Today's Video Link

Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by Simon Åkesson and Evan Sanders, with the help of Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty…

The Verdict

I don't seem to have much to say about the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial that others aren't saying. Viewed from afar as most of us viewed it, it seemed like an open-and-shut case of police wrongdoing…and it's nice to see one of those not go the cop's way for a change. I saw someone on CNN (I think it was) say that police would be outraged at the jury's actions. I think they should be outraged at the crime.

Naturally, I'm curious as to how long ex-officer Chauvin will serve…and where he'll serve it. I'd really love to know what he was thinking as that verdict was read. We could only see his eyes but they looked like they were saying, "Yeah, just about what I expected." What I saw of the closing argument from The Defense looked to me like the attorney was just going through the motions, already resigned to the outcome.

And I wonder how the jury's ten hours of deliberations went. Were there ever any votes to let Chauvin walk out of there a free man? Or did they spend the the time reviewing the case carefully and then debating which of the three counts applied?

Here's a solid explainer about today's verdict. It doesn't answer any of my questions but it will remind you what today was all about. It's about all that and working towards a justice system that doesn't treat minorities as guilty until proven innocent.

The Mad World of Texas

The Palace Theatre, a restored art deco-style 1940s theater in Dallas-Fort Worth runs classic/vintage movies. This Saturday at 4 PM, they're running It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on what I'm told is a big screen. That's one of my two requirements for enjoying this film at its maximum strength. The other is a large, enthusiastic audience.

The Palace is currently operating at 75% capacity so people don't have to sit so close to strangers. Their website also says "While masks are no longer a requirement, they are highly recommended. Staff will continue to wear masks." Even fully-vaccinated, I don't think I'd take the risk but you do what you want to do. And either way, let's thank Dan Koller for letting me know about it.

When Your World Fluctuates

Q: What's worse than your Internet service being out?

A: When it goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and g

When Your World Stops

Not really but it can feel that way when your Internet connection ain't working…as mine isn't. And just as I don't put much stock in anyone's predictions of when The Pandemic will be over, I've learned not to rely on my Internet Service Provider's reassurances as to when service will be restored. "Sometime between now and the turn of the century" is their current forecast and I don't even trust that.

So posting here will be light until it happens (if it happens) because I'm lousy at typing with my thumbs on my iPhone as I'm doing now.

Today's Bonus Video Link

The Daily Show ain't what it used to be but they've had some great material on it in the last year or two. A lot of what I've most enjoyed have been reports filed by Jordan Klepper, a brave man who ventured into Trump rallies and even the 1/6 demonstration/assault. They've just put together a "best of" compilation that includes new material. If you have a half-hour, you might enjoy it. At the very least, you will admire the man's courage…

Today's Video Link

Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by Asia's premiere vocal group, The CompanY (that's how they type it) accompanied by the University of the Philippines Jazz Ensemble…

Recommended Recommending

If someone is trying to argue with you that it's wrong for the U.S. to get the hell outta Afghanistan, send them a link to this article by Daniel Larison.

My Latest Tweet

  • Can you imagine what the late Reverend Jerry Falwell Sr. would say about a Democrat who had behaved like Jerry Falwell Jr.?

Three Brief Announcements

BRIEF ANNOUNCEMENT #1: I want to thank all of you who've written in to tell me of the great Creamy Tomato Soup you've found in some store. I'm not belittling your taste when I tell you that if I tried it — and I'm tried all the ones suggested that are obtainable where I live — it wasn't what I wanted. I really am happy with the kind I now make for myself and will probably try no others. But I appreciate that someone took the time to write and try to help.

BRIEF ANNOUNCEMENT #2: I have decided not to post as much on Facebook or to read some of the forums where I find messages that compel me to debate or correct. Some especially nasty/inaccurate postings on the Marvel forums lately have me limiting my participation on them. But if you see something posted on this blog that might be of interest to the folks in any Facebook forum or anywhere, please post a link over there to them. Apart from tipping (hint, hint) it's the best way to show appreciation for this blog.

BRIEF ANNOUNCEMENT #3: I've had more than the usual sprinkling of typos on this blog lately. A frighteningly-perceptive reader (and reporter of some typos) named Larry Blair noticed that they almost all involved my left hand because they involved keys on the left side of my keyboard. This is probably because I'm having a fair amount of trouble with my left shoulder.

