Monthly Archives: April 2021

Longtime MAD magazine writer Frank Jacobs passed away this morning at the age of 91. When Harvey Kurtzman stepped down as editor of MAD and was replaced by Al Feldstein, Frank was the first writer Feldstein bought material from and over the years, he and subsequent editors bought a lot of it from Frank.

That first piece of his for MAD appeared in #33, cover-dated June of 1957. He had work in 312 issues, making him the seventh most-prolific contributor to the magazine ever. (Beating him out: Jaffee, Aragonés, DeBartolo, Drucker, Coker and Berg.) Frank's last new work seems to have been in #529, cover-dated October of 2014. Work of his is reprinted in almost every issue of the last few years.

I thought he was not only the best writer of humorous verse and parody lyrics in MAD but in the whole world of comedy writing. He never got the recognition he deserved for all that brilliant work and that was one reason I was proud to present him with the Bill Finger Award at Comic-Con International in 2009. Another was that I really liked Frank. I learned a lot from him and I laughed a lot because of him — as did anyone who read more than a few issues of that magazine.

My favorite pundit/political reporter these days is Amanda Marcotte, who writes often and wisely over at Salon. The other day, she had an article up about this development I mentioned a few days ago: Declining church membership…

The drop in religious affiliation starts right around the time George W. Bush was elected president, publicly and dramatically associating himself with the white evangelical movement. The early Aughts saw the rise of megachurches with flashily dressed ministers who appeared more interested in money and sermonizing about people's sex lives than modeling values of charity and humility.

Not only were these religious figures and the institutions they led hyper-political, the outward mission seemed to be almost exclusively in service of oppressing others. The religious right isn't nearly as interested in feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless as much as using religion as an all-purpose excuse to abuse women and LGBTQ people. In an age of growing wealth inequalities, with more and more Americans living hand-to-mouth, many visible religious authorities were using their power to support politicians and laws to take health care access from women and fight against marriage between same-sex couples. And then Donald Trump happened.

I think people look to religious leaders to rise above petty politics and matters of personal gain…and they aren't finding many. Almost everyone is looking like one of those TV evangelists who can find quotes in The Bible supporting the notion that God wants them to have a private jet and for you to pay for it.

Today, she has a piece up about "Cancel Culture," which is one of those terms like "Political Incorrectness" that I think a lot of people use with very different definitions from one another. Both terms strike me as sometimes employed in a literal sense and sometimes in a sarcastic sense…and always with the aim of stifling Free Speech under the guise of protecting Free Speech. Here is Ms. Marcotte…

Many a tear has been shed over wealthy actors losing plum gigs for embarrassing movie studios with their bigoted tweets, or obscure books by famous authors being delisted voluntarily by their own publishing companies, or people making fun of a paranoid right-wing couple in St. Louis who pulled guns on peaceful protesters, or the librarian whose boss prevented her from humiliating herself by doing a rap presentation to onboard college freshmen. Free speech, they argue, is dependent not just on the absence of censorship, but the absence of any consequences whatsoever, including criticism from others who are using their free speech rights. It turns out there was one caveat to this right to speech unfettered by opposition, criticism, or consequences, however: It is a "right" enjoyed only by those on the right.

I still think Free Speech involves your right to say something stupid and my right to say that what you said was stupid…or vice-versa. I also think you're not standing on any principle relating to Free Speech when you're fighting for people to be able to say things you agree with. When someone complains that singers or actors or athletes should STFU about politics and just sing, act or play, it never seems to be about the singers, actors or athletes who support the complainer's side.

We were about due for another tune from Randy Rainbow…

A new fad on YouTube is to compile videos of what you consider the Top 100 Broadway Songs of All Time. Someone who calls himself Mister Lister has compiled this one. I don't expect you to agree with his rankings — I don't — but you might enjoy spending an hour listening to a teensy excerpt of each. And the video is very well edited.

I've seen about a dozen of these online, some of which have been taken down due to alleged copyright infringements. All the ones I've seen show a preference for recent musicals, especially Hamilton, Wicked, The Book of Mormon, Dear Evan Hansen and Les Miz. In fact, every one I've looked at has more selections from Hamilton than from the entire collaborative works that involved Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein or both. The list compilers are of course entitled to their opinions but you wonder how much of their selections have to do with what speaks more directly to their generation…or maybe they just haven't seen that many shows.

