Monthly Archives: October 2019

Back in this post in 2010, I wrote the following here…

Visiting New York in the seventies, I discovered the mixed joy of a chain of eateries, primarily around Times Square, called Tad's Steaks. A Tad's was a steakhouse the way a stripper is a professional dancer…but I have to tell you: I've had worse steaks in fancy, well-reviewed restaurants than I used to get at Tad's for a fifth the price. The decor was nothing fancy unless you have a thing for red-flocked velvet wallpaper, which is what they had at some of the Tad's outlets. It was cafeteria style and in every Tad's I ever visited in Manhattan, there was a little Hispanic fellow behind the counter — it seemed to be the exact same guy in every Tad's — whose job was to stand there and ask everyone as they slid their trays past him, "Jew want onions?" I always told him, "Yes, the Jew would like some onions." I was always afraid that since I'm really only half-Jewish, I'd only get a half-portion.

The onions were cooked, like everything else at Tad's, in this amazing, all-purpose yellow liquid. I have no idea what it was and had the ominous sense that I was better for not knowing — but they did everything with it. The chef would brush the grill with it, then cook your steak in it. The onions were cooked in it. If you got a salad, they'd daub it on as dressing. If you got a baked potato, they'd put it on in lieu of butter. The garlic bread was made by painting split french rolls with the yellow liquid, then grilling them face down. Once when the cashier handed me my change, I caught her making it out of the yellow liquid.

Great food? No. Good food? Good for the money, maybe. I don't recall what they charged in '70 for the specialty of the house, which was a steak, baked potato, side salad and maybe even onions if you were Jewish, but it was a tremendous bargain and it was also quick. My friends and I liked both those things about Tad's. Then. I haven't been back to one in New York in more than twenty years, though I've occasionally passed the few that have not closed and gone away.

Now, nine years later, I haven't been to a Tad's in New York in more than twenty-nine years…and unless I get back East by January 5, I never will. That's when they're closing the last one, which is located at 761 Seventh Ave., not far from Times Square. My last two trips there, I passed it with my friend Amber and pointed it out and told her about it…but we went to other, better dining establishments.

Craving a good steak? Less than a tenth of a mile away, there's a Ruth's Chris and within two blocks, there's Mastro's, Capital Grille, Gallagher's, Del Frisco's and if you're low on funds, an Applebee's. I guess I'm not the only one who remembered Tad's fondly but went to one of those other places. I certainly did when someone else was picking up the check.

When it shutters, the only one remaining will be the one in San Francisco, which I'd just visited when I wrote the above-linked post. It was pretty good…better than Applebee's and maybe a few of those higher-priced joints I just listed. I don't know how the New York ones have been in the last 29+ years but maybe they weren't as good.

Some of the articles reporting the closure (like this one) say you can still get a steak lunch there for about $9. Looking at the online menu for the S.F. one, the cheapest steak lunch I see is $18.99. Maybe the Manhattan one decided to go with lower prices which meant lower quality.

One night not so long ago in Vegas, I found myself in a casino coffee shop at 3 AM and they were offering a "graveyard special": A steak and fries for $3.95. Somehow, the word "graveyard" did not scare me off so I ordered it, as much out of curiosity as hunger. When it came, I tasted it and decided that the fries were worth about three bucks but that the piece of meat was overpriced at ninety-five cents. Not everything cheap in this world is a bargain.

When the server cleared away my dish, she seemed unsurprised that the fries were gone but the steak was only reduced by the size of about two bites. I asked her, "Do you sell a lot of these?" She said, "Tons of 'em. We must sell fifty or sixty of 'em a night."

I then asked, "Any repeat customers for it?" She said, "Nope." Maybe that's why New York will soon be Tad's-less.

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
Well, it looks like a three-way tie! In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld a lower court ruling saying Trump's accounting firm must turn over eight years of his accounting records — i.e., his income tax forms. That's one. Then a federal judge in Texas ruled that Trump's "national emergency" declaration to build The Wall is unlawful. That's two. Then a different federal judge blocked the Trump's "public charge" rule, which would have made it harder for immigrants to obtain green cards. Had it not been blocked, it would have gone into effect next week. That's three.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
The Trump administration is sending 3,000 service members, two fighter squadrons, one air expeditionary wing, two Patriot Missile batteries and one THAAD missile defense system to Saudi Arabia to aid that kingdom. As Daniel Larison noted in a link yesterday, Trump is often praised by his supporters for his policy of getting us out of permanent foreign wars…but he hasn't actually done that yet anywhere. To date, he has escalated every war he inherited and he sure looks poised to create some new ones.

Bonus Article About Donald Trump
Trump keeps soliciting or applauding illegal or unethical actions done on his behalf. His followers claim that what he says in these instances are "jokes." But as William Saletan makes clear, they're not.