I am now under the care of a Terrific Shoulder Doctor and I start physical therapy tomorrow for the problem. The Terrific Shoulder Doctor says it will be a few months before the condition is eradicated but it already feels a bit better thanks to him…and I should also thank whoever invented Meloxicam, which also helped a lot back when I had my knee replcement. I would fix the missing letter in "replacement" but it's on the left side of the keyboard.

The Lost and Found Falcon

I recently did a post here about what happens when, as occasionally happens, the artwork for a comic book gets lost in the mail. Right after I posted that, I noticed that the Comic Book Resources site had this post up about a time back in 1978 when by a strange twist of fate, I wrote the first solo story of the Marvel super-hero, The Falcon. [CORRECTION: No, I didn't.]

As you'll see, it was another example of artwork getting (sorta) lost in the mail so I figured I oughta tell the whole story. This may take a while so I'm going to include this cautionary note…

Now then: My friend Steve Gerber was living out here in Burbank, working for Marvel and serving as writer-editor of his beloved Howard the Duck comic. They'd just assigned him a similar post on the Captain America comic and when he got it, the book was several months behind schedule, probably through no fault of whoever had preceded him.

The way to get it on-schedule — the only way, really — would have been to do two or three issues a month until he was caught up. I had that problem once on the first comic book on which I was editor and in this case, it was my fault. I stupidly let my "lead" slip away so I sat down and wrote full scripts for three issues in one week. Then I hired a couple of different artists to draw them and before long, I was not only on schedule but ahead.

Steve couldn't do that. He couldn't find a couple of different artists who were acceptable and immediately available. He couldn't find one. He made a number of calls and at that moment, anyone he knew who was good enough to draw Captain America was also good enough to have a full schedule of work.

The only artist he had was the book's regular artist, Sal Buscema. And the problem there was that Sal was drawing, I believe, four comics a month for Marvel at the time…doing rough layouts or rough pencils, true, but he couldn't do more than one issue a month for Steve.

Steve spent a lot of time talking to various folks in the New York office and it was finally decided that there would be a fill-in issue that spotlighted The Falcon, The Falcon then being Captain America's sidekick and co-star of their comic. Marvel was then somewhat fussy about how their superstar characters like Captain America were drawn but The Falcon was not then a superstar character. There was less concern about who would draw him…and someone other than Steve could write that issue so Steve could focus on getting ahead on the regular Captain America storyline, which was going to be neglecting The Falcon for a while.

He then called me and asked me to write that Falcon story. It had to be a one-issue standalone story and it had to be out-of-continuity because they weren't sure exactly which month it would run. Also, it could have a brief cameo of Captain America but for no more than a few panels. I asked who was going to draw it. He said, "Whoever's wandering around the Marvel offices tomorrow who needs work."

I shrieked, "Tomorrow?" and he said, "Yes! I need you to drop everything and write a plot outline we can get in the mail to New York tonight so it can go to an artist tomorrow. I'd do it but I have to finish dialoguing Howard the Duck pages and get them in the mail tonight."

(I should explain: Like most Marvel comics then, Howard the Duck and Captain America were being done "Marvel Method," meaning that the writer wrote a plot outline, it was sent to an artist to draw in pencil and then those pages were sent to the writer to compose the dialogue.)

I said okay, fine, I'll do it. You could then send overnight packages to New York via Express Mail if you got them to the big post office near Los Angeles International Airport by 10 PM. I sat down and wrote a plot. Around 9 PM, Steve arrived at my house with his Howard the Duck pages and we went over my hastily-written Falcon storyline. He okayed it — like he had much of a choice — then we packed it and his pages up in an Express Mail package and drove out to the airport, getting there with seconds (but not minutes) to spare.

We then drove to Canter's Delicatessen for chow since neither one of us had had dinner. Steve was confident it would all work out and get the book ahead. I asked him who he thought would draw the Falcon story from my plot and he said, "I asked them to give it to anyone…well, anyone except Sal Buscema." He said that because as soon as he finished the next Captain America plot in a day or two, that would be going to Sal Buscema. It wouldn't get the Captain America book ahead if they sent my plot to Sal.

And of course, the next day, whoever assigned such things in the Marvel office then sent my plot to Sal Buscema.

