Monthly Archives: June 2021

Yesterday around 4:30 in the afternoon, I was sitting here writing when I heard the sound outside of the bi-monthly traffic accident at my corner. We have them about that often and so far, no one has been seriously injured in any of them, though I suppose it's just a matter of time.

I peeked out and saw it involved a grey sedan and a white SUV and no one else, and it seemed like folks were upset but not hurt. I then saved the work I was doing, called up the program that deals with my home security cameras and watched an instant replay of the collision. One of the cameras had not only caught the whole impact but clearly showed what the traffic signals were showing. The grey car, going north, had run a red light and hit the front right side of the white SUV going east across the intersection.

When I have such video and it can settle a dispute, I go out and offer it. One time, the three drivers involved in a collision were arguing loudly over whose fault it was. The guy whose fault I knew it was was giving his description of what he claimed had happened. He had absolutely, positively not run the red light..and believe me. Ray Bradbury never wrote a finer work of science-fiction.

I wandered up to them and said, "Hi. I live in that house over there and my security camera captured the entire accident." Whereupon the fellow I knew was at fault instantly began telling a different version in which he had run the red light but only because a tree branch had obscured the signal. He said this even though it was plain to see there was no tree branch anywhere near any signal.

That arguing continued. Yesterday when I went out to tell the folks involved in yesterday's accident that I had video, it wasn't necessary. The gent in the grey sedan was admitting he'd run the red light and apologizing so sincerely that the lady in the white SUV — the lady he'd hit — and I felt sorry for him. She was shaken but forgiving.

And it made me happy…not happy that they'd had this auto accident but happy at the pure civility. The fellow admitted he was wrong and that doesn't seem to happen often in the world these days, even when someone is demonstrably, provably wrong. They want to keep arguing the inarguable. We need more "I was wrong" in this world.

And I seem to have been wrong to quote online sources that the record "Love Grows" by Edison Lighthouse came out in 1972. A great many of you wrote to tell me it was 1970. I stand corrected. Well actually, I'm seated at the moment but you get the idea.

The 1961 animated feature 101 Dalmatians changed the cartoon industry a lot…and some are still debating if it changed it for better or worse. Here's an interesting article about this controversy.

The team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby launched Captain America in a comic dated March of 1941 which went on sale just before Christmas of 1940. The first patriotic super-hero to wear a facsimile of the American Flag? Nope. The Shield, published by the company later known as Archie Comics, debuted late in 1939.

There were threats of litigation before it was decided, somewhat gentlemanly, that both heroes could co-exist. I suspect that if anyone then had dreamed how valuable a property Captain America would turn out to be, it would not been so gentlemanly.

The Shield has come and gone from the newsstands more times than I can count. One time, it was even revived for the Archie company by Simon and Kirby. Anyway, that firm is about to bring out yet another new version and the cover, seen above at right, is a parody (that's not quite the right word) of the cover of Captain America #1 seen at left.

I don't see anything wrong with that except that — and you won't be able to see this in the images above but trust me, it's there — the artist for the Shield cover signed it "after Kirby." That's a way of saying, "Yes, I acknowledge I'm copying Jack Kirby." And the problem there is that it's really a cover by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

As you probably know, I knew Jack and worked with him…but I also knew Joe. Two of my favorite people. Their memories of who did what on some stories were not identical and then let's add that scholars of their comics often debate if a given piece of work from the Simon-Kirby studio was mostly or all Simon or mostly or all Kirby.

Jack's standard answer if you asked him who did what in that studio was "We both did everything." They didn't sign that first, iconic Captain America #1 cover but if they had, they would have signed it "Simon & Kirby."

I also know Dan Parent, the fine artist who drew that new Shield cover. I don't know if he's the one who decided to omit Joe's name but I'm sure no malice was intended. (John L. Goldwater who was the publisher at Archie Comics for many years was very fond of Joe.)

It's easy to understand why Jack's name may be more familiar to some people who came to comics after there was no Simon-Kirby team. Okay, fine, that's not an excuse. Joe was a gifted and important maker of fine comic books. Let's not cancel him out of his own history.

Back in 1967, a group called Yellow Balloon defined the phrase "one-hit wonder" with their one hit. You know what it was called? "Yellow Balloon." That's right. The one hit of Yellow Balloon, a group founded by Don Grady of the My Three Sons TV show, was called "Yellow Balloon."

And you know what was on the flip side of "Yellow Balloon?" A song called "Noollab Wolley," which was "Yellow Balloon" spelled backwards. They named it that because all it was was the same recording played in reverse. I always thought that was funny. Most "one-hit wonder" performers technically had two hits because the A side of the record sold a zillion copies and then the flip got a free ride because even though nobody ever cared about it, it also sold a zillion. But Yellow Balloon actually was a one-hit wonder with one hit.

Here they are lip-syncing their one hit at Angel Stadium on the 1967 TV show Shebang with your host Casey Kasem…

Introducing a new feature on this blog…

I graduated High School in 1969. While I was there, the radio station that almost everyone on campus listened to was 93/KHJ, which called itself "Boss Radio." We all listened to other stuff — I was starting to get more interested in jazz, show tunes and (all my life) comedy/novelty records — but we all also listened to KHJ. It was kinda required of every L.A. teenager.

