I see all these folks on videos and TV wondering just why Trump held on so tenaciously to those Tippy-Top Secret documents…and it may just be, as the most common speculation says, that he thought there were ways he could swap or share them for power and/or bucks. That's a perfectly logical, in-character motive.
But you have to wonder — well, I have to wonder — if maybe Donald couldn't turn loose of the rush of being The Most Powerful Person on Earth, as most presidents think they are. And maybe he loved the feeling of sitting in the Oval Office, knowing he had all this secret information that could alter the world, including the power to bomb some other country out of existence. And maybe if he really and truly believed he'd beaten Joe Biden in a landslide, he couldn't bear to have all of that thrill wrenched away from him.
Maybe. But more likely, it was just the power and/or bucks.
Friends keep asking me what I think is going to happen with the case against Mr. Trump over the wrongly-retained documents. My answer: I dunno although I'm fairly certain it will not end with him being acquitted, the documents being returned to him and the government apologizing for ever accusing him of anything. It's supposed to be a speedy trial but I think we can expect delay, delay, delay…and by the time it finally does get to court, who knows what other legal troubles he'll be in? It may not even be the biggest worry in that man's life.
Speaking of that man's life: Back when he was running against Ms. Clinton, he and his supporters had no reticence to spread the word that Hillary was in terrible health and could not possibly survive one year, let alone four of Presidenting. Obviously, that was not so and later they said that of Biden. I'm not saying that's the prognosis for Trump but given the way he's looked in recent interviews, it would not be difficult for his opponents to sell that notion to some voters.
The Comic-Con in San Diego is 27 days away. I'm looking forward to everything except the fact that, like last year, the main exhibit hall will not be carpeted. That nude concrete floor is rough on the feet. I am well aware that because of that Pandemic thing you may have heard about, the con has to cut some corners to recoup financial losses…and someone on the committee told me what it costs to rent, lay down and take up the carpeting that was there, pre-COVID. It's way more than you'd imagine and not having it is probably a wise way to save bucks…but I can say I'll miss it. Might I suggest getting your purchases done swiftly and then coming upstairs where there are wonderful panels and presentations to enjoy?
You may be following the news story about the wealthy folks who may have perished in that "submersible" that went down to snoop on The Titanic. It's a horrifying situation. I also see a lot of folks online trying to make jokes about it. I subscribe to the notion that you should be able to find humor in anything…but so far, those I've seen attempt it with this matter are batting zero.
Like anyone who loves old movies, I'm a little concerned by the recent shake-up and layoffs at Turner Classic Movies. That channel is one of the few class acts on cable and it would be very easy to ruin it by inserting more commercials — especially in the middle of films — or aping the programming strategies of some other channels. One hopes wiser heads will prevail at TCM. Matter of fact, it would be nice if wiser heads prevailed everywhere on everything.
If you're in or around Los Angeles on July 25th — the Tuesday after Comic-Con — you might enjoy a new performance of Celebrity Autobiography, an always-hilarious show in which funny folks read actual excerpts from actual autobiographies of famous show biz folks. It's at the Groundings Theater on Melrose, tickets can be purchased here and the readers for the evening will consist of Pamela Adlon, Kathy Griffin, Tony Hale, Laraine Newman, Eugene Pack, Dayle Reyfel, Steven Weber, George Wendt, Cedric Yarbrough and probably others. We recommend going. We also recommend The Black Version, a wonderful improv show that will be on that same stage on July 17. Always a delight.
Fifteen years ago today, the world lost the man many would call its all-time master of Stand-Up Comedy, George Carlin. I hope at some point you got to see this man perform in a hall in which you were sitting. The cable specials were great and I'm sure folks will be watching them for approximately forever. But there was an energy and excitement and a connection with the live audience you felt when you were a part of that live audience.
My good buddy Jeff Abraham was George's friend and publicist. He wrote this article about his friend and client. Go read what Jeff wrote.
I have several e-mailboxes. The one most likely to receive spam mailings has many today asking that I donate to a man named Doug Burgum who is running to be the next President of these United States in…well, it doesn't say what party but the layout of the message and the design of the typography is the same as all those messages I received wanting me to donate to Donald Trump and all those messages I received wanting me to donate to Ron DeSantis. So I guessed Republican.