There was some question as to whether whoever did that did it because they didn't pay attention to Steve's request or because they were trying to sabotage him or because at that moment, Sal needed something to work on and there was no plot to send him from Steve or the folks writing the other books Sal worked on. I have no idea which was the case; just that my plot went to Sal so the fill-in to get the book ahead was not going to get the book ahead. (I also have no idea who sent it to Sal. In the Comic Book Resources piece, author Brian Cronin speculates it was Jim Shooter. I see no reason to assume this.)

Steve meanwhile had a similar but not-as-severe deadline problem with Howard the Duck which was being drawn by Gene Colan — again, one of several books (like Tomb of Dracula) that Gene was doing for Marvel then. Gene's schedule was similarly tight so he could only do one issue of Howard per month at best. Fortunately, Steve didn't have to get anyone's okay to assign an issue of Howard the Duck to another artist so again, I quickly wrote a plot and our mutual friend Will Meugniot began drawing it.

He continued battling with Marvel over deadlines and before the penciling was completed on either of the stories, Steve was fired. I don't know to what extent that was because of lateness and to what extent it was because he was making noises about how he should own all or part of Howard the Duck. I'm not sure Steve knew, either. In any case, he still owed Marvel a certain number of pages for which he'd been paid in advance and his lawyer suggested that it would be good if Steve finished them, a.s.a.p. before everyone plunged into the murky area of lawsuits relating to his termination.

Will had just finished penciling the Howard story and turned its pages over to Steve to give to me to dialogue. I suggested that Steve do it instead of me, which would help him whittle down the number of pages he owed Marvel. This was done. Meanwhile, Sal Buscema had sent Marvel the pages for the story with The Falcon and they were reportedly being forwarded on to me to dialogue. I was going to turn them over to Steve to dialogue, again so he could get even with Marvel on pages owed.

But that didn't happen. Well past the date when they should have arrived at my home, I hadn't received them. I called Marvel to tell them and someone there — Roger Stern, I think — told me to just keep waiting. (These were the original art pages Sal had penciled. And no one in New York had made copies of them.)

The folks back there were worried about lost pages but not about deadlines. I was told they weren't going to use the story in the Captain America comic because, once it was drawn, they saw that it didn't have more than a few panels of Captain America in it. That is, of course, exactly what I'd been told to do. Not using it in the Captain America comic would put that book even farther behind for whoever took over as editor from Steve…but, hey, that wasn't my problem. It was also no longer Steve's.

They weren't sure where, when or even if it was going to be published so we could just give the mail time. If the pages never showed up, they would just scrub the whole story. If the pages did turn up, I could dialogue them at my leisure and send them in whenever.

Weeks passed. The pages did not arrive. We gave up on them.

Now all this time, I was editing and writing most of the Hanna-Barbera comics that Marvel was then publishing. The original art pages for those comics were returned to H-B after publication in packages that were not addressed to me — just to the studio. A guy in the mailroom there would look at the return address and think, "Marvel Comics? I guess this goes to the office where they're doing the comic books!" And he'd then throw the packages in the corner of my office where they usually remained unopened for some time. For me, it was one of those "I'll get around to it one of these days" tasks.

One of those days, I had a rare spot of Nothing To Do so I opened a half dozen of them and in one package, there it was, nestled in amongst a batch of returned Scooby Doo and Yogi Bear pages: The missing Sal Buscema artwork! It had arrived when it was supposed to arrive. I just didn't know or imagine it was in one of those packages.

I don't know why whoever shipped art out from Marvel did that. Clipped to the pages was a note with my home address and instructions to send the art there but whoever sent them hadn't done that. He or she had no way of knowing that package would wind up in my office instead of going to some H-B warehouse. Even if they had known that, I could have gone several more months without opening that particular package and finding Sal's pages in it.

Anyway, I called Marvel to report that I'd found the missing story. They said fine, just get it done whenever you get it done. I got it done, sent it in, got paid, assumed I'd never see it published…and many months later, was surprised to see it turn up as an issue of Marvel Premiere. What did I think of the finished product? Well, it had a real nice Frank Miller cover on it.

(More detailed answer: If I'd known it was going to run as a standalone — and if I'd had more than about three hours to plot it — I would have done a very different story.)

