Monthly Archives: August 2022

Nineteen seconds of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck singing about Post cereals. I always liked Mel Blanc singing with himself…

Jeremy Stahl makes the argument that Donald Trump will not be the Republican candidate in the next election. And what he says would be a very strong, convincing argument if it was about anyone except Donald Trump…a man who rarely does the logical/sane thing. An awful lot of past rules of political conduct do not seem to apply to Trump. His followers are willing to forgive deeds and words that would send them fleeing from some other candidate.

If you forced me to wager, I'd bet Stahl is right but I think it's way too soon to place a bet on this one. Since Trump got involved in national politics, things have become stunningly unpredictable. Something could well happen tomorrow which no one could have imagined today. With all the different investigations and leakers and former aides turning against the guy, every day feels like "Anything Can Happen Day," which was a weekly feature of the old Mickey Mouse Club show. In fact, I think one of the strongest arguments for Republicans to not re-nominate the guy is that they can't possibly know what scathing detail revelation or conviction was in his future.

One of the reasons a lot of Republicans deserted Richard Nixon during Watergate was the steady drip-drip-drip of damning disclosures from the investigations and especially those presidential tapes. So many of them were afraid to support him wholeheartedly today for fear of what would come out tomorrow.

• Today is looking like another really good day to be glad you're not Alex Jones.

Joshua Rosenkranz recently sent me a question I get often in my e-mail. I usually give those who so inquire a brief, probably insufficient reply but I've now decided to write a long answer to which I can link when others ask. Here's Joshua…

I am writing once again so I could find out more about Arlene's absence from the Garfield and Friends cartoon. I read once that there was alleged information that during the production of Garfield and Friends, Arlene was omitted because the character had a specific portrayal envisioned by Jim Davis himself, and since the criteria wasn't met, she was never used and replaced with an original character named Penelope.

If possible, is there a way I could find out why Arlene was not present/denied usage for the Garfield and Friends cartoon?

I am willing to receive an answer anytime, since I asked about Arlene in my last writing along with the cut characters from U.S. Acres, Cody and Blue, and never got an answer specifically about Garfield's pink-furred love interest.

It's kinda true that Jim Davis had some other plans for Arlene but the main reason she only appeared fleetingly in the Garfield and Friends show is that I didn't come up with any ideas I really liked that involved her.

Much of the time when you create a TV series with a whole buncha characters, you find out along the way that you don't need all of them. When Happy Days started, Ron Howard's character had an older brother who was later quietly discarded by the producers. They didn't know what to do with him.

Shows change. When Larry Gelbart wrote the pilot for the TV series of M*A*S*H, he intended Hawkeye to be much more of a womanizer…and some have suggested that was Larry projecting a certain amount of himself into the character. I have a mimeographed, ready-to-shoot copy of a script that would have been Show #2 or #3 before it was decided (reportedly demanded by Alan Alda) to temper that aspect of the character and that script was tossed.

As a result, there were a couple of nurse characters who had been planned as recurring — Nurse Dish and Nurse Cutler, I believe — who didn't appear on the show as often as had been expected and were soon dropped altogether. Nurse Cutler was played by Marcia Strassman and when I worked with her on Welcome Back, Kotter, she was often complaining she'd been led to believe she'd have a much bigger role on M*A*S*H. That was when she wasn't complaining that she'd been led to believe she'd have a much bigger role on Welcome Back, Kotter.

That happens with cartoon shows, too. When I was writing a lot of 'em for Saturday morning, I was sometimes called in to rewrite the development (the pilot script and the "bible" overview) of a proposed series. Much of the time, I decided that one problem was that the writers before me had included a lot of extra characters that were unnecessary. I cut several out of the format for Dungeons & Dragons on CBS that had been developed before I was hired. On one series I worked on for another studio — one of several shows from which I removed my name — I threw out a dozen characters. (And, as the studio head later admonished me, "…killed a dozen potential toy deals!")

It's just a thing writers often do. You look at the script you're working on and ask of each character, "Is this character necessary?" Once in a while, you decide one isn't.

It even happens with newspaper strips. When Jim Davis launched Garfield on the funnies page, Odie the dog was owned by a friend of Jon's named Lyman. As Jim produced the script day after day, he came to the feeling that Lyman was extraneous…so Lyman went away and Odie became Jon's dog. (Lyman popped up every so often as a kind of in-joke. In one of the Garfield video games, you — as Garfield — eventually come upon Lyman locked up in a dungeon, which is where he'd been all those years. On The Garfield Show, I wrote an episode where we learned a different fate that took poor Lyman away.)

Anyway, when I started writing the Garfield and Friends TV show, we were doing cartoons that averaged about 6.5 minutes in length. That ain't a lot of room. In most, we saw a good deal of Garfield, Jon and Odie…and unless the main plot needed a certain character, I was better off not trying to also service that certain character. I just didn't have many ideas that would have needed Arlene.

