Monthly Archives: August 2021

We haven't had nearly enough baby panda footage on this blog lately so…

A friend of mine spent several years in Afghanistan working as a doctor attached to the U.S. forces. He told me some pretty harrowing tales about his tour o' duty here but the thing I remember most is when he said, "Staying there is a disaster. Leaving there would be a disaster. Nothing about the country is not a disaster." I think that's proving to be the case.

I seem to recall a lot of politicians of both parties saying we should just get the hell outta there. So we tried to get the hell outta there and they're not happy about that.

The two pundit/experts I look to on this kind of topic are Daniel Larison and Fred Kaplan. You can read what each has to say.

It's several numbers from the Broadway musical 42nd Street except that it's a Korean production. They did a nice job of it…

Jim Henson, who was a pretty smart guy, once said…

At some point in my life I decided, rightly or wrongly, that there are many situations in this life that I can't do much about — acts of terrorism, feelings of nationalistic prejudice, Cold War, etc. — so what I should do is concentrate on the situations that my energy can affect.

That's a pretty good quote there…one of the ones I find myself quoting to others a lot these days.

Geoff Hall writes to ask…

In your latest blog post, you described someone as "banana-wackie," which I assume means crazy or nuts. I've seen you use that term before and I'm wondering where it comes from. Is it a joke I'm missing or something?

It's something that wormed its way into my vocabulary in the mid-sixties when the General Foods people marketed (briefly) a breakfast cereal that was called "Wackies" on the box but "Banana Wackies" in the commercials for it. I never tasted it and am not sure it got as far as supermarkets in Los Angeles before they gave up on it…but I sure saw a lot of those ads. Here are a few…

It was, I'm given to understand, a sort of spin-off from the same company's Lucky Charms cereal which came out to great success in 1964. A box of Lucky Charms contained puffed oat cereal mixed with little marshmallow pieces shaped like moons, stars, clovers, etc. A box of Banana Wackies contained puffed oat cereal mixed with little marshmallow pieces that were allegedly banana-flavored. Since I never cared much for Lucky Charms, I probably wouldn't have tried Wackies if I'd had the opportunity…but I liked the name.

Incidentally! In the commercials you may have just watched, there's a little boy and a gorilla. I have no idea who did the little boy's voice but the gorilla seems to be the comedian and character actor, B.S. Pully. And if it isn't him, it's someone doing a darned good impression of him.

B.S. Pully was said to be the dirtiest comedian of his day, starting in the mid-forties. The "B.S." was not an abbreviation for his actual first and middle names. His real name was Murray Lerman. He named himself "B.S." to hint at the profanity and for a time was teamed with a comedian named H.S. Gump who operated on the same principle.

Pully with his gravel voice and earthy manner did bit parts in movies until 1950 when he accompanied a friend to an audition for the original production of the show Guys and Dolls. According to legend, the friend who was trying out for a role did not get the part but B.S. wound up getting cast as mob boss Big Jule on Broadway and later in the movie. He spent most of the rest of his career playing gangsters. And he outlived Banana Wackies, though not by much.

I have a lot of e-mails about Glen Campbell's recording of "Galveston" and yes, I guess I did make the connection when I first heard it. I did realize it was about a young soldier off fighting a war somewhere, wishing he was home with that 21-year-old lady he loved. I forgot or perhaps never knew it was a Jimmy Webb song. When I get through with this whole mixtape series, I need to go back and figure out how many Jimmy Webb songs I had on my tape. I bet a lot.

What I didn't know is that "Galveston" was first recorded by Hawaiian music superstar Don Ho. His version sounds sad and not all that interesting and if someone told me it could be turned into a top-selling hit with a few alterations, I'd have thought they were banana-wackie. Buzz Dixon pointed out to me that over on Wikipedia, they show how some lyrics were changed for the Campbell version. Originally, one section went like this…

Galveston, oh Galveston
Wonder if she could forget me
I'd go home if they would let me
Put down this gun
And go to Galveston.

And it got changed to…

Galveston, oh Galveston
I still hear your sea waves crashing
While I watch the cannons flashing
I clean my gun
And dream of Galveston.

I didn't know most of this when I put it on my mixtape. I just liked the song.