Mr. Lister's Top 100 here has, I think, one Lerner and Loewe song, not much Sondheim, one Cole Porter, no Meredith Willson, lotsa Lloyd-Webber, etc. His rules for inclusion exclude instrumentals and shows that never played Broadway. He says songs written for movies are ineligible but he includes "You're the One That I Want," which was written for the movie of Grease. Some of the other lists don't have the same rules. One I saw includes some of the Four Seasons' songs heard in Jersey Boys and "Singin' in the Rain," which was not only not written for the stage, it wasn't even written for the movie, Singin' in the Rain.

But hey, they're all just someone's list. When you make up your list, you can make up your rules at the same time. Your list wouldn't match mine, mine wouldn't match yours…or even mine if I redid it tomorrow. Just enjoy the excerpts and don't bitch that so many of your favorites aren't in this…

Earlier today, I canceled my online subscription to The New York Times…but not because I no longer wish to read it. Lately, I've been canceling a lot of my subscriptions to various online services, mainly to see what kind of offer I get to not cancel. I'm still a subscriber but now I'm paying a lot less.

I joined a few years back at a very nice "introductory" rate but when I wasn't paying attention — i.e., reading every one of the dozens e-mails I got a week from them — they quietly raised the cost on me a few times. I couldn't help but notice that the Times recently ran a scathing exposé on the Donald Trump organization for doing something similar to campaign donors.

I'm way overdue for a Pussycat Report, telling you the latest on the feral cats that live in my backyard. The last one was back in those halcyon pre-Pandemic days, all the way back on 2/1/2020. At that point, I was down to one permanent tenant and one occasional and very loud demanding visitor. The visitor cat was one which both a neighbor and I, quite independent of one another, both named Murphy. The permanent tenant, who has been living 'n' dining here since some time in 2007, is Lydia, named for the famed tattooed lady once romanced by the eminent attorney J. Cheever Loophole.

Murphy has not been seen or heard from in some time but Lydia is still in more-or-less eternal residence. She occasionally goes unseen for a couple of days and is not overly-famished when she does show up so I assume she's found somewhere else nearby to grab a meal once in a while.

The above photo was taken of her one time when she did seem hungry.  If you listen carefully, you can hear her say, "Put down the damned camera and fill the bowl, lackey!"  (I'm kidding, of course.  She hardly ever calls me "lackey.")

She's pretty much lived alone out there since Murphy skidoodled but every now and then, a Mystery Cat has turned up once or twice and Lydia has tolerated or perhaps welcomed its presence.  Until this morning.

A cat with fur the color of Donald Trump's hair was out there this morning, lying in a sunny spot by the pool.  I think it had also helped itself to Lydia's supper dish.  Whatever the reason, Lydia didn't want it around  and made it feel most unwelcome by staring daggers and slowly advancing on it.  The New Cat was younger and larger but it opted to not mess with Lydia.  It backed off, then turned and fled over the back fence.  If it knows what's good for it, it won't be back.

Lydia took a little victory lap, strutting around the backyard which she has clearly defined as her turf.  Then she settled down in roughly the same sunny spot in the sun and resumed the never-ending task of licking herself.  Don't mess with her.

When will Broadway reopen? Well, last night it did…for 36 minutes. Hey, it's a start.

A baby otter with his or her mommy…

Like a lot of you, I'm pretty irked by all the Republican-controlled state legislatures that are now trying to rewrite voting rules to make it more difficult for non-Republican votes to be cast. The one in Georgia is pretty bad. I actually took the time to read it and it does indeed say what Kevin Drum summarizes here.

And like a lot of you, I am unsurprised that Donald Trump's fund-raising, supposedly to "stop the steal," resulted in lots of that money going into various Trump and Trump-related bank accounts. Also unsurprising is that a vast number of donors thought they were signing up for modest, one-time donations and later found their credit cards charged repeatedly for higher amounts. Read all about it here.

The theme song from The Flintstones — the second one — big band style…

Before he was a TV host, Jerry Springer was a member of the Cincinnati City Council…that is, until a sex scandal forced him to resign. Police raided a "massage parlor" (actually, a brothel) and found, pinned to a wall, a check that a customer had once written to pay for services. The check had bounced so, as some businesses do, they'd posted it for all to see…and the check was from Mr. Jerry Springer.

Mr. Springer was roundly condemned and ridiculed, partly for patronizing a sex business but also for being dumb enough to pay with a check. I was reminded of that as I read today's latest chapter in the ongoing investigation of Florida representative Matt Gaetz…

Reporters…retrieved receipts of payments that Gaetz and Greenberg made via Cash App and Apple Cash to one of the women involved. This particular detail raised eyebrows on social media, mostly because it seems foolhardy for a high-profile politician to commit a crime using something as traceable as these two extremely popular payment apps.