Our buddy Jim Meskimen recites a poem about his trade (being an impressionist) with a little help from DeepFake technology…

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
Two associates of Rudy Giuliani were arrested today and "America's Mayor" may himself be in great legal jeopardy. That's all worse news for Rudy than it is for Donald but having his lawyer and most visible spokesperson in legal trouble sure won't reflect well on Trump. Giuliani keeps saying that when all this is over, he will emerge as "the hero." And that may be true — to those of us who want to see Trump gone.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
Trump's attacks against the Bidens are getting wilder, coarser and more hysterical. If he's at this level of mud-hurling with close to 13 months before Election Day, where is the public discourse going to be by Halloween of 2020?

Bonus Article About Donald Trump
Daniel Larison makes the important point that most of the folks praising Trump's foreign policy are hailing what he says he's going to do, not what he actually does. There's a very big difference.

This is Part Two of a series by SYFY Wire on Jack Kirby's Fourth World series for DC Comics. Part One is here and — caution! — I'm in both of them, looking very sleepy as we did the interview during Comic-Con back in August and I spent much of that convention in a walking coma. But it was a happy walking coma.

I like what they produced but I would quibble when they say "The Fourth World was due to be Jack Kirby's final masterpiece." Oh my God, no. He did some great things after that — I get the feeling Kamandi and perhaps The Demon now have more fans than the Fourth World — and Jack sure didn't intend the Fourth World to be his final anything. He had dozens of future masterpieces in mind — or at least dozens of projects he thought could or would be masterpieces.

It is important to understand that at that point in comics history — 1970 — newsstand sales were dropping as that distribution system was crumbling, and no one in comics had any serious concepts for other forms of distribution. By "serious," I mean something in which they were willing to invest serious money.

Years later, new means of distribution would turn up but at the time, the business was locked into those little 32-page comics printed via the cheapest possible means and Jack wanted to drag the business away from that format and into higher-priced, better-printed packages, many of which are now the profit centers for the field. DC said they wanted to go there but as we all know, there's often a vast gap between saying you want to invest in something new and actually risking the funds to do so. First though, they wanted Jack to come up with something in the old, atrophying format to boost them up in that area.

When Jack first envisioned The New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle — as well as the mythology and supporting characters who could spin off into additional, related books — he thought of it as something he'd launch, then turn it over to others. New writers and artists would continue it under his editorial supervision while he invested his time in the kind of fancier, upscale comics he felt the industry needed to begin producing. My then-partner Steve Sherman and I would probably have done a lot of the writing.

For the art, Jack mentioned getting Wally Wood for New Gods, Don Heck for Forever People and Steve Ditko for Mister Miracle — but those were just thoughts. No firm offer was ever made to any of those men and if you'd asked Jack two days later, he might have come up with three different names. He also sometimes talked about us doing a massive talent search and discovering new, probably-young and inexperienced kids in the local area that he could train.

While Jack was doing the early issues of those three books, he certainly didn't think of them as any sort of "final masterpiece." He expected to be off them shortly and on to other things. As DC began to chicken out on the "other things" in other formats, that trio of comics increasingly became Jack's immediate future and it was then that he began to think of them as his own epic graphic novel. And even that was just something he wanted to do before moving on to future masterpieces.

Despite that quibble, I really like what SYFY Wire did here. Have a look…

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
For the first time, a major poll shows more than half the country believes Trump should be impeached and removed from office. And it's going to be hard to dismiss this as some rigged Liberal-Democratic poll since it's the Fox News Poll.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
According to a new book, back in March, Trump was in a frenzy to stop immigration and he discussed shooting migrants in the legs, electrifying the border wall and fortifying it with spikes, and putting in a moat stocked with snakes or alligators. It's frightening to think how many of his supporters would have cheered these measures…and even complained they weren't harsh enough.

From Stu West:

I was at a bookstore event recently and heard a novelist talking about one of his influences, the "Spy vs. Spy" comic strip from MAD magazine. He mentioned that the strip was originated by Antonia Prohias, a Cuban cartoonist who came to the United States to escape the Castro regime. I had no idea, and it sounds like an interesting bit of history. Did you know Prohias, and do you have any stories about him?

I met Señor Prohias a grand total of once and learned almost nothing about him from him. This was because he did not speak English very well…and if my amigo Sergio Aragonés is to believed (and I always believe him) Prohias did not even speak Spanish all that well.

But it is quite true that he was a cartoonist in Cuba who placed his life in jeopardy by drawing anti-Castro cartoons. He fled Cuba in 1960 and never returned, spending the rest of that life he'd saved, living off doing two dozen pages or so of "Spy Vs. Spy" for MAD each year plus the occasional paperback and a few other commercial art jobs.