It was a good station if you liked hearing the Top 40 of the present and near-past played over and over with occasional older flashbacks. The disc jockeys — they called them "Boss Jocks" — were fast and funny and most of them seemed to know that they should just shut up and play records. It all had a certain nice energy…but I rarely listened to KHJ directly.

I taped KHJ. I had a reel-to-reel tape recorder that I'd hooked up to a radio so I could record off the radio…and the radio also picked up the sound of local TV stations so I could record their audio, too. I couldn't always stay up late enough to watch Johnny Carson but I could record the audio of his show…or sometimes Dick Cavett's if he had a better guest lineup. So long before there were TiVo or even VCRs, I could record TV programs and watch them — well, listen to them — at a later date.

But getting back to KHJ: I recorded a couple hours of it every now and then, then I'd do some editing, yanking out my favorite songs along with their intros and outros by the Boss Jocks. I'd splice those hunks o'tape onto one tape reel so when I felt like listening to KHJ, I'd just play that reel and hear only my favorite songs. It eventually got to be around a hundred tunes and it felt like KHJ was programmed just for me. Which it should have been.

After I graduated University High (rah!) I kept this up until around 1972, which is why I call it my 1972 "mixtape," using a noun that I don't think existed in 1972. I played that thing a lot, though less so as time wore on and the tape wore out, as did my reel-to-reel tape deck. Fortunately, I have a list of what was on the tape…though if I didn't, I could probably recreate it from memory. What was on that reel is burned forever into what I laughingly call my brain.

All those songs are now on a thumb drive, along with hundreds of others, that I can play in my car when I'm traveling somewhere. Almost all the songs that were on the tape are also on YouTube in little videos of the recording artists performing (or often, lip-syncing) those hits. So I've decided to put one of them up here every day or three in no particular order. When you see this banner —

— that means it's a song that was on my KHJ mixtape compiled between approximately 1967 and 1972. Some of the songs are from before '67 since KHJ played "oldies," defining them as anything (I think) that had been off the charts for more than about eight weeks. This is one of the later entries on the tape. It's "Love Grows," a '72 hit from Edison Lighthouse and I'm sorry I no longer have the Boss Jocks announcing and/or back-announcing the music of my high school years…

Back when Las Vegas was seriously shut down because of The Pandemic, there was a prevailing theory on the Vegas chat boards I sometimes read. It held that when the time came to reopen, the hotels and the airlines and everyone in the tourist business would offer all sorts of discounts and cut-rates and deals to lure visitors back.

Well, Reopening Time is now and the prediction couldn't have been more wrong. Those visitors appear so desperate to get back to the city and the gaming tables and the slot machines and the Elvis impersonators that the folks who run the businesses seem to be saying, "Quick! Raise the price of everything! They'll pay whatever it is!"

And if someone complains? Blame in on The Pandemic.

It's today's all-purpose excuse and it probably will be for a long time. Your business is delivering lousy service? "Sorry but because of The Pandemic, we're still understaffed!"

The price of something you buy just went way up? "Sorry but because of The Pandemic, we're having a lot of trouble getting things from our suppliers."

You haven't paid some bills that are now way past due? "Sorry but because of The Pandemic, my accountant is not in his office and I need to confer with him."

Real simple. And it's going to be this way for a long time. Five years after the last coronavirus germ is gone — which will probably never happen but let's assume it does — people will be saying, "Sorry, I was late for my appointment because of The Pandemic."

I have more examples but I have to go finish a script that was due weeks ago. And I have to figure out how I'm going to blame its lateness on The Pandemic rather than admit I spent all last week playing Sudoku instead of writing. (I usually win but when I lose, I blame it on…well, you know.)

I just felt like watching this today so I might as well share it with you. It's the "We're in the Money" number from the Broadway musical, 42nd Street. I once found a dime on the real 42nd Street in New York and I didn't break into this tune. But I probably should have…

Back in this post, I talked about the Citizen App I put on my iPhone a month or so ago. I described my mixed feelings about it and some of you sent links to articles about it and I read them and thought more about it…

…and now I've taken it off my phone and canceled my subscription. This post is about why. It has to do with my distaste for all the forces in our society today that seem to want us to live in a perpetual state of fear. You know what I'm talking about —

— politicians whose platforms pretty much come down to "If you vote for my opponent, he will take away your guns and your freedom and your religion and your free speech and your car and all your money and your Netflix® and your cocker spaniel and your flat-screen TV and your Chick-Fil-A and of course, you and your loved ones will be murdered in your beds in your home which he'll also take away."

— or people who want to sell you insurance or alarm systems and it's like "Buy my product or you and your family will die."

Once in a while, there's a smidgen of truth there but I hate that "I have to keep you scared for my purposes" attitude. You should not live your life in constant fear of what might happen. Planning for emergencies is fine. You should. But just because it's theoretically possible your home could be attacked by snakes doesn't mean you should keep a batch of live mongooses in your basement and worry you might not have enough of them.

The more I read about Citizen, the more I saw it as one of those "keep you terrified" campaigns. That's a shame because it did give me some useful information. I wish someone would invent the same thing but make it so you could adjust what it shows you and when and how it tells you that someone might have been held up at gunpoint X.X miles from you. But the Citizen app is just Every Possibly Bad Thing Near You and I decided I was better off without it. So my phone now is without it and I am more comfy without the distractions.