Springer actually managed to overcome his scandal and resignation. His confessions were so humble and candid that he later got re-elected to the City Council and actually served as Mayor of Cincinnati for a while. Mr. Gaetz does not strike me as the kind of guy who could pull off a self-effacing, contrite mea culpa. But we'll see if he even has to.

It's been over a month since I had my second hit of Moderna so I'm about as immune as I'm going to get. So is everyone who comes into my home and while we don't wear masks on the premises, we do whenever we venture outside. There are folks who would say we don't need to but we all feel like we need to. If we're wrong, then at least we're erring on the side of caution…and not making others feel as uncomfy as we all do to be around unmasked strangers.

When the history of The Great Pandemic of 2020 and Beyond is written, I believe it will show that the disease was prolonged by cities "opening up" too soon, people not wearing masks and too many "super-spreader" events held by people who thought it was over — or some sort of hoax — when it wasn't. It certainly isn't being prolonged by too much mask-wearing.

Here's an article about The Shaming of Those Who Break COVID Restrictions. I haven't done a lot of scolding because of my "a-holes will be a-holes" philosophy. It generally seems saner to try avoiding those people instead of engaging them and thinking you can change a mind set in Lucite.

The ones I've encountered up-close and personal all seem to think that "the government (or popular opinion) keeps telling me to do it" is reason enough to not do something. I've tried to point out to a few that the government (or popular opinion) also tells you not to consume a lot of alcohol and then drive a car but they don't get it. I don't think I've ever met anyone who said "If I'm wrong, I'm only hurting myself" who only hurt themselves.

These past 387 days haven't been bad for me, largely owing to the fact that I'm in a profession where I work at home. And I want to thank whoever arranged it that we didn't have this lockdown before someone had invented The Internet, ZOOM, FaceTime, e-mail, file transfer services like Dropbox, Home Video and Streaming, Grubhub, DoorDash, Uber Eats, etc. When people talk about plagues of the past, they're talking about a world that didn't have any of those things.

Still, I feel for those who've lost lives and loved ones, jobs and careers, income they'll have a hard time replacing, precious time with others and all the other catastrophes, large and small. And I worry for one friend in particular who doesn't think he needs to get vaccinated.

Last August or so, he felt like crap for a couple of days, then recovered. No doctor or test told him he'd had Coronavirus but he decided he had…so he now insists his body has all the antibodies it needs to keep the beast at bay. As if COVID-19 is the only thing that could possibly make you feel bad for a few days. As you well know, before it came along, none of us ever felt bad for a few days…

For Easter Weekend, the company of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber has, like they did last year because of The Pandemic, put a full video of Jesus Christ Superstar online. This is a concert production staged in the U.K. in 2012 which stars Tim Minchin, Ben Forster, Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm and Chris Moyles and it'll be available for viewing for about the next 46 hours.

I'm not a huge fan of this show but last year when they put it up, a friend who loves it wrote to tell me this was the best-possible video version of it; that it was one of the few shows that is more effective in concert/rock opera style…and I can see why that might be. Anyway, if you want to watch it, there it is until Sunday evening…

Here we have three minutes from "All American Co-Ed," a 1941 college comedy and I call your attention to the young actor doing the impression of Gary Cooper and, later, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. That's Kent Rogers and if you've watched a lot of old cartoons, you've heard his voice, especially in old Warner Brothers cartoons like Hollywood Steps Out that featured a lot of celebrity imitations.

He was the first voice of Henery Hawk, Junior Bear and Beaky Buzzard, among many other roles. He was also one of the many actors who spoke for Woody Woodpecker for a time. And the other day here, I mentioned the little pig in Tex Avery's cartoon, One Ham's Family. If I remember correctly, Rogers did the Red Skelton impression as the pig.

He was very good and what could have been a great career — both on-camera and off — was cut short in 1943 when he went into the Navy and was killed in a plane crash during training exercises. Thereafter, Mel Blanc spoke for Henery, Stan Freberg took over as Junyer Bear and they took turns playing Beaky. Thanks to whoever found this clip and uploaded it to YouTube…

• Every day, Matt Gaetz does something to undermine his own defense. If he really wants to go to prison, wouldn't it be faster to just hire Rudy Giuliani?