Still, I wasn't sure who Doug Burgum was so I looked him up. He is, of course, a Republican. He got wealthy in the software business and now he's the governor of North Dakota. The e-mail I got mentions none of this. It mentions nothing about any of his political positions and his own website says just about nothing about them either. A little Googling of press coverage though tells me that he loves signing bills that restrict abortion and/or are against transgender folks so I don't think he's getting any money from me, now or ever.
But even if I wanted to donate serious bucks to his campaign, I'm not sure he'd get it if I clicked the links in that e-mail and gave it my credit card info. Way down in it where some people might not notice, it says "Paid for by WinRed. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee." So Burgum didn't authorize this mailing and I'm wondering how much of what I gave, if any, would make its way to him or his campaign. In fact, it's got me to wondering if I'd responded to all those mailings that appeared to be Donald Trump whether any money they got out of me would have gone anywhere near Donald Trump. Maybe I misjudged the guy.
In the mood for a slightly creepy (but true) story? Imagine if you will, a hotel-casino that once was as colorful and swanky and as full of life as anywhere people went to play and party and gamble. Now imagine it closes down in 2002 and is effectively abandoned. What becomes of that multi-million dollar structure over two decades of no one taking care of it…especially after the entire area experiences a major flood?
Well, you don't have to imagine if you watch this video…during which you may even begin to smell mold and feel the need to put on a gas mask. For reasons unknown, the filmmakers do not identify it by its location or final name and since they don't, I won't. But it took me a whopping forty seconds of Googling to figure it out.
(HINT: It won't help you to search for "abandoned casino." As you'd find, there are a lot of them. If you've ever had a casino leave you in financial ruin, it might be comforting to know that it sometimes works the other way.)
Much is being written online about the recent Stan Lee documentary and it has rekindled an old debate that many thought had been more-or-less settled. The family of Jack Kirby sure thought so. One of the sharpest comments I've read was written by Rob Salkowitz over at Forbes magazine. I'll quote just this much of it here…
It is no scratch on the creative imaginations of his collaborators to credit Lee with brand-building genius that helped turn those creations into something that echoed far beyond the confines of the comic book industry. Whatever virtues Ditko, Kirby and the others had as makers of awe-inspiring comics, shameless self-promotion was not among them, and that's what was required to catapult Marvel into public notice. It is also enough to cement the reputation of Stan Lee as one of the most significant figures in the history of American comics and American business.
But somehow it was never enough for Stan Lee to be known as a master marketer. He always fancied himself a creator and a storyteller, and never considered comics to be a big enough canvas for his ambitions. According to his biographers, he liked the limelight and needed the money. And having the avuncular and charismatic Lee, who was a career salaryman and never asserted personal claims to ownership over Marvel's corporate property, as the father-creator figure suited both his ambitions and Disney's agenda.
I would quibble with two teensy things Rob says in the above paragraph. Stan didn't like the limelight…he loved the limelight. Becoming rich was important to him but becoming famous was even more important…and he achieved it. Fame in and of itself didn't matter much to Kirby — he was too busy creating — and Ditko didn't even want his picture taken. But Stan, when he was surrounded by cameras and being offered money to sign his name, was just about the happiest human being on this planet.
And secondly, once Marvel largely dispensed with his services, he did make some claims about ownership of those characters. It was a bluff and most knew that but he did seek to gain some leverage by occasionally threatening that battle. And some of the investors in Stan's failed company Stan Lee Media (for which — full disclosure — I briefly worked) thought they were investing in a firm that would someday wrest Spider-Man, The Hulk and the others from Marvel…or at least receive compensation for their value.
And I would also add that even the best salesperson in the world can only do so much to promote an unremarkable product. Kirby and Ditko — and lesser but still vital contributors like Don Heck, Wally Wood, Bill Everett, Larry Lieber and others — gave Stan a remarkable line to sell. But yes, Stan does keep getting credit for what he didn't do instead of what he did.
Every morning lately, I get up and look to see what the latest self-inflicted damage is to Donald Trump. The other night, he did an interview on Fox News with Bret Baier that had to have Jack Smith thinking, "Wow…this guy's making my job so much easier." Analysts are saying that Trump is saying what he's saying — that the documents are his and he willfully and lawfully retained them — as the result of bad legal advice from the non-lawyer Tom Fitton.
