My buddy Vince Waldron is the world's foremost expert on my favorite TV program, The Dick Van Dyke Show. On August 14, he posted some vital information on Facebook and with his permission, I'm quoting some of it here. The first season, the show had a different opening from the one most folks today remember. It involved still photos of the characters spilling out of a manila folder. I'll let Vince take it from here…
Today marks a little known but nonetheless significant anniversary in the history of The Dick Van Dyke Show, for it was on this date, August 14, in 1962 that director John Rich finally got around to filming a new opening credit sequence for the show's second season — a short live-action scene in which Rob stumbles over an ill-placed ottoman and falls flat on his back in the Petrie living room.
Actually, Dick and company also filmed the alternate version of the scene — in which Rob doesn't fall, but instead deftly sidesteps the ottoman — that same night, making this anniversary a double-header.
Both variations were filmed, rather quickly, as a kind of bonus assignment that the cast undertook immediately after filming the show's 32nd episode, "The Two Faces of Rob." That's why if you look closely at the opening credit sequence, you'll notice that Buddy, Sally, and Laura are wearing the same wardrobe they had on in their respective closing scenes in that episode.
Although Carl Reiner has said his intention was to randomly rotate the two original ottoman sequences at the start of the show to keep the audience guessing, in fact, the version where Rob trips over the ottoman appeared almost exclusively in the show's opening titles until well into the second season.
The tripping version of the opening first appeared on the season two opener, "Never Name a Duck," which debuted on September 26, 1962, and was then repeated at the top of the next seven consecutive episodes. As it happens, audiences didn't get their first glimpse of a more sure-footed Rob until the second variant that shows him sidestepping the ottoman appeared on episode #39, "The Night the Roof Fell In," which premiered on November 21, 1962 — almost two months after Rob took his first tumble over the family footrest.
Vince goes on to note that there was a third opening sequence filmed for the third season. It was shot on August 13, 1963, the same night they filmed "The Masterpiece," the episode in which Rob accidentally buys a painting by the great artist, "Artanis." In it, everyone was dressed a little nicer than in the first two versions and Rob again sidesteps the ottoman before he stumbles on his own.
This one first ran on "That's My Boy??" — the one in which Rob thinks they brought the wrong baby home from the hospital — which first aired on September 25, 1963. It was then used intermittently during the show's third season. For the fourth and fifth seasons, they went back to the two original openings, leaning heavily on the one in which Rob avoids the ottoman and doesn't fall.
My thanks to Vince for letting me post this here. If you love The Dick Van Dyke Show anywhere near as much as I do, you must have a copy of his wonderful volume, The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book It's a must-have for lovers of Rob, Laura, Buddy, Sally, Ritchie, Mel and even Alan.
Part 1 is still right here and Part 2 is still here and Part 3 is right where I put it (here) while Part 4 is over here it should come as no surprise to you to learn that Part 5 — that's right, I said Part 5 — can be found here. Oh — and below this line, you'll find Part 6, which I think at the moment is the last part but we'll see. Remember I warned you.
This part is about how I really learned to "do" Comic-Con. Mostly, it's about the many personal mistakes I made at comic book conventions of the seventies and into the eighties. For instance, it took me too long to realize that I didn't really like sitting behind a table for any length of time signing autographs and that I was under no obligation to do that. I somehow felt that I was.
I don't hate it. If my publisher thinks it'll help them sell books, okay, fine. If someone approaches me and asks me to sign a book I've worked on, sure, no charge…and if it leads to a friendly conversation, that's great. In a "Could I have your autograph?" situation, it too often does not. Being sometimes as dense as a certain wandering comic book character I work on, it took me a while to realize I didn't have to spend all day writing my name and sitting at a table, pen at the ready, to invite that.
I also didn't like selling anything. That's the business model for most folks in comics when they're guests at most conventions: They fly you in, give you a table and you're expected to put up a little display that announces your presence and then sit there for 3-4 days, selling books or scripts or sketches or just your signature. It works for most professionals — I'm not knocking it for others — but it's always given me an "I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing" feeling.
In a similar sense, I didn't like approaching a convention as a place to get work. I was sometimes offered projects at cons and I've established (or renewed) relationships with people who at some point — probably not at a convention — would offer me things to do. That's fine but I learned the slow way that I enjoy a convention a lot more when advancing my career is not among the uppermost topics on my mind. I also learned I didn't like having a responsibility to advance anyone else's…
With rare exceptions, I didn't like critiquing samples of art or scripts from people hoping to break into the business. I'm fine with offering advice in a general sense but I often don't feel qualified to tell someone, "You're not ready" or worse, "Give it up." Just because I think someone lacks potential, that doesn't mean there aren't people out there with hiring power who will feel otherwise. There are those getting steady work in comics these days who, if they'd shown me their work that publishers are now publishing, I would have told them one of those two things.
Again, it took me a while to realize I didn't have to do this and that I wasn't being a bad guy by declining. I think that revelation came to me one con when a "stage father" (in the sense that Gypsy Rose Lee's mom was a "stage mother") badgered me into evaluating sample pages drawn by his fifteen-year-old son. Both Father and Son were pretty angry that this did not lead to me dragging them over to whoever was qualified to hire