Monthly Archives: July 2021

My phone just rang. One of the umpteen filter-things I employ to weed out robocalls and frauds identified it in the Caller I.D. as "Spam Risk." On a whim, I answered anyway…

ME: Hello.

HIM: May I speak to Mark Evanier please?

ME: That's me. Who are you?

HIM: I'm calling from Quicken Loans about new opportunities to refinance your home.

ME: The caller I.D. said you were a Spam Risk.

HIM: Oh. We get that a lot. Our offers are so unbelievably good that people don't believe them and they report us.

ME: Hey, that's good. Don't call again.

And I hung up on him. But I was impressed with how fast he came up with that…or maybe remembered it.

My post about "Never attribute to deviousness that which can be explained by incompetence" (this post) brought a lot of thoughtful e-mails and I thought I'd share a few with you. This one is from Carl Cafarelli…

My own preferred way of phrasing this is that we often attribute to a Machiavelli what is actually the work of the Three Stooges. Keep fighting the good fight.

And here's one from Tim Kinseth…

Agree completely about conspiracy theories. Some people are so paranoid and some people just have to have a bad guy. The thing with all the J.F.K. conspiracy nuts was the belief that something as monumental and earth-shattering as the death of the President of the United States could not possibly have been caused by one loser guy with a cheap rifle. It had to be some whole nation or awesome force. When I argued the matter with friends, they'd come back with the claim that the lack of evidence of a massive conspiracy proved there was a massive conspiracy because only a massive conspiracy could hide evidence that well.

And finally, here's my old pal Pat O'Neill…

Another important point to consider when dealing with conspiracy theories is summed up in "correlation is not causation." Just because two things occur together — even if that happens frequently — does not mean one caused the other. One example of this I recall from my youth was when people would claim that rockets launched from Cape Kennedy were causing the weather conditions that resulted in hurricanes making landfall in Florida.

Yeah. We see a lot of that from anti-vaxxers these days. Someone got a shot of Pfizer and died four weeks later…so naturally, it had to be the shot. At the same time, they dismiss the cause-and-effect of COVID-19 rates rising in areas with low vaccination rates. That just might be correlation equaling causation.

I think Tim above is right: Some people need bad guys. They have to blame every bad thing on someone…usually the same someone. I even have to remind fellow Trump-dislikers that you can't blame every bad thing that happens on the guy. He might not be responsible for DoorDash screwing up my order last night. Tucker Carlson might be right. It must have been Joe Biden doing that.

Thanks to all who wrote in.

Alex Duquette performs a medley of ten Hanna-Barbera theme songs in two minutes…

"Monster Mash," recorded by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers, came out in 1962 but it was played often enough on KHJ — probably around Halloween — that years later, it made it onto my mixtape. Mr. Pickett, who died in 2007, recorded other songs, mostly with a monster theme, but "Monster Mash" was such a smash that people cite him as an example of a "one-hit wonder."

I have a memory of sitting at a table next to Mr. Pickett at a horror convention — perhaps a two-day thing that was held at a public school in Lawndale, California one weekend in 1977. It was run by author George Clayton Johnson.  He called it ClaytonCon 1 and as I recall, the honored guests outnumbered the paying ones by a notable ratio, at least while I was there.

Maybe it wasn't that con but at some convention, I sat and chatted with "Boris" and he talked about all the things he'd done besides "Monster Mash" — a pretty impressive list, as I recall. But when people came by his table, all they wanted to talk about was "Monster Mash" and most weren't there to purchase the copies of his album and other goodies he was selling. Everyone just wanted to prove to him that they knew the song by heart and most of 'em wanted to show him their bad impression of him doing his bad impression of Karloff.

I felt sorry for the guy but then I remembered how many recording artists in this world — or wanna-be recording artists — never record anything that makes the Top 100, let alone goes to #1 as his did. One hit is infinitely better than zero hits.  So here's one the biggest novelty records of all time from American Bandstand for October 13, 1964…

And now here's a bonus — a novelty record based on a novelty record! You may remember my friends in Big Daddy, the local band that takes everything recorded after John F. Kennedy was shot and redoes it so it sounds like a record that came out before John F. Kennedy was shot. A few years ago, they took "The Music of the Night" from Phantom of the Opera and did some surgery to make it sound like "Monster Mash." I like both songs better when mashed this way…

Lately, everywhere I look, I seem to see people talking about conspiracies. "A" happens and then "B" happens and though there's no obvious connection between the two, someone finds a way to link them and to suggest that they're all a plot by Master Planner "C."