1969. Glen Campbell — a performer I always liked and never heard anything bad about — has a big hit with "Galveston." I tried to understand the story from the lyrics and decided I shouldn't always do that. Some songs, you just listen to and don't ask questions…

I love these Korean versions of American musicals. Here are a couple of numbers from Man of La Mancha…

In the last day or three, I've heard of three people I know who either have COVID or seem to have the symptoms and are awaiting tests. None of these was one of those "I'd rather die from the virus than the vaccine" people. All three are folks who had no problem with the vaccine except getting around to actually getting jabbed. Double sigh.

Greenblatt's Delicatessen up on Sunset closed its doors last night — maybe forever but maybe not. The owner is looking for a buyer so maybe it'll come back like Nate 'n Al's deli in Beverly Hills did. Greenblatt's was a great deli with awful parking. It's on the same block as The Laugh Factory so it was often full of comedians…and their parking lot was often full of comedians' cars.

A lot of restaurants I like have closed lately. The Enterprise Fish Company is gone, both locations — the one out in Venice and the one up north in Santa Barbara. I liked 'em both a lot. How much The Pandemic had to do with all these closures is unknown to me but obviously, it had some impact. It's had some impact on everything.

That's right. Evanier has another Korean version of an American musical for you today. I give you the opening and closing numbers from Hairspray…

Hey, remember all the way to this morning when I posted this? Well, longtime MAD writer Arnie Kogen, who was mentioned in my piece, sent me this…

That sure looks like 1960 to me. Even though I wasn't there (Yes, I didn't have enough pages), I remember it well. 1960 was MAD's very first trip and Gaines took the gang to Haiti. Some observations:

#6 was not Larry Siegel. (I know the top of Larry Siegel's head. This was not it.)

One of the four unidentified people, #8, #11, #12 or #14 could have been Larry Gore, the MAD publicist at the time. I'm guessing Gore was #8.

There was this great story about Gore that Frank Jacobs wonderfully described in his book, The Mad World of William Gaines.  On that Haitian trip, Gaines and the guys (there were no women. It was 1960) were visiting the sky-swept Citadel near Cap-Haitian. Each traveler mounted a burro and made the steep, slow climb up the mountain path, which was unspoiled by guardrails. Halfway to the top, at an especially tricky turn, Gore looked down and duly noted, "My burro just crossed himself." I wish I was there just to hear that line. (but, sadly, I didn't have enough pages)

Last Sunday was sixty years to the day since the first issue of Fantastic Four appeared on newsstands and forever changed the world of comics.  How much it changed it is hard to explain but a couple of us try it in a forthcoming hardcover book from Abrams Comic Art.  The book, which will be out this November, is called Fantastic Four No. 1: Panel by Panel.  It's a reprint of that fateful publication lovingly reformatted by ace book designer Chip Kidd to achieve, as the title suggests, panel by panel analysis of the material.

This was tried before but from what I've seen, this is a much better realization of the goal with superior reproduction.  There are also some new essays by Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort and me, and some other goodies.  You can advance order a copy here.

The expert reproduction has been achieved by locating a just-about-perfect copy of that first issue and then spending a lot of time and skill photographing and scanning and making it look as sharp as possible. How did they locate someone with such a copy? Easy: I asked here in this blog post last September. Here — I'll quote it here so you don't have to click…

This is not for me. It's for something I'm working with. They're looking for someone who has an unslabbed copy of Fantastic Four #1 — an original one, not a reprint — who will make it available to them for scanning…and yes, this is all approved by Marvel. It's for a forthcoming fancy book and they will pay a fee and give you credit and some free copies and take very good care of it. In fact, they may even be able to come to you and you can take it out of its Mylar® sleeve or whatever it's in and handle it. They just need to scan it for this big, impressive book.

Someone who is located in the Eastern Tri-State area would be ideal but they may be willing to settle for anywhere. Drop me a note if you've got one and are willing to share it with the world. I will pass you on to folks I trust.

Several volunteers came forward and the gent who loaned his to the project is very happy that he did. Meanwhile, the folks behind Fantastic Four No. 1: Panel by Panel are so happy with it that they're starting work on a similar book that would reprint Amazing Fantasy #15 with the debut of Spider-Man, and also Amazing Spider-Man #1…so now they're looking for someone with copies of those two books. They're looking for original, unslabbed first editions, not reprints and would prefer someone in or around New York. If you can help them and wanna do so, drop me a note and I'll forward it on.

William M. Gaines, the publisher of MAD magazine, used to take the folks who worked for him on an annual trip to some exotic place. It was a way, he felt, to engender loyalty and productivity and to take a trip with a lot of funny people and then write it off as a business expense. The gent labelled #13 below probably advised him on this.