But it is true that Jim had some plans for her so we decided I wouldn't try to put her into any episode and when I did need a female friend for Garfield, I created one for the occasion. One named Penelope, voiced by friend Victoria Jackson, wound up appearing in seven episodes.

Later, I decided the series had been a bit too male and when we did a new series called The Garfield Show, I told Jim I wanted to have Arlene appear and by then, whatever project he'd wanted to save her for had come and gone or perhaps never happened. Neither of us remembered what it was. So we made a special effort to get her into the new show…and that's really all there was to it.

The same thing happened back when we started doing the U.S. Acres segments for Garfield and Friends. I was adapting a newspaper strip that had about a dozen characters in it and I decided that was too many for a 6.5 minute cartoon, at least at first. I decided to focus on Orson, Wade, Roy, Bo, Booker, Sheldon and Lanolin…and then we'd add in the others when we had a place for them. And I just plain forgot about Blue and Cody and a few others. There just never seemed to be a need for them especially after the strip was discontinued.

I'm sorry I don't have a spicy, full-of-secrets explanation for these decisions. Sometimes, it's like how I decided to have roast chicken for lunch today. I just decided and there's no interesting story behind that decision.

Randy Rainbow's back with one of his best…

• Ah, another day when we can all be glad we're not Alex Jones.

• Considering how furious Alex Jones gets when someone votes Democratic, how livid must he have been at his lawyers who accidentally gave the prosecution evidence that he'd committed perjury?

This interview with John Cleese is called "John Cleese's War on Wokeism" but it's more about criticizing people who hold positions of responsibility and don't really know what they're doing.

The problem for me with any "war on wokeism" is that so many people seem to have so many different definitions of "woke." To a lot of them, "wokeism" is bad because it expects them to take responsibility for what they say or do…or to care if they harm others. In some anti-"woke" circles, having empathy for other human beings is a bad thing. I don't think Mr. Cleese is in that category…

Here's an interesting clip from Johnny Carson's Tonight Show for 12/12/1972. Ed Sullivan was an unadvertised guest that night. Preceding this segment, they did a Mighty Carson Art Players sketch about Dr. Frankenstein bringing his monster to life. Throughout the sketch, the "monster" was covered with a sheet and at the end when it awoke and was unveiled, it was Ed Sullivan. Big laugh. And when they came back from commercial, Ed was in Johnny's guest chair for this awkward conversation.

Ed Sullivan was an anomaly in early television — a man with no real visible talent who hosted his Sunday night variety show from 1948 until 1971, often to sky-high ratings. Sullivan's "day job" was as a newspaper columnist, at first in the sports section. When Walter Winchell became a national sensation with his show-businessy column, he had imitators galore and eventually, Sullivan became one of them. Sullivan and Winchell had once been friends but they became bitter rivals…and with his TV show, Ed won the battle by becoming richer and more famous. (Eventually, they patched things up.)

Sullivan's non-professional presence on TV had a simple explanation: When TV started, everyone was an amateur. He got a show because his newspaper connections and the power of his column enabled him to book great acts. You didn't watch Ed's show for Ed. You watched because of who he was able to book that week. As more and more people of genuine talent moved into television, Ed simply outlasted the rest of the amateurs.

Several people I met who appeared on his show told me that one of the secrets of Ed's success was in how hard he fought to stay on the air. He was able to put pressure in many ways on performers he wanted to do his program. Movie studios and Broadway producers and record companies knew the promotional value of the Sullivan Show and dared not deny Ed what he desired. At times, he simply paid more than another show might have to get certain acts.

For a time, NBC thought they could knock him off by programming an hour with Steve Allen opposite him. The premise was that Steve, one of the most versatile talents then on television, could take down the guy who couldn't sing, couldn't dance, couldn't tell a joke, etc. But Ed prevailed, in large part because he so loved being famous and would do anything to win. He didn't want to go back to being a newspaper guy who went unrecognized on the street and unasked for his autograph. And of course, the money was also a big incentive to stay on.

With Ed, it was do or die. When The Steve Allen Show was canceled, it was not the end of Allen's stardom. There was another Steve Allen Show and another and another. But Ed always knew that when The Ed Sullivan Show went off, it was the end on any possible Ed Sullivan Shows…and when that day finally came, it was.

That happened not long before this Tonight Show appearance. Ed did his last regular show on June 6, 1971. As noted, this visit with Johnny was in December of the following year…and Ed died on October 13, 1974 at the age of 73.

What I find especially interesting about this conversation is how bad a guest Ed is in it and how Johnny is using all his skills to keep the spot afloat. This is an ability that few other talk show hosts have had…one they rarely need since interviews on talk shows today are so non-spontaneous. Some are largely pre-scripted by publicists to ensure that the guest (a) sparkles and (b) gets in all the requisite plugs for the new movie, the new series, the new album or the new whatever.