It's possible…but possible does not mean certain or even probable. It's possible that that lottery ticket you purchased will win you $50 million but it's not probable and certainly more than a bit far from certain. Things do happen all on their own. There are coincidences. And there's another factor that has a lot to do with what happens in this world…

That factor is incompetence. There's a lot of it on this planet, sometimes even from people who give every appearance of knowing what they're doing. I am a big believer in the aphorism, "Never attribute to deviousness that which can be explained by incompetence," though I more often modify it to "Don't rush to attribute to deviousness that which can be explained by incompetence."

Back in the seventies, I took a course in criminology just for the heck of it. Our instructor, a former F.B.I. official I believe, spent a lot of time telling us why Real Life was not like an Erle Stanley Gardner novel…or like the way we saw crimes in the movies or on TV. One of his main points was that you can't solve a mystery by assuming that all parties did the logical thing. Even relatively-sane people do not follow obvious rules of logic…and criminals are often far from sane.

Sometimes, you can figure out what they're thinking. Often, you can't. And often, they're not thinking at all.

Lately, I've received a lot of questions about comic book history with folks asking me why some publisher did something that now seems totally illogical. Well, maybe it didn't then. Or maybe there were other factors in play about which we know nothing…

Or maybe the person making the decision was totally illogical. And/or incompetent.

I saw someone on the web the other day trying to figure out Mike Lindell's "endgame." I wouldn't assume The Pillow Guy has one. It strikes me that when he starts a sentence, he doesn't know where he's going en route to the period. You cannot have a Master Plan if you're not to some degree a Master Planner.

And there are Master Planners in the world. I'm not saying there aren't. But there are also incompetents and I think they outnumber the Master Planners…by far.

As many of you are informing me this A.M., I seem to be a character in today's Funky Winkerbean comic strip. What a surprising thing to wake up to.

From The Ed Sullivan Show for March 28, 1965, here's my favorite non-speaking comedy stage act, George Carl…

Our great friend Steve Sherman passed away last month. I wrote about him here and here. A memorial gathering will be held on Sunday afternoon, August 8th, here in the Los Angeles area. If it would be appropriate for you to be there and you'd like to attend, drop me a note and someone will get in touch with you about the details.

I apologize I don't have a better photo of Don Jurwich — preferably one without me in it. That was taken at a Christmas Party thrown by the Animation Guild a few years ago, the last time I saw Don. He was semi-retired from animation and was very happy to be painting what he wanted to paint instead of writing, producing or directing cartoons that someone else wanted him to do. He did a lot of that because he was so good that everyone wanted to hire him.

Don, who died yesterday at the age of 87, had a tremendous career in cartoons. It included working for most of the studios in Los Angeles but long stints with Jay Ward (where he worked on George of the Jungle) and Hanna-Barbera (where he worked on dozens of shows including Super-Friends, Scooby Doo, The Smurfs and so many others).

He was one of those guys — I encountered many of these in animation — who'd gotten stuck in executive-type positions, dealing with the networks and overseas animation studios and budget problems when he would rather have been just writing and drawing. Another producer there once said to me, "Don has to spend ten hours fixing a storyboard by someone else when it would have taken him five hours to draw it himself right in the first place."

But he was a tremendous talent and a supporter of tremendous talent. At H-B, he gave an awful lot of young artists their first jobs

I can't do Don's story justice but maybe Don can. Some time back, he sat for a two-part interview on his career. The two parts total a little less than an hour and if you're interested in the reality of the cartoon business and how it worked in years past, you couldn't learn more than you'll learn listening to this fine man.

Any number of you who read this post yesterday wrote to remind me that Stacey Abrams, who was among those nominated for a Voiceover Emmy, is not even a live-action actress. She's a politician and activist and former member of the Georgia House of Representatives. I probably should have said something about that but my mind was on my main thesis, which is that the nominators were nominating celebrities instead of real voice actors.

Also, my view is not that it's wrong to nominate famous people or on-camera performers. Some of them, as I noted, occasionally give outstanding performances. I think it's wrong to favor them to the exclusion of folks who are first and foremost voiceover artists. I have no idea what show Ms. Abrams was nominated for and I'm pretty sure I never saw it…so I have no opinion on whether her performance was Emmy-worthy. The problem for me is not Stacey Abrams. It's a judging process that appears to overlook superlative work done by lesser-knowns.

