife years in prison. I think I'd raise it to a "billion, jillion years times infinity." He still faces trial for a "hate crime" and that could carry the death penalty. As I've mentioned before here, I don't know how I feel about the death penalty. I might be more in favor of it if we hadn't seen so many people who were sentenced to it and then later exonerated by DNA testing and other evidence.

When I've discussed the issue with folks who are fiercely for the government executing people — you know the kind who want the bailiff to administer a lethal injection just as soon as the verdict's in — that doesn't seem to matter. It's like they believe someone has to die for each capital crime and while it would be nice if it was the actual murderer, anyone who looks like they might have dunnit will do just fine.

I don't understand that thinking. But then I also don't understand why, when Fields admitted to driving the car and there was plenty of evidence that he was hot on the idea of killing anti-Nazi crusaders, it took four hours over two days to arrive at a verdict. I think mature, rational people could do that in the time it takes to make Top Ramen.

Anyway, I guess if I was forced to take a stand on the death penalty, I'd say that someone like this guy should receive the maximum punishment…and it's up for discussion as to what that should be. I don't think spending the rest of his life in prison is getting off easy, nor would his being executed make me feel any better if I'd lost someone to his criminal insanity. If I were ever properly convicted of murder, I think I'd prefer death to sitting behind bars forever, kicking myself for what I'd done.

That's what I think. I doubt I'm ever going to do anything to find out for sure.

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm being frivolous about such a horrible crime. The judicial and penal processes often sound silly and inefficient to me. The pains, both physical and emotional caused to innocent people are very real. I hope it provides some healing to those who can be healed. I just think there's a better way to do that.

Real estate developer Hackman Capital Partners has purchased CBS Television City in Hollywood for $750,000,000, beating out my highest bid by a crushing $749,999,947.45. I thought it might be a nice place to store all my old comic books.

So what does this mean? Well, for the shows that "tape" there, not much for a few years. They can stay for five and even after that, the buyers will probably operate some portion of it as a TV facility and those shows may be able to lease space there. After NBC sold its big facility in Burbank, Jay Leno's show and a soap opera or two remained on the premises.

A lot of different shows are done at Television City but at the moment, the main ones are The Price is Right, The Late Late Show with James Corden, The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, Dancing with the Stars (which airs on ABC) and Real Time with Bill Maher (which is on HBO). The question of whether these shows will go or stay has a number of components including what else is available, what it will cost and in some cases, the "look" of the program. Given five years time, I would guess they can clear enough space at the CBS lot in Studio City to take in the two soap operas…and those shows would look the same there.

The Price is Right — which would probably not look the same elsewhere — is an interesting matter. The new owners of the Television City are reportedly looking to bring in condominiums and retail stores…and I would think there would be a great appeal to keeping The Price is Right there as a glamorous tenant and maybe a tourist draw. I'm also thinking the producers of that show might be thinking this is a good time to get out of Studio 33 ("The Bob Barker Studio") and relocate to a new, modern facility that was designed for that show which will never be canceled. I can see that going either way.

Really, no one knows for sure what's going to happen except that the developers probably have some plans to start adding stores and restaurants wherever they can without disrupting production. They'll keep some of what's there, add on some of what isn't and just try to start recouping the $750 mil.

Over the next few months, I may just drive my car down Beverly Boulevard past it several times a day. I drive past that building a lot and I figure that once the development reaches an advanced stage of Doneness, it will be impossible to go past it. So maybe I can store some up for later.

M. Flaherty is asking me…

I've read a lot of pieces about Stan Lee lately. Some of them say he was first hired at Marvel because he answered an ad in the newspaper. Some say he was hired by his uncle, Martin Goodman, who owned the company. Can you settle this?

Sure. Stanley Martin Lieber — later known as Stan Lee — got his job there through his uncle but it wasn't Martin Goodman. Stan's uncle was a man named Robert Solomon who was the brother of Stan's mother. He worked for Goodman's company and was married to Goodman's sister. You can figure out for yourself what relation Stan was to Goodman but it's somewhat more distant than nephew/uncle. The confusion though is highly understandable because Stan himself told it several different ways over the years.

Sometimes, he claimed he answered an ad in the newspaper, got hired by a stranger and then discovered that his uncle just happened to work there. Yeah, I don't believe that either, especially because he also sometimes said "Uncle Robbie" hired him or said that his uncle told him about an opening and gave him a recommendation to the person there who did the actual hiring. Joe Simon, who was the editor of the comic book division when Stan was hired, wrote that Solomon brought the young Stanley Lieber in one day and said, "Martin wants you to just keep him out of the way."

So you can take your pick of any of those versions…but the point is that the hiring was arranged somehow by Stan's Uncle Robbie, and Martin Goodman was not the uncle of Stan Lee and his brother, Larry Lieber.