I read this and I can't help but think of a couple of folks I've known who made very bad mistakes with their careers…and all of these mistakes were made by not accepting what to me is an obvious fact of life: If you ask enough people for advice, you can eventually find someone who'll tell you what you want to hear.
If I asked everyone I know, "Hey, should I liquidate everything I own — sell the house, sell the stocks, auction off my autographed photo of Marty Allen — and turn it all into cash and send it to this Nigerian Prince who e-mailed me?," it might take a while but I'd find someone who would tell me, "Brilliant idea, Evanier!"
They might say that just to get rid of me. They might say it because they wanted to see me destroy my life. They might even say that because they too were dumb as a bucket of glass shards. But someone would say it.
The world has always had no shortage of Bad Advice and it's gotten worse since the invention of The Internet. It makes it so easy to connect with people who don't know what the hell they're talking about. Recently, I came across this image on said Internet…
I want to get one of these for my doctor. He's not right 100% of the time but he's right way more often than I am…and even righter than I am when I think I've found a great answer on some website. We go to doctors because doing that has a much better success rate than going to YouTube.
I'm not saying there are no correct answers out there. There are plenty of them. What I'm saying is that the correct answer may not be what you wish it was.
And now we have the former President of the United States accused of willfully retaining documents it's illegal for him to have and he's out there, making it easier for the prosecutors to prove the "willful" part of that. He didn't get it off a crackpot website but he might as well have. If you didn't know by now this man was in no way qualified for elected office, he's making it frightfully obvious.
The Fifth Dimension performs — live, I think, not prerecorded — one of their bigger hits on The Ed Sullivan Show for March 10, 1968…
This is from the stage at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and it of course reminds me of this story which I posted here before…
I once had an aunt who was a lovely lady but she was particularly fearful of non-white human beings in groups. She didn't have a dram of prejudice in her towards any one person of color but the minute she saw two or more together, she started worrying about race riots and gangs and people pulling knives. "Pulling knives" was a particular concern.
There's a story about her that I know sounds bogus but knowing her, I tend to believe it. It took place around the pool of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in the late sixties. She and my uncle were hanging out there on vacation when she noticed some black people gathered, talking loudly and acting a bit rowdy. I don't know if she overheard some remarks or just what it was but she was suddenly seized by the fear that even though they were wearing swimsuits, they were about to pull knives and do something ghastly. Nervously, she hurried over to a Security Guard, pointed the black people out and suggested he keep an eye on them.
The Security Guard took a look, then told her, "I'm going to be watching them tonight in the showroom, ma'am. That's the Fifth Dimension."
Sorry…I've been away from the keyboard much of the day, taking care of all sorts of boring things. My dentist had to remove a crown on a tooth and put a new one in its place. I've been going to this dentist so long that he put the first one on, 30+ years ago.
One person who's attending Comic-Con next month wrote to ask me, "I'm going to need a place to park and I'm waiting for you to tell me when to leave in order to get one." He's referring to a joke I used to do on the blog sometime midway during the Renaissance. In February or March, I'd tell you, "If you're going to need a parking space, leave now."
The truth is I have no idea how to get a parking spot there and I always get a hotel room and it always comes with a parking space…although last year, the hotel directed me to an overflow parking lot so far away, I felt like I might have to show a passport to get from it to my room. All I can tell you is that some friends of mine have decided to park in some lot a mile or so away from the con and then Uber or Lyft to and from the festivities. In some cases, that might even be cheaper.
Right now, I have a deadline that needs meeting. I'll try to meet it and get back here before Midnight if only to post a video link. Your patience is appreciated.
This ran here on Father's Day of 2010. Nothing in it has changed since except that Tom Luth no longer colors the Groo comic books…
In recognition of what day it is…
I have written here many times of how my father hated his job. He spent twenty-five years working for the Internal Revenue Service, loathing every nano-second of it. He was bothered by the grief he sometimes had to bring upon people who were in serious financial trouble. He was annoyed at the way his superiors sometimes treated him.