I should probably have said something else here which I think I've said before on this blog. I think people take awards and nominations and especially supposed "snubs" way too seriously. I served briefly on a committee for the TV Academy that was trying to survey the process and recommend improvements to it. As far as I know, the committee never came to agreement on anything that was worth submitting to the Board of Governors or whoever we supposedly were advising.

What I learned was how random and political and (most of all) subjective the process was. Expecting it to yield the nominees and winners you think are wise decisions is like expecting a bunch of pussycats to do what you want them to do. They might…but only by chance. I do not disdain the Emmys or any awards. I just think people take them too seriously. Maybe in this case, I did.

Here's another one of these.  It's the openings to 36 (actually, more than 36) shows that were on NBC in the Fall of 1960…

The nominations for this year's Emmy Awards in the category of "Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance" are as follows: Jessica Walters, Maya Rudolph, Stacey Abrams, Julie Andrews, Tituss Burgess, Stanley Tucci and Seth MacFarlane. With the exception of Mr. McFarlane, these are all actors known for their on-camera or on-stage work who do an occasional voice in a cartoon or something. When they do, they are at the center of two prejudices.

One — which I hear less often but I do hear it — is the presumption that they aren't very good and they were cast — to the exclusion of full-time voiceover performers — only because of their reputations. This is undoubtedly true in some cases. Hell, I've even had producers or casting directors admit as much to me and I can almost (almost!) defend it in certain cases, especially relating to feature films.

The sale of a movie to exhibitors — or of a TV series or special to a network — can often be easier with a S*T*A*R attached. Not everyone is cast in roles because they are the most talented or "rightest" for a role. Sometimes, they're cast for their reputation and the belief that they have some sort of following that will sell tickets or bring in viewers.  The movie Shrek might not have been made or been sold in advance to so many theaters with unknowns voicing the leads instead of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. A certain part of the movie business (emphasis on "business") does revolve around star names. That screenplay you wrote that no one even wants to read, let alone make, might be helped immeasurably if Tom Hanks was interested in starring in it.

Still, I love "real" voice actors — the kind who follow the lineage of Daws Butler, Mel Blanc, June Foray, Paul Frees, Don Messick and so many more…the kind who really know how to act with only their voices. No body language…no facial expressions…just their voices.

If I just start giving you the names of current "real" voice actors, I'll offend many friends by leaving them out so I'll just list the ones who've participated in the online Cartoon Voices panels I've done during The Pandemic. All of these videos can be found in this section of this website. Here's the list…

Bob Bergen, Julie Nathanson, Fred Tatasciore, Phil LaMarr, Secunda Wood, Jim Meskimen, Gregg Berger, Kaitlyn Robrock, Rob Paulsen, Debra Wilson, Alan Oppenheimer, Alicyn Packard, Jason Marsden, Elle Newlands, John Mariano, Debi Derryberry, Michael Bell, Neil Ross, Neil Kaplan, Nickie Bryar, Laraine Newman, Misty Lee, Dee Bradley Baker, Bill Farmer, Corey Burton, Kari Wahlgren, J.P. Karliak, Kimberly Brooks, Jon Bailey, Mara Junot, Maurice LaMarche, Anna Brisbin and Brock Powell. And in two weeks, the one I did with Candi Milo, Wally Wingert, Jenny Yokibori and Zeno Robinson will be online.

These are all folks who do a lot of voiceover work. Some of them also do on-camera…just as Mel Blanc, June Foray, Paul Winchell, Gary Owens, Stan Freberg and other inarguable voice actors occasionally did on-camera. But I think you can see the difference between them and when a cartoon special or Mr. Disney brought in Bing Crosby or Ed Wynn or Boris Karloff to do a voiceover for a cartoon.

As a director of cartoon voices, I've hired the "on-camera" variety — Don Knotts, Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, Jesse White and even a few who weren't in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World like Jeffrey Tambor and Shelley Berman. The prejudice that such actors are only hired for their names is just plain wrong. Some of them are good at voiceover and some of them are not.

But the other prejudice is also wrong. That's the prejudice — and I've heard this one too from folks who admitted to it — that on-camera actors are somehow preferable because they're "real actors." That's absurd. Look at the names in the list above of folks who've been on my online panels. Any one of them is capable of doing things in front of a microphone that such "real actors" could never do.

We once had James Earl Jones on an episode of Garfield and Friends. I would never have thought of casting him but one day when we were recording in Studio A, he was recording promo-type announcements in Studio B. He wandered over and watched our troupe for a while and then asked me if I could use him someday for a character part. I immediately said, "Have you got a demo of your work I could listen to?"