And don't feel bad that you thought that. I'd say that a good two-thirds of the people I've met who worked at that company during its first three decades were under the impression that Goodman was Stan's uncle. Stan himself would sometimes jokingly refer to him as "Uncle Martin."

By the way: Though Stan seemed at times to be a tiny bit embarrassed at being hired via a family connection, that was pretty common at the time — in the comic book business and everywhere. After the Great Depression with its massive unemployment, it seemed like if you were fortunate enough to own a business, the least you could do was provide jobs for all your relatives. It was easier than "loaning" (that is to say, "giving") them money.

All the comic book publishing houses practiced nepotism, sometimes to excess. Goodman had plenty of other kinfolks, many of them closer than Stan, on the payroll. And Stan himself later hired his brother Larry. If he'd had other siblings and they needed jobs, he'd have hired them too.

The Washington Post fact-checking crew has done impeccable work — and you can tell because no one has caught them in a serious error. If they had, Trump would be tweeting about it every hour on the hour. The newspaper has now decided that instead of just awarding one to four "Pinocchios" when a public figure utters an untruth, a new category is necessary. Read all about it.

And remember the good ol' days when Al Gore was branded a "congenital liar" and "unfit for office" because he once said that a magazine had written that he and his first wife were the author's models for the characters in the book Love Story? The magazine in question had said that but they (not Gore) were wrong because only Al, the former college roommate of author Erich Segal, had influenced the book. That was a "lie" back then.

Cookie Monster consorts with a known criminal…

The newspaper scene in Los Angeles changed mightily the first week of 1962. Prior to that, we had two major morning newspapers — the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Examiner. And we had two major afternoon papers — the Los Angeles Mirror and the Los Angeles Herald-Express. The Times and the Mirror were published by a company called The Times-Mirror Corporation and the Examiner and the Herald-Express were published by the Hearst Corporation.

That was how it worked Monday through Saturday. On Sunday, the Times-Mirror folks put out a Sunday edition of the Times which included comic strips, columnists and other features from both of their papers. And the Hearst people put out a Sunday paper which featured the best of both of their papers.

On 1/5/62, the Times-Mirror company announced that it was discontinuing their afternoon paper, the Mirror. Almost simultaneously, Hearst announced they were stopping their morning paper, the Examiner. The Hearst afternoon paper was thereafter known as the Herald-Examiner.

The timing, of course, caused everyone to assume a deal had been made between the two publishers…and I think it's still taken as fact that one was. But there was some denial of that at the time. A Congressional inquiry was held to determine if any laws — anti-trust ones, perhaps — had been violated by this apparent collusion but I don't think anything came of it.

Still, there was much shouting and wailing as each organization dismissed a great number of employees. Kids who delivered newspapers on their bicycles complained that their incomes had been halved. Subscribers to the discontinued papers were not all happy with how, for example, a subscription for a year to one paper suddenly became a subscription to the other, and if you took both of one company's papers, you now had twice as long a sub to the remaining one.

That was the case in our house. My father loved newspapers but he hated the Hearst operation for a lot of the same reasons that some people now despise Fox News. Thus, we just got the Times and the Mirror. He took the Mirror largely because he played the stock market and didn't want to wait until the next morning to see how his stocks had closed. When it went away, he overcame his Hearst aversion and subscribed to the Herald-Examiner.

At the time, being not quite ten years of age, what concerned me most was the comic strips. I did occasionally read something not on the funnies page but none of that was as important as the comics. Each of the four newspapers had one page of comic strips with a few other strips scattered elsewhere around each edition.

Prior to the downsizing, I had not been fully deprived of the many fine comic strips that ran in the two Hearst papers just because my father wouldn't have them in the house. My Aunt Dot and Uncle Aaron got them and they'd save the Examiner Sunday pages for me. Sometimes, if they remembered, they'd save some of the daily pages for me. I liked visiting Aunt Dot and Uncle Aaron.

I imagine that at each of the two firms, there was much discussion about what to do about the funnies when they each dropped one of their newspapers. At the newly-rechristened Herald-Examiner, they had a glorious solution: They ran two pages of comics! They ran the entire page that had appeared in the Examiner and on the facing page, there was the same full page that had run in the Herald-Express.

That made me very happy but, alas, it didn't last for long. A few weeks later, they announced that for budgetary reasons, they'd be dropping enough strips to get down to one page. I vaguely recall that they ran some sort of survey to ask their readers what should stay and what should go. I might be wrong about that but I do vividly recall my disappointment one day when I opened to the funnies pages and there was just one of them.