Before I end this, I don't want to give anyone the impression that Steve Gerber — a friend I still miss an awful lot — was always late with his work. When he worked for me on several projects, he was always on time or close enough. But we all go through periods where we have problems — sometimes of our own making, sometimes because we find ourselves in a less-than-ideal work situation, occasionally both.

Steve was not one of those writers who could sit down every day at 9 AM and have X number of pages completed by quitting time and that is not a criticism of the man. I've known good and bad writers who could do that and good and bad writers who couldn't. And sometimes, the guys who can are the guys who are satisfied with whatever they produce, whether it's any good or not.

And sometimes, work comes in late due to circumstances beyond our control…like when someone mails pages to the wrong address in a package they weren't supposed to be in.

Today's Video Link

Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by pianist Vinheteiro…

Money 4 U

This may be of interest to you if you live in California. It's the California Unclaimed Property Search, a database of assets (mostly money) that the state is holding for people. A lot of the friends I've looked up in it are still at the addresses the database has for them so I don't know why the state doesn't just mail them a check. I do though see a lot of actors and writers in there who are listed at being at the address of a former agent who's no longer in business.

Take a moment to look yourself up…and also look up any deceased relatives whose unclaimed funds you may be able to claim. You may find nothing and if you do find something, it may be an amount not worth the hassle. It's especially complex — though not insurmountable — if you're claiming money that's owed to one of those deceased relatives…and I speak from experience. But maybe you'll find they have a sum for you that's worth wading through the red tape to claim it. Maybe…but not likely.

For Bad Cooks Only

I'm not kidding with that subject line. If you feel at home in a kitchen and really know how to prepare foods, don't read this item. It's for guys like me who are terrible at it and are searching for the simplest, idiot-proof recipes they can find — something that doesn't involve difficult words like "sauté" or "roux." This is one…

Ever since the Souplantation chain went under, I've been searching for a simple Creamy Tomato Soup. Some of you recommended store-bought brands in cans or boxes. I tried every one I could find and didn't find what I was seeking. Then I tried a few simple recipes and they were okay but not ideal either in terms of taste or simplicity. Finally though, I found this.

I am not saying this yields great soup but it's great enough for me. It's real quick…which matters because I'm real lazy when it comes to cooking, which is some (not all) of the reason I'm real bad at it. And it basically only requires these three ingredients…

I take a jar of my favorite marinara sauce (Rao's) and I blend it in a blender until it has the texture of soup instead of sauce. Then I add a certain amount of chicken stock and a certain amount of heavy whipping cream and then I stir a lot as I heat it on the stove 'til it's warm.  And then I put some of it into a bowl, toss in some croutons and serve it…so far, only to myself.

What are these "certain amounts?"  I'm still experimenting.  My most recent batch involved an entire 28 oz. jar of Rao's (the size they sell real cheap in a two-pack at Costco), a cup-and-a-half of chicken stock, a half-cup of the whipping cream…and I'm also playing around with onion powder and garlic salt and such. If/when I settle on exact amounts, I'll post them here…but anything around those proportions is quite edible. Or at least, it's better than any Creamy Tomato Soup I bought in a store.

I make this on Wednesdays and Saturdays. That's because my cleaning lady comes on Thursdays and Sundays and I want her to wash the pan and the blender and everything. I told you I was lazy when it comes to cooking.

Today's Bonus Video Link

All the time we've been in lockdown, Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley have been doing episodes of Stars in the House, an online talk/variety show about Broadway which occasionally detours into television. I defy you to look over the list of episodes they've done and not find several you want to watch…but tonight's was a must-see.

Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the musical of The Producers, they gathered together director Susan Stroman and members of the original cast — Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Cady Huffman and Brad Oscar. If you love this show anywhere near as much as I did, you'll want to watch this.

The webcast begins, as many episodes of Stars in the House do, with a brief interview with Dr. Jon LaPook, the CBS Medical Correspondent who gives very good, lucid reports on The Pandemic. Stars in the House is worth watching just for his briefings. He starts at 6:45 in. The discussion of The Producers starts at 13:30 and a surprise guest star joins the show at the midpoint, shortly after the 39-minute mark.

This is all a benefit for The Actors Fund, which is probably misnamed because it helps everyone in show biz — not just actors — with rent, insurance, groceries, etc. when they need it. If you enjoy this video, donate here