No, I didn't say that. That stupid, I am not.  What I actually said was, "Sure if you're willing to work for what we pay." He was…and two weeks later, he came in and played — of course — a dastardly villain with a real deep voice. He was fine but throughout the whole session, he kept saying of the other actors in our cast, "I can't believe them, switching voices like that, making creature sounds." He was impressed with the sheer acting.

I don't know if we submitted him for Emmy consideration that year. If we had and he'd been nominated, that would have felt very, very wrong to me. I'm sure he was magnificent doing Othello or Driving Miss Daisy or The Great White Hope or almost anything else on the Broadway stage but not everyone can do everything.   Laurence Olivier was ten times the actor that Bruce Lee was but if you'd been casting the lead in a martial arts movie when both were around, which one would you have picked?

My point is that the great voice actors are great at voice acting.  Some who are not primarily voice actors can be fine in certain roles in certain situations as Mr. Jones was…but when I see a list of nominees like the one for this year's Emmy Awards, I think someone is disrespecting professional, full-or-most-time voice actors.  They're voting for celebrity, not talent.

They're not understanding what James Earl Jones understood about how the other actors in the session with him were exhibiting a range and expertise he did not have.  Even the late Lorenzo Music, who really only had the one voice, was using it to give life to a fully-fleshed characterization, created using only his voice, not his face or body.

I have not heard all of what earned this year's nominees their nominations.  Perhaps some of their performances were wonderful but it's hard to think some judges didn't stampede over the work of some actors with less familiar names to get to actors they'd heard of.  Come on, Academy.  Give voice acting awards to voice actors.

I try to limit the amount of space on this blog to plugging things I have coming out because as far as I'm concerned, every single person — no, let me put that in all caps, italics and boldface: EVERY SINGLE PERSON — who posts often on the Internet posts way too much self-promotion. But every so often, I allow myself one of these…

The first issue of the long-awaited Groo Meets Tarzan mini-series is coming out July 28 from Dark Horse. Here's a preview and if you plan on buying this comic, don't read the preview. Wait and read those pages in context. But if you're on the fence or on the wrong side of it, take a look. It's four issues and — truth in advertising — Groo doesn't meet Tarzan in the first one. But he does later on and it's very strange and very silly and there is wonderful artwork in there by Sergio Aragonés (the stuff with Groo and the stuff about him and me) and Thomas Yeates (everything Tarzan).

Some of you may not know and less of you will care that I used to write Tarzan comics. They were not published in America but they were fun for me to do and the job heightened my already-extant love of Mr. Burroughs and his characters. It was fun to get back to it for a little while. Also worth noting: This may be the last crossover we ever do with Groo and Somebody With Whom He Should Not Be Crossing Over so if you like that kind of comic book intermarriage, enjoy this one while you can.

(P.S. The preview makes reference to "Groo creators Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier." Groo was created by Sergio Aragonés. I know the author of the preview probably didn't mean "creators" literally. He just meant "the guys who create each issue" but this is kind of a provocative matter with me.)

How about another selection from The Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra? This is a tune written by George M. Cohan for the 1906 Broadway musical, Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway. But if you've ever seen the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy, you already know that. Here to favor us is vocalist Molly Ryan with "Mary's a Grand Old Name"…

Our pal Doug Abramson wrote to ask…

I am curious if in your wandering around the Burbank Studios, if you ever got an idea of how big the original squares for Hollywood Squares were? I know that they weren't anywhere as large as they appeared on screen, because I was in a Summer day camp in 1978, when I was 6, where we went someplace everyday and one day was the Burbank Studios; where the squares were sitting out in the hallway. Even to a 6-year-old, they looked really small. Not a space you would want to be squeezed into for several hours during a marathon taping session.

Well, the stars weren't in there all through the taping session. They taped five shows in about seven hours so they were in the boxes for half an hour, then out for half an hour, then in and so on.

I sat in one once when the big set was out in the hallway outside Studio 1. It was there, no one was around and I couldn't resist sitting in a ground-level box that had Jonathan Winters' name on it. I'm not good at estimating sizes but I'm 6'3" and the ceiling in that box was about two inches over my head. I was sitting kind of low but sitting there wasn't uncomfy; just getting in and out of it.

Sitting there for the length of a game wouldn't have been uncomfy. I might have gotten worried if Louie Anderson was in the box above me.