The Times-Mirror folks got down to one page of comics immediately. They kept the Times comic strip page mostly intact but dropped about eight strips from it to make room for what they must have thought were the eight (or so) most popular strips from the Mirror. They included Dennis the Menace, Mr. Mum, B.C., Peanuts and Pogo. Not long after, I believe — and remember, these are unconfirmed recollections from when I was pretty young — Walt Kelly's Pogo disappeared from the Times and therefore from Los Angeles. That didn't bother me as much then as it would have a few years later when I was finally old enough to start understanding some of it.

The Herald-Examiner went out of business in 1989. The Times continues to publish but I don't think I've touched a copy in ten years. I took delivery of it when I first moved out of my parents' house in the mid-seventies because, well, a daily newspaper was something you just had to have when I was a kid. But increasingly, they were piling up unread and on days when it didn't come (or got stolen off my porch), I didn't notice. When I finally noticed that I wasn't noticing, I took that as a sign to cancel my subscription. This was well before there was an Internet as we know it.

Unlike some friends a decade or two older than me, I do not miss the daily comics. I miss certain cartoonists and characters but I vastly prefer to read them in book collections. I am very proud that I am now involved with bringing Pogo to the world in that format. It was my favorite newspaper strip long before I ever met anyone related to Mr. Kelly. I enjoy my current favorite comic strips online and I pointedly do not check them every day. I let a few weeks go by, then I read many at a time to catch up. I still love comic strips. I just don't like loving them one day at a time.

Stephanie J. Block sings "Our Time," one of my favorite tunes from the Sondheim repertoire…

Since we're hearing incessantly about "witch hunts" these days, it might be nice to know more about them.

A day or two before the presidential election of 1992, independent candidate Ross Perot went on Larry King Live, the TV program which was largely responsible for him even being on the ballot. King asked him the obvious question: "How do you think you're going to do on Tuesday?"

I haven't been able to find a video or transcript online but I remember his answer quite vividly. It struck me as especially stunning since Perot's appeal to voters — the only real reason he was a major candidate who'd been included in the debates — was that he was a straight-talking, atypical politician. And what this straight-talking, atypical politician said was that he was going to carry every state and win 100% of all 538 electoral votes. All of them.

I remember the look of shock on Mr. King's face and he muttered something about how no one in history had ever done that, to which Perot replied with dead seriousness that he'd be the first. I don't recall if King then pointed out that at that moment, not one single pollster was showing Perot as being even close to winning one state, let alone every one. And indeed on Election Day, Perot won as many as I did. Or you did. Or Donald Duck did. Zero.

I wonder to this day: Was that what he really believed or was it something he thought he should say? It had to be one or the other and neither is flattering to the man.

I began thinking about this again last night when I saw this…

As hundreds of reports like this one by Rod Dreher have pointed out, Trump is being accused — indirectly, but accused nonetheless — of actual crimes by the actual Justice Department.  There was nothing in the Very Bad News he received yesterday that clears him.  He's in more legal jeopardy now than ever.  Does he know that?  Was that what he really believed or was it something he thought he should say?

If it was something he thought he should say, he's in trouble because that's not a response that will satisfy his supporters and it certainly won't stop the accusations and indictments from rolling on, even if the prosecutors have concluded that the President of the United States cannot be indicted, no matter what he's done.  There are (and will be more) charges that have to be faced.  You can't make them go away by insisting they do not exist.

But if he really believes he was cleared, he's in bigger trouble.  Because you can't even formulate a strategy if you don't even know what you're up against.

• Tomorrow night, Saturday Night Live should have Robert DeNiro come out and say, "Fuck Individual-1!"

I'm back from a screening of the long-awaited sequel to the 1964 classic film. Mary Poppins Returns won't be released until December 19 so I guess real reviews are verboten right now…but I doubt anyone at Disney will be outraged if I say here that it's real, real good.

In fact, it's about as good as you could reasonably expect a follow-up to be with outstanding performances and visuals and songs and script and just about everything. If you can't imagine anyone but Julie Andrews in the title role or won't like that this version is a little darker and scarier, you won't enjoy yourself. You'll also be stubbornly depriving yourself of a wonderful time at the movies.

Cookie Monster and Superstar Ballerina Misty Copeland perform the Cookie Ballet…

Okay…so Kevin Hart is out as Oscar Host because he might offend people and Ricky Gervais is trying to place himself in the running. But of course, the whole point of picking Ricky Gervais would be to get more people to tune in because he would be offending people. I don't think so and it all begs the question of just what the job requirements today are to host the Academy Awards. I'm not sure anyone is clear on this. I'm not sure there really are any.