His is truly a remarkable story and it has been told in some form in most (not all) of the collections of his work that have been published over the last few decades. All of them, alas, seem to be outta print but it wouldn't surprise me if another one comes out before long. If you want to hunt down one, this one is probably the best but it could run you upwards of a hundred bucks in the reseller market. If I were you, I'd wait.

I've been getting an awful lot of e-mail in the last few days…why, I dunno. I also don't know why my server is now taking several hours to make a message accessible to me. Three hours ago, while I was on the phone with him, a friend sent me some info via e-mail and I just received it a few minutes ago.

So don't expect instant replies and, better still, don't expect replies at all. I'm waaaaaay behind (that's with five "a's") and I'll never get around to answering the ones which don't really need responses. This would include those from folks who wish to engage in a private e-mailed debate with me over the merits of cole slaw, Trump, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or even Trump eating cole slaw while watching It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Just know that I read everything I get and that if I don't reply, it isn't you. I treat almost everyone like this.

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria is not going over well with a lot of people. Among them, as Adam Edelman and Elizabeth Janowski report, are a lot of the kind of Republicans who, if Trump mugged an old lady would race to the microphones to praise him for it. Even Lindsey Graham couldn't bring himself to smooch butt over that one. And we also have Fred Kaplan explaining why it's such a wrongheaded move.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
Trump has this new, novel theory about how impeachment works. Jonathan Chait explains that it comes down to "Trump will cooperate with an impeachment probe if Democrats stop the impeachment probe." The man who criticized Barack Obama every way he could think of doesn't believe any criticism of him is legit.

Hey!

I've received a lot of e-mail asking me what I think of the new movie, Joker. I think I haven't seen it and I don't know when I will. I do get the feeling that the filmmakers made at least nine or ten completely different versions of it, all quite different from one another in the levels of violence and the political messaging, and that everyone who's reviewing it is seeing a different version.

And when some folks tell me "It's the Joker from the comic books," I wonder "Which comic books?" Because I think I've seen at least a dozen distinctly different characterizations of that villain in comics I've read. In one or two, he didn't even seem that much like a villain.

I forgot to mention it but last Thursday night, I was up at U.C.L.A. speaking to a class of future (they hope) Animation Writers. It was a class taught by my buddy Brooks Wachtel, who knows so much about the art/craft that he doesn't need guest speakers but invites people like me in, anyway. The students were bright and attentive and they asked real good questions, many of them about the process of being a writer, not just of cartoons but anything. I'm not much help advising anyone on how to break into the field, having last had that problem in 1978. The business has maybe changed a little since then. But I hope they got something out of what I had to say. I like talking to students like that once in a while because I usually think I get something out of hearing what I have to say.

Halloween is coming soon. That means that people are sending me every possible link and news item that mentions candy corn, an alleged food I have said here I think is horrible. Since I gave up candy of all kinds, my campaign against the stuff is pretty hollow and I no longer have any emotions invested in it. If you want to hear someone rant about its evils, go listen to Lewis Black. He rants way better than I do on the topic. In fact, he rants better than I do about everything since he screams all the time and I yell about once every three years.

My dislike of cole slaw, however, remains firm since restaurants keep interpreting a request for "no cole slaw" to mean "make sure I get cole slaw." That's all I ever really had against the stuff apart from the fact that it's repulsive and disgusting and probably fatal if taken internally. For me, anyway.

• Apparently, the part of the Constitution that covers impeaching the President has a small loophole we didn't know about.  It doesn't apply if the one who might be impeached thinks the process isn't fair to him.  Bill Clinton's probably thinking, "Why didn't I know about that?"

Ricky Gervais is interviewed for 60 Minutes Australia…

I've decided that until Donald Trump leaves office — and maybe even after — I will feature one story each day about what he's doing to The World, America, The Rule of Law, The Dignity of the Executive Branch and himself. He, of course, is concerned only with the last of these. I've decided to also post one bit of bad news for him for that day. I'm fairly confident there will always be one. So here's today's…

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
A Federal Judge has tossed outta court, Trump's suit claiming that he doesn't have to hand over eight years of his tax returns to an investigation in the state of New York.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
Trump and his Giuliani-grade legal team are trying a ridiculous argument: That it's unconstitutional to investigate the affairs of the President of the United States because he can't be punished except by impeachment. So not only would he be above the law but so would anyone who committed crimes in his service.

The New York Times has corrected its obit on Rip Taylor…

Correction: Oct. 7, 2019
An earlier version of this obituary misstated Mr. Taylor's role on the animated television series "The Jetsons." He did voice work for one episode, "Elroy in Wonderland," when the show was revived in the 1980s; he did not provide the voice of Elroy on the original series, seen in the 1960s.

No doubt dozens of Jetsons fans, if not hundreds, informed them of their error. Donald Trump is probably jealous of us for being able to get the Times to change what they print.