Ed came on with things to plug and both men make sure they get mentioned…but Johnny is unable to prompt Ed into a good anecdote or story. People said that after Ed's show ended, he deteriorated fast and went into deep depressions. That may be why Carson had to do all the heavy lifting in this chat…

I used to like Keith Olbermann back when he did the Countdown show on MSNBC. He had a way of looking at the news and pointing out aspects of a story that had not occurred to…well, I was going to say "anyone else" but I can't speak for anyone else. Maybe it was just me…but he was interesting and sometimes very funny, and when he had someone else on with him, he was a good interviewer.

He was not as good at getting along with Management and I dunno if it was him or the Management or what but he had a habit of disappearing on us. He's back now with a new almost-daily podcast which, so far, is just him yelling at us for 53 minutes (the first one) and 44 minutes (today's). Even when I agree with his positions, I don't like being scolded over and over in the style of certain right-wing pundits that he probably doesn't like any more than I do. This is not "preaching to the choir." It's screaming at them and saying the same thing over and over and over.

I've decided to not listen to him for a while. If he's still doing this in a month or two, I'll give him another try…maybe. If you want to give him a try, here's a link. Lower the volume on your computer speakers before you click.

You didn't have to be a huge baseball fan to appreciate Vin Scully. Some time ago, I wrote this here…

I am not a fan of the Dodgers. I am not even much of a fan of baseball. Once upon a time, I had some interest in both largely because my father did. This was back when the Dodgers were Maury Wills, Frank Howard, Willie Davis, Tommy Davis, Jim Gilliam, Johnny Roseboro, Don Drysdale, and Duke Snider.

And — oh, yeah — Sandy Koufax.

Only one member of the team is still at it today: Vin Scully. No, he didn't put on the uniform but he was the single most indispensable person in the stadium when the Dodgers played. And I always suspected he was secretly managing the team. Walter Alston was officially the manager then but it was easy to imagine Alston, just sitting in the dugout during the game, listening to Vin Scully like everyone else in the place. I'd hear Scully say, "This is the time when Walt Alston is probably deciding to take out the pitcher and bring in Ron Perranoski to throw to the next batter" and I was sure Alston would listen to that, then turn to someone and say, "Bring in Ron Perranoski to throw to the next batter."

At least, it sure felt like that.

As I've written about certain dancers and jugglers and gymnasts, there's a real beauty to seeing anyone do anything difficult and do it as well as a human being could possibly do it. Mr. Scully absolutely fell into that category. I should probably thank him just for the many hours of enjoyment he gave to my father…and anyone else who followed Dodger Baseball. Even, now and then, me.

For those of you who've never been able to attend a Comic-Con International in San Diego, someone made this 33-minute walking tour of the main hall at this year's gathering. Actually, this might even be of interest to those of you who've been there because I've been to all of them and I'm seeing stuff in this video that I never saw in person…

This video underscores the point that the convention is many things to different people and the convention you experience there will be the one you seek out…or at least try to seek out. In all my years of attendance, I've never gone near most of these corners of the con. My convention occurs mostly upstairs in the panel rooms and this year, I only set foot in the main hall on one of the days I was there…and only to sign books for an hour at a publisher's booth.

I'm not saying this is good or bad or anything; just that everyone who goes can experience a very different convention. It depends on your areas of interest. It depends on whether you're searching for certain items you want to purchase. It may even depend a lot on how much walking you're willing or able to do.

Some years, some folks seem to think I'm the Complaint Department for the convention and one of those years, a guy I barely knew sought me out to bitch about something that was ruining the con for him. It was how much certain dealers were charging for certain old comics he wanted to purchase. He seemed to think that I — or the folks who run the convention — could do something about that. And some of you may remember this story I've told here before about another complainer who cornered me at the 2002 Comic-Con…

[He] was upset that so much of the Comic-Con wasn't about comics and he felt, I guess, that I'd concur and would rush off to do something about it…maybe throw Robert Downey Jr out of the hall or something. Instead, I told him about that great panel we did on the Golden Age of Batman with Jerry Robinson, Sheldon Moldoff and Lew Schwartz. If you're interested in the history of comics, it doesn't get any more historical than that. I then said to this fellow who was complaining about the con not being about that kind of thing, "I didn't see you there."

And so help me, he replied, "I couldn't be there. I had to get in line to see the 24 panel with Kiefer Sutherland."

I now tell people that if they didn't have a good time at Comic-Con, they were either expecting something that just plain wasn't going to be there or they didn't plan well enough how to locate what they did want that was there.

Lots of stuff to get done today, not enough time to do it. So I won't be blogging much this first day of August…which is what the soup can graphic indicates. There may be a rerun or a video link or an obit here later. I hope not an obit.