Some of those involved in the selection probably aren't interested in anything else besides "Who'd get the most people to tune in?" America's interest in award shows has fizzled a lot in recent years, perhaps because there are way too friggin' many of them. But maybe it's also because your top movie stars are paid so, so much money (and it's not a secret) that a lot of people really view the show as a lot of undeserving, easy-to-resent, overpaid people celebrating the awesomeness of each other. Which, of course, it is.

To some extent, the Oscars these days are like watching Jeff Bezos play Deal or No Deal. Even winning the top prize isn't going to change his life one bit. We don't have a lot of rooting interest these days for actors, even for our favorites. If your career has been such that you're up for an Oscar, you're probably to the point where you're so rich and famous that it won't make a bit of difference. I mean, you might get $20 million for your next film instead of $15 million but why should anyone who can't afford health insurance care?

So maybe what the Oscars need is a host who can puncture all the pomposity and bring it back down closer to the real world. In that sense, maybe Ricky Gervais wouldn't be a bad choice, just as Kevin Hart wasn't a bad choice. But then the show won't so much be about Who will win? but about about Who will Ricky insult? Hell, if all we want is controversy and puncturing, forget about Ricky and bring in Gilbert Gottfried.

Somewhere amidst those who'll make the decision, there may be someone concerned with propriety and the dignity of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. There are plenty of hosts out there who can fulfill that role. Why not have Meryl Streep host? She's a big star and it would save the time it takes a winner seated in the audience to get to the stage. She could just give herself most of the awards — and don't tell me she isn't likely to be up for one this time. With Streep, that doesn't matter.

Really, nothing matters on Oscars Night. Those who just want a host who will improve the ratings may be kidding themselves that there is a host who will improve the ratings. In a real sense, it's like trying to select a sportscaster who'll boost the tune-in for the World Series. If people care about who wins, they'll watch and if they don't, you could have the biggest or the rudest person doing play-by-play and he or she wouldn't make a gram of difference. I say get Gervais…or better still, Gottfried. Hell, get Trump and let him congratulate himself after every award because, you know, he would.

I'm not saying it will improve the ratings. I don't think any host would improve the ratings. They'll be the same if a megastar hosts or if you and I go in and do it. They should just pick the person who will make a shambles of the thing because at least those of us who do watch will enjoy watching the ship sink.

From afar, I've been following the new King Kong musical that recently opened on Broadway. The critics were mixed. A few friends of mine who've seen it thought it was great. Everyone — even reviewers who were underwhelmed — seems to think the Kong puppet and the leading lady (Christiani Pitts) are superb.

But it ain't doing Kong-sized biz at the box office. For the week ending 12/2, it was at 73.94% capacity. Nearby, Aladdin, Come From Away, Dear Evan Hansen, Frozen, Hamilton, Harry Potter, Mean Girls, Network, Pretty Woman, Springsteen, The Book of Mormon, The Cher Show, Lion King, To Kill a Mockingbird and Wicked were all at 95% or more. Many of those shows were selling-out, which would make you think that a lot of folks who couldn't get in to see Lion King, for instance, were looking for something else to see. Kong tickets are available for half-off at the TKTS booth.

A show made from a beloved story that features two outstanding performances (Ms. Pitts and the big marionette) should be doing a little better. Here's a news story about it…

And someone on YouTube posted a good video of the curtain call at the performance they attended and this also makes me want to see King Kong: The Musical. I dunno when my next New York trip will occur but I sure hope it's still running then. That's gotta be an expensive show to put on every night…

I wish I could look away from the still-unfolding story in the Les Moonves matter but it ain't easy. You look at this guy who was fabulously wealthy, wildly successful, happily (supposedly) wed, not bad-looking, often charming and versed in what some might call "people skills" and (again, supposedly) pretty damned smart. Then you try to reconcile that with what he did and all the damage he did to himself and everyone around him — his victims, especially — and it just doesn't reconcile.

It's like the Cosby matter but without the drugging part. Both men might as well have gone out and started robbing 7-Eleven stores for all the sense their crimes made. You wonder if anyone around them who knew about it — and clearly, some did and did nothing — at least said, "Les [or Bill], you know there are hookers for that kind of thing. Why don't you spend five minutes' income on one of them instead?" Never having tried either, I guess I don't see how paid sex could be any less satisfying than coerced sex.

Is it a frustration that all that power was not absolute power? That it was a thrill to feel that no one could say no to them, not even over that? I have encountered people who seemed obsessed about controlling everyone around them, whether they did it by threats, money, personal charm or some bizarre combo of two or more. I'm not expecting an answer to any of this and maybe that's because there isn't one.

I keep thinking back about a line that the playwright Alan Jay Lerner once said: "There are some people in this world who are absolutely brilliant at playing the clarinet and nothing else." Just because you are smart about one thing doesn't mean you aren't an idiot at something else. Maybe that's all there is to this. Maybe.