A lot of folks online have been trying to identify all the folks in this photo taken on one of those trips. As a public service, I sent it to my partner Sergio Aragonés and asked him to help out.

The online folks are theorizing this photo is from the 1960 trip, which was the first.  1960 was when Alfred E. Neuman made his first real bid at the presidency; ergo, the campaign poster and pins suggest that year.  Well, maybe…but Sergio is also certain the man on the far left is Paul Coker, Jr. and Mr. Coker did not have work in MAD until 1961…so maybe this is '61 or '62 in spite of the poster and pins.  It would have to be one of those three years since Sergio isn't in it.  His first MAD trip was 1963 and he was a steady participant after that.

Bill Gaines later decreed that freelancers had to have contributed some specified number of pages to the magazine during the previous twelve months in order to qualify for each year's MAD trip but Sergio says that rule came along later.  (The policy led to a great quip by longtime MAD writer Arnie Kogen when Gaines' mother died.  Someone asked Arnie if he was going to the funeral and he said, "I can't.  I don't have enough pages.")

If you click on the photo, you can see it larger and with everyone numbered. Here are his identifications…

1. Joe Orlando (Artist)
2. Frank Jacobs (Writer)
3. Jerry DeFuccio (Editorial Assistant)
4. Nick Meglin (Editorial Assistant)
5. Almost Certainly John Putnam (Art Director)
6. Maybe Larry Siegel (Writer)
7. Al Jaffee (Writer-Artist)
8. Unidentified
9. Paul Coker, Jr. (Artist)
10. Leonard Brenner (Production Manager)
11. Unidentified
12. Unidentified
13. Sidney Gwirtzman (Gaines' Accountant)
14. Unidentified
15. Al Feldstein (Editor)
16. Bob Clarke (Artist)
17. Dave Berg (Writer-Artist)
18. George Woodbridge (Artist)
19. Nancy Gaines (Gaines' Daughter)
20. William Gaines (Publisher)

Sergio is reasonably certain that one of the Unidentified men has to be Gaines' lawyer Marty Scheiman, who was credited for years in the masthead where it said, "Lawsuits: Martin J. Scheiman, Esq." Sergio is also reasonably certain that this photo does not contain any of the following people who were contributing to MAD at the time: Don Martin, Wallace Wood, Mort Drucker, Sy Reit, Gary Belkin, Frank Kelly Freas or Tom Koch.  That is, unless one of them is the guy in the Alfred E. Neuman mask which seems highly unlikely.

It might or might not contain Larry Siegel, who was one of MAD's most prolific writers.  MAD's photographer at the time was a gent named Lester Krauss so it's possible he took the picture.  Or maybe someone else did and he's one of the Unidentifieds.  Or maybe he isn't there at all.  Who the hell knows?

Obviously, if anyone knows for sure what year this was or has corrections or additions, send 'em in.  And hey, take another look at the photo.  Doesn't it look like this is a bad, all-male road company of Guys and Dolls and Dave Berg is about to start singing "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat"?

Continuing with our festival of American musicals performed in Korea, here's six minutes of Barnum. Over there, it starts with the finale song…

As I explained yesterday here, I've seen the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World more often than I've seen some of my best friends. It gets written about a lot online and for some reason, many folks lately are discussing the now-classic cars driven in it. They may not have been classics when the movie was made in 1962 but if you tried to amass examples of those models today, it would run you a lot more than the $350,000 that the characters in that film were trying to get their mitts on.

Various automotive sites have identified all the vehicles. For instance, here's the one in which Phil Silvers took a lovely river voyage…

That's a Ford Super Deluxe convertible — either the 1946 model or the nearly-identical 1947-1948 model. Apparently, the movie used at least one of each in various scenes. No one seems to be certain how many they had of some of these cars but clearly with all the stuntwork, it was vital to have at least a couple of each around. And many of them had to be duplicated at least in part on the soundstage for rear screen projection scenes.

If this kind of thing interests you, the Hemmings site (which traffics in classic cars) has identified them all in a four-part article and they'll also show you what it'll cost to buy each car today. So go see Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four…and I'll warn you that all four parts are filled with SPOILERS, just in case you've never seen the movie.

And if you haven't ever seen this movie, make sure you read yesterday's post here. Thanks to the many people who sent me links about the Hemmings piece. I think Shaun Faulkner was the first.