Monthly Archives: November 2021

CNN has two articles up about Jack Kirby, creator of The Eternals and an awful lot of other valuable properties. Some of us may live to see every single thing that man touched revived, dramatized, merchandised or otherwise make a heap of dough for its copyright holders and become beloved among new generations.

Roy Schwartz wrote an overview of Jack's life. And Brian Lowry writes about The Eternals and how it fits in with the amazing career of Mr. Kirby.

As you'll see, I was interviewed for the latter piece and my only quibble with it is the assertion that Jack's Fourth World comics for DC in the early seventies didn't sell. In this interview, you can hear Paul Levitz, former president of DC Comics, say that according to their files, the books sold decently.

No, they did not sell as high as some folks then at DC were hoping. Nothing DC published during that time sold as well as some folks then at DC were hoping. But they sold better than much of the line then and the reprints of them are now selling so well that one of the editors at the company said to me, "We wish we had a hundred issues of each title to reprint."

Here's a new Charlie Frye video.  A friend told me he doesn't like these because — and I quote — "I don't like seeing people do things I'll never be able to do." I asked him if he was in the room for the birth of any of his children and he said, "No…for the same reason."

• So many deaths due to DUIs lately. For driving intoxicated, the minimum sentence should be one year for every mile per hour at the driver's top speed multiplied by the number of times over the limit of his or her blood alcohol count. Henry Ruggs would get 312 years.

It's been two months and two days since Lydia the Cat passed away at the ripe old age of…

…I don't know. I know she lived to a ripe old age but I'm not sure what it was…fifteen or eighteen.  Somewhere in there. If you search online, you'll see many, many estimates of how long feral cats live and I'm sure it has a lot to do with where they are and what kind of support (if any) they get from us humans. Some sources though say two to five years and Lydia frequented my back yard for at least fourteen.

She often slept in the little house you see in the above photo. One evening a week or so ago when it was drizzly out, I saw a possum in there but it fled before I could grab up my camera.  It's the first possum I've seen out there since Lydia died, which of course is when I stopped setting cat food out there.

I haven't seen any raccoons out there either but last week, a lady who was staying with me reported seeing a huge raccoon on the back porch where the food used to be.  It stood up on its hind legs, she said, and leaned against the sliding glass door in order to peer inside.  Then it sulked off.

And no cats have come around.  And I've just about broken the habit of wondering if Lydia needs fresh food and water.

There's been a noticeable benefit to ending my 30+ year practice of feeding stray cats out there.  No cat food means no raccoons coming by to eat, and no raccoons coming by to eat means the yard is no longer full of raccoon shit.  It's a lot nicer out there now…but that doesn't mean I don't sometimes miss my little furry friends.

Republican Glenn Youngkin just won the governorship of Virginia and, of course, Donald Trump is taking credit for that victory saying the folks who loved him turned out for it.  This is Trump's well-worn "I win either way" spinning. Youngkin avoided appearing with Trump and clearly dodged questions when he was asked why.  If Youngkin had lost, Trump would be everywhere today saying, "He lost because he tried distancing himself from me."

In this country now, everyone is living in terror of the next election, no matter how far in the future it may be or how little we may even be able to predict about who'll be running or what the issues then will be.  Tomorrow if there's an earthquake in Peru, someone will connect it to the likelihood of Trump or someone like him winning or losing.

I'm not looking at a lot of this.  It's clickbait…someone trying to get your attention by telling you there's been a vital, determining development in that next election you're worried about.  But there really isn't.  How many unpredictable things have to happen in this world before people will stop fretting about things that can't possibly be predicted?

As for Virginia, William Saletan suggests a way to look at the results there…

…GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel lauded the former president as the hero of the night. "President Trump continues to be a huge boost for Republicans across the country," she declared.

This is a logical spin to put on the Virginia result, if you're trying to pump up your party and manage a narcissist's ego. But if McDaniel and others feature Trump in next year's elections based on the conclusion that he was an asset in Virginia, they'll be sorry. Polls show that he was a significant liability. Youngkin won this race not because of Trump, but despite him.

If you read Saletan's whole piece, you'll see this is at least as valid an interpretation of the data as any other. I'm not saying it's definitely right; just that there's a good chance it is. So drawing the conclusion that Donald is obviously making a comeback might not be correct. But saying that is good clickbait.

Watch this. I probably like this more than you will but it's only seven minutes…

In my earlier piece here, I said, "Donald Trump was the first politician to talk like that when he was in or even near the presidency. And let's not forget that." In response, I received this message from someone who said…

Not true (at least in "modern" times) Nixon was far worse. Listen to the Oval Office recordings.

Do I have to explain that I was talking about public speech intended to be heard by the public? Trump's public speech is worse than Richard Nixon's public speech.

If we had Oval Office recordings of Trump, we could compare those. Nixon's were pretty bad. Trump's might be worse. And if someone found a lot of private recordings of Lyndon Johnson, it would not surprise me if he topped them both.

Jonah Goldberg — not a pundit with whom I usually agree — writes about the use of the phrase, "Let's go, Brandon" as euphemism for "F.U., Biden!" And to the extent his position is that Democrats started this kind of thing, I think he's wrong here. There's a big difference between Robert DeNiro cussing out the President of the United States and an elected leader using or encouraging that kind of thing. I don't buy most "both sides are guilty of this" arguments but I do on this one with one exception: Donald Trump was the first politician to talk like that when he was in or even near the presidency. And let's not forget that.