He was frustrated at how there seemed to be two sets of rules as to who had to pay delinquent taxes. Rich folks with "friends in Washington" (i.e., Richard Nixon) or sometimes "friends in Sacramento" (i.e., Ronald Reagan) often did not. Poor folks with no "connections," of course, always did. They were treated like criminals whereas the Friends of Dick and/or Ron had to be coddled like royalty and remain unthreatened. On several occasions, after my father made a routine call on a Friend of Dick and/or Ron about owing vast amounts to Uncle Sam, the bill would be torn up and my father would be ordered to apologize to the Rich Guy for upsetting him so. But the Poor Mother always had to pay…or else.
You'd have to be a bit of a psychopath not to hate being in his position…but it had to be done and my father had to earn a living. Before that, he had an array of short-term jobs that weren't as stable — the I.R.S. was nothing if not stable — and which he didn't like a whole lot more. He'd worked for a time in the administrative office of a hospital and couldn't stand having to take paperwork to people who were injured and suffering.
None of them were the kind of careers you dream of having. They were all the kind of jobs you take because you can't get one of the kind you dream of having.
And I think the thing he liked least about them were that they all had a firm, concrete ceiling. When you fantasize about what you want to do with your life, you usually pick something that could, at least in theory, make you very, very wealthy. My father never had one of those jobs. He had ones that by their very nature excluded that possibility. They were jobs where if you did them better than anyone else had ever done them, you might at best be able to get a $10 raise next year. Might. It was tough to accept that limitation on your life.
None of this should suggest that he was not, on balance, a happy man. He loved — not necessarily in this order — his home, his wife, his son and our cat. He had a life that was largely free of tragedy and disaster. Once he signed on with the I.R.S., he never had to worry about paying the mortgage, buying food and clothing, affording a car, etc. He had a wonderful health insurance plan that covered him, his spouse and his kid and the only thing wrong with it was that it didn't cover the cat. Apart from paying off the house — and for a time, my orthodonture — he was free of debt.
There's a lot to be said for all that.
My father and me. Even at an early age, I was very good at not paying attention to authority figures.
In the early seventies, he hit retirement age with the I.R.S., grabbed his pension and got the hell out, just in time to spend all day watching the Senate Watergate hearings. I have vivid memories of him sitting in front of the TV watching the Dodgers or the Lakers, yelling at the screen like he was managing from afar. He was very happy doing that but he was even happier watching the Senate investigate the Nixon Administration.
After it all ended, he missed it. If they'd rerun the hearings like old Star Trek episodes, he'd never have missed one. A lot of I.R.S. abuses were exposed for all the world to see. Years later when I met John Dean, the former Nixon aide who blew the whistle on much of that, I thanked him. On behalf of my father.
Once the hearings were over though, my father had a problem: What to do all day?
It was a small problem at first. He had my mother around. I still lived at home. He had his friend who still worked at the I.R.S. to lunch with, once a week. Then the friend went to prison for accepting bribes. Then my mother took a part-time job at a local gourmet grocery shop. Then I moved out. Then my mother's part-time job turned into a full-time job.
For a while, my father had a portfolio of stocks — nothing that was likely to ever make him wealthy. Following them was more a spectator sport than an investment. They'd go up a dime or two. They'd go down a dime or two. It was not unlike following the Dodgers or the Lakers but without Vin Scully or Chick Hearn.
It was also a place to go. Once a week, he'd go to his brokers' office where there was an entire wall covered with a stock-tracking scoreboard and a gallery where you could just sit and watch. You might sit for hours before you saw any activity on one of your stocks…and then it might only be up or down a penny or so. But it was a pleasant place to sit, read the newspaper, sip the free coffee and maybe chat with other investors and your personal broker if he wasn't busy, which he always was.
Then Channel 22 happened. Today, that UHF station runs programming in Spanish but back then, it ran stock market reports all day. Two lines of crawl ran across the bottom of the screen and my father would sit and stare at both for hours, hoping to spot one of his stocks and learn it was up a half a cent. He missed the camaraderie of the brokers' office but thanks to Channel 22, he could follow his investments without shaving and while wearing his pajamas.
One day when he did shave, dress and go to the broker's office, his broker gave him some advice: "This would be a good time to sell." My father's stocks were all of a kind that had peaked, the broker told him. "Get rid of them all now," he said. "And if you want to stay in the market, I'll advise you on others you should purchase with what you get for them." My father got out and didn't get back in. He couldn't bring himself to follow a new team. He did make some money but he didn't have that to help fill his days.
What he hoped for was Jury Duty. Jury Duty, he was sure, was the remedy for his boredom.
He kept waiting for it, longing for it. He thought it would be interesting and would give him a feeling of accomplishment — having a place to go each day, hearing the cases, pondering them, rendering a just and rational verdict. If you could have signed up to be a full-time juror, he would have done it, no pay necessary. He may even have called up and asked if there was anything he could do that would make him more likely to be called.
He was a few times but it was disappointing. He was never picked to serve on a jury…not once. It was because of his background. Lawyers would ask him his profession and when they heard he'd worked for the I.R.S., they didn't want him. I guess they figured he'd naturally side with the government.
So no jury duty, no stocks to follow, no friends to lunch with…my mother was at work and I was living somewhere else, busy with my career. What could he do all day? Well, he could come visit me from time to time. And he could ask me to send him on errands. I don't know how many times he offered to do things for me.
I understood why, of course. He'd feel useful and he'd feel more a part of my life…so I gave him what I could but I simply didn't have many things I could send him to do. And with some of them, things didn't work out well.
He loved to shop. When it was time for him to buy a new (used) car, he would take weeks. When I bought a new (new) car, I'd decide what I wanted, go to a showroom or two, haggle a bit and buy it. My first new car purchase took, I think, three hours.
My father would spend three weeks or more trading in his ten-year-old Buick for a five-year-old Oldsmobile. He would make charts and consult Consumer Reports and he'd visit ten or more lots, often several times each. Then he'd narrow it down to three possibles and go around and test-drive the potential acquisitions and see if this salesman would come down twenty bucks or that one would come down fifty…
He enjoyed the hell out of it. I think he even looked forward to things going wrong with whatever he was driving because they would hasten the moment when he got to say, "I think I need to trade it in for something newer." (He never bought an absolutely-new car in his life and that first time I did, he was so proud of me…and also disappointed that I bought it in, like I said, three hours. He would have loved it if he and I could have driven from dealer to dealer for months, making a joint decision, negotiating in tandem, etc.)
One day, I decided I needed a new TV so I decided to let him find it for me. I decided on the brand I wanted, the screen size and certain features. I wrote them all down and sent him off to find me the right set at the right price. What I would have done was to walk into ABC Premiums a few blocks away, bought the set there and just carted it home, in and out in under an hour…but this gave him something to do.
He made it take weeks. He consulted ads in the newspaper. He drove to stores all over the city. He called others. After the eighth time I told him I needed the set sooner rather than later, he came to me with the results of all his research and scientific inquiry. A set that filled all my requirements could be purchased, he proudly revealed, at Frandsen Electronics for $139.50. I asked, "Where is Frandsen Electronics?"
He said it was in Downey. Downey was — and as far as I know still is — 22 miles away.
I asked if, uh, there might possibly be a closer place? "Yes," he said, consulting his lists. "But it's more expensive and I'm trying to save you money." I asked what the next cheapest place was.
Answer: ABC Premiums, a few blocks away from me. The exact same TV for $139.95.
When I told him I'd decided to buy it from ABC Premiums, he registered a letdown, then bravely said, "Well, son…it's your money." (Yes, it was…all forty-five cents of it.) I could see he was worried about what would happen to me if I went through life indulging in such reckless extravagances.
There were other chores and errands that did not go well…and this brings us to the story of my Leather Sport Coat. I no longer wear things like that but for a time, I was often seen in this great leather sport coat I bought somewhere for around the same price as that TV. Back then, that seemed like a lot of dough to spend on one garment but it was a great addition to my wardrobe. It was more casual than your basic sport coat but it was a little dressier than a windbreaker. Here's a very old photo of me with the folks who still do the Groo comic books. Forget how much younger we looked then and check out the coat…
Stan Sakai, Tom Luth, me and Sergio Aragonés. The comic Sergio is holding came out in January of 1984 and this was probably taken not long after.