But I also understand that we're getting more and more polarized in this country. More and more, it seems to me that political arguments are not about what they're really about but who gets the "win." People are against things just because "the other side" is for them. I will not be surprised if we soon see elected leaders, functioning in their job descriptions, calling each other most vulgar names imaginable…because a certain sector of their followers want that. They get tingles and think it's straight-talking when their side insults the other side.

It's indicative of a growing mindset in this country that the goal in every negotiation or confrontation is not to reach a point where both sides are happy. It's to reach a point where you get everything you could possibly want and the other side is lying on the floor, bleeding and sobbing and begging for mercy. The next time there's an opening on the Supreme Court, the idea will not be to select a justice that everyone agrees is fair and unbiased. The objective will be to select someone that the other side will loathe…someone who will "decide" based not on the merits of the case but according to which team they're on.

In a way, it may be a good thing that there's almost no ambiguity on where people stand. In another way, it's awful because it gets everyone farther and farther from reality to presume that the other side is wrong 100% of the time. I happen to think the truth sometimes lies somewhere in-between and people used to know how to be partisan but to still get to that middle-ground. These days, it's getting harder and harder.

This is another excerpt from the Stephen Sondheim 80th Birthday Celebration which was staged (and recorded for broadcast) at Avery Fisher Hall in New York on March 15, 2010. This particular song — "We're Gonna Be Alright" — was, as host David Hyde-Pierce informs us, created for the 1965 Broadway musical Do I Hear a Waltz? Mr. Sondheim famously hated the project, writing lyrics for tunes by Richard Rodgers, who was (reportedly) neither nice nor sober much of the time. As our host notes, these lyrics are a bit "naughtier" than what got on the stage back in '65.

It's performed here by Jason Danieley and Marin Mazzie…a happily-wed couple who met in 1996 performing in the off-Broadway play, Trojan Women: A Love Story. Married the following year, they were together until she passed away in 2018 following a three-year battle with ovarian cancer. I saw Ms. Mazzie on the stage a few times and she was utterly dazzling and superb. In this number, you'll see why they were often referred to as "Broadway's Golden Couple"…

Yesterday on this blog, I was probably guilty of doing something that annoys me a bit when others do it to me. I get a little irked when folks send me questions that they could answer themselves in ten seconds by Googling instead of writing to me. I got one this morning from someone asking me if Jack Kirby ever drew any covers for Daredevil. I went to Google, typed in "jack kirby daredevil cover," hit my enter key and it instantly showed me several he'd done, including the first.

So I was curious about the very funny YouTube superstar act, Men in Coats, and I asked about them without taking the time to search myself. A lot of you did and you led me to some answers. The gent with the white hair is named Mick Dow, and he started in show business as a magician. He wrote this bio on IMDB…

Mick Dow is a writer and director, best known for creating the comedy show 'Men In Coats' (100 million Hits on You Tube) and as the writer of the multi award-winning short film 'Interference' (Best Student Film at the London Short Film Festival) Mick Dow, born in Dundee Scotland and brought up in Yorkshire, started as a street performer in Covent Garden, London and went on to national tours and International acclaim with his own take on visual comedy. 5 years ago he went back to school to gain a Diploma in Film Making.Writing Credits include 2 BBC pilot comedy dramas and he has directed 3 shorts; 'Department of Fate' 'Shortcut' and 'Hope in a Box.' His next short as Writer-Director will be 'Pretty Bonnets, due for release in 2018.

If I understand correctly, his first partner in the act was a comedian named Maddy Sparham and now, when the Men in Coats perform, Dow works with a gentleman named Mark Felgate. There are videos on YouTube of them doing basically the same clever act in recent years. I think that's Mr. Felgate on the left in the photo above with Mr. Dow.

That's a lot more than I knew about them before. If you want to know about them, searching for "Men in Coats" will take you to a lot of websites and photos of guys in parkas. But if you search for "Mick Dow," you can find what you're looking for.

Since my dear friend Betty Lynn died — and "friend" understates our long relationship — there have been a lot of online articles and videos and I'm sure there are stories in the tabloids that are really, really wrong. She did not have a sad life at the end. When I saw her in Mt. Airy in June of 2019, one of the things we talked about was how happy she was living there. She was in an assisted living home where the staff took very, very good care of her. She was financially sound. She loved her doctors and caregivers. She loved being the big celebrity in town and meeting her fans. When I spoke with her after that, including the week before she died, none of that had changed.

Yes, she had health problems. If you live to be 95, you might have a health problem or two. It is not news that a woman that age had health problems. She was very content with that situation and grateful she had as few as she did and had lived as long as she had.

She was not in despair. She also did not die of a broken heart because of Andy Griffith. She and Andy were friends but they were not as close as some people like to think. I actually do have a little insight into Betty's romantic life because we talked about matters of the heart and love — hers and mine — a few times, including that last time I saw her in person.

Betty's passing was only sad in the way that the death of anyone who dies at the age of 95 is sad. We can't stop people from writing what they write about folks in the public eye…but we also shouldn't believe that if it's written somewhere or there's a YouTube video about it, it's true. There were sad parts to Betty's life and career but her last years were anything but.