I wore it often and one day, it was in need of cleaning. My father was quite pleased when I assigned him the task of finding a place that did that kind of thing, taking the coat in and picking it up. What, as they say, could go wrong?
Well, this: When he went to pick it up, he found the laundry closed tight in the middle of a workday. A sign on the door said they were out of business.
Panicked, my father went to other stores on the block to ask if they knew what happened and how one might retrieve a leather sport coat that was being cleaned there. No one could help. The laundry was the subject of lawsuits — partners suing one another, one neighbor had heard. There was some reason to believe it would never reopen.
My father was almost trembling — no, he was trembling — when he came to me and reported what had happened. Near tears, he said, "I lost your leather coat, son. I promise…I'll buy you a new one." He acted like he'd done something horribly, horribly wrong and no matter how many times I assured him it wasn't his fault, he kept repeating his vow to replace the coat.
This went on for a week. At least once a day, sometimes twice, he'd phone to ask if we could go shopping together so I could pick out a replacement coat and he could pay for it. He would not believe that he was not responsible and he did not owe me a new coat. One night, my mother took the phone into their bedroom so he couldn't hear and she called me…
"He's so depressed about this. Isn't there something you can do?" I thought and thought but the only solution seemed to be a good, old-fashioned lie.
I went out and purchased a new leather sport coat. It wasn't exactly the same but it was close enough that I figured he wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Then I called him and said I was coming by the house and I had something to show him. When I walked in, I was wearing a leather sport coat though it was ninety degrees out. Here is the lie I then proceeded to tell…
The most amazing thing happened. This afternoon, I was driving by that laundry, the one where you took my leather sport coat. I saw trucks outside…they were loading clothes on hangers into them. I parked and ran up and told them I had a coat in there and they let me go in and search and I found it. There weren't that many leather goods on the racks so it was easy. The tag said "Evanier" on it and I had I.D. that proved I was Evanier and since the coat fit, they let me have it. See? You didn't lose my coat after all.
He was overjoyed…so overjoyed, in fact, that he didn't remember he'd never told me where the laundry was. My father slept well that night and the next night and the next night…
And then someone called him from the laundry to say they were closing the place down for good and he should come in and pick up that leather coat he left there. "Oh, we already got it," he told the caller. The caller said, "No, you didn't. I'm looking at it right this moment." He drove over, picked it up and showed up at my apartment with it.
I felt like Lucy when Ricky Ricardo finds out she hoaxed him. He was angry at me for about as long as Ricky was ever mad at Lucy, which is to say around thirty seconds…maybe less since he understood I'd fibbed for his own good. I asked him if he would forgive me. He said yes…on one condition. I asked what that condition was.
He said, "That you give me something else to do for you."
I said, "Take my new car in to be serviced. And try not to lose it."
There's a newly-made documentary on Disney+ about Stan Lee. I have not seen it yet and judging from some of the online reviews, it might be good for my blood pressure if I didn't watch. I probably will soon but at the moment, the Stan Lee Tribute TV Special which aired on ABC on 12/20/19 has been sitting unviewed on my TiVo for all this time.
My opinion of Stan Lee is complicated and not easy to explain. It falls somewhere between "He did everything" and "He did nothing." It includes massive disappointment with some (not all) of the things he said over the years, some (not all) of the things he did. It became clear to me at times that he did not believe in the phrase, "With great power comes great responsibility."
With the exception of one ugly falling-out we had, Stan was very nice to me…as he was nice to almost everybody when his reputation and continued employment were not at stake. He could be a charming man and I absolutely understand why some people love(d) the guy. But I think that the notion that he was the primary creator of those properties is utter…what's the word I'm looking for here? Oh, I know: Bullshit.
Note that I am not saying he did nothing. You could not be in his position and contribute nothing even if you tried. But I think the driving force behind those properties was Jack Kirby — in at least some cases by a wide margin — and I think Steve Ditko was the driving force behind Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.
Since I haven't seen the documentary, I don't want to say much more than that if it suggests those two artists contributed nothing more than the visuals, it's wrong. (And let's be honest here: Even if all they'd contributed were the visuals, they both deserve more creator credit than they've received at times. All Joe Shuster contributed to the creation of Superman was the visuals and no one ever disputed his full status as the co-creator.)
Marvel finally — too little, too late — agreed to always credit both as co-creators of the properties they helped launch. Actually, it was more Disney than Marvel that agreed to that…so I really don't understand why there's now a documentary that suggests otherwise.
One reason I believe it suggests otherwise is that I read this letter which was released the other day by Jack's son Neal. Neal is a very smart guy and if the documentary says what Neal says it says, the documentary is definitely wrong.
I am still working on my long-promised exhaustive biography on Neal's father. In it, I go into far greater detail about all this than I can on this blog. My conclusions were arrived at by extensive conversations with both men. I think I'm the only person alive who worked — at different times, of course — for both Stan and Jack. Stan could sometimes be surprisingly fair in his recollections of who did what when there wasn't a tape recorder running.
I also talked, often at great length, with Ditko, Don Heck, Stan Goldberg, Bill Everett, Sol Brodsky and others who were around at the time. Not one of them thought all Jack or Steve did was draw what Stan dreamed up. Some felt the credit should just be 50-50 and we should leave it at that. Some felt the artist end of it should be higher. No one felt it should be lower.
Yes, yes…I need to finish and publish this book that I keep talking about. This documentary may be all the push I need to do that. In the meantime, read what Neal Kirby has to say. Here's that link again.
The Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles — affectionately called "The New Bev" by many — is running a 35mm Technicolor print of my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on the evening of Sunday, July 16. So will I be there to see it for the umpteen gazillionth time? Probably not, since I already bought tickets to see Puppet Up! in Hollywood that evening.
As you may know, I feel this movie should be watched on a big screen with a big, appreciative audience. What the Criterion folks did with their Blu-ray and DVD release was wonderful — the best possible home video version there could be — but I don't recommend it if you haven't seen Mad World the way it should be seen. (Among the many extras and bonus features of the Criterion version is a very long, detailed commentary track by my friends Mike Schlesinger and Paul Scrabo plus me. Listen to it but don't listen to it until you've seen the film a few times the "right" way.)
The absolute best way to see this movie is at the Cinerama Dome Theater in Hollywood which was — honest-to-Stanley-Kramer — built in 1963 to host the initial release of It's a Mad (Etc.) World. Alas, the place closed for that Pandemic thing and hasn't yet reopened. Instead, we hear, it's undergone extensive renovation and will reopen, we further hear, next Spring with this movie among its first offerings. I'll be there for such a screening but if you're local and you can't wait, info and tickets for the New Bev screening may be located on this page.
I get an awful lot of e-mail from alleged women who want to have sex with me even though they've never seen me and do not live on the same continent. My feeling is that if you are soliciting sexual partners in another country, maybe you aren't among the best-looking individuals in yours. And if I were more cynical, I'd think it was just some predator, male or female, trying to get my attention so they could try various lines to get money out of me, just in case I was really, really desperate and really, really stupid.
For some reason, I'm also now getting messages from country clubs on other continents…like today, I have one here trying to sell me a membership in the Huntswood Golf Club located in Taplow, England. For only £12 per week (marked down from £20) I can become a member and enjoy, among other amenities, my 30 second full screen advert played every 20 minutes on the club's in-house televisions, my banner advert displayed on the club website, full use of the club facilities plus lessons "with the PGA Professional" and many, many complimentary golf balls for me or my clients.
It's a helluva deal and if I played golf and the club wasn't 5,418 miles from me, I might consider it.
Seriously: I get why the folks sending out the sex solicitations don't care about geography but when I get invites to concerts in Connecticut, festivals in Brazil or country clubs in Taplow, I wonder: Isn't there an easy way of filtering a mailing list to not send ads to folks who are more than, say, a thousand miles away?
And I've started getting mailings again from the Trump organization (or what purports to be the Trump organization) trying to get me to donate to stop the witch hunt that's trying to send Donald J. to prison and all of America into total ruin. Couldn't they have some way to filter out those of us who have I.Q.s higher than the freezing point of water? Because frankly, there's more chance of me sending all my money to "Helga" in Sweden or signing up for lifetime membership in that golf club than there is of Mr. "They're my boxes" getting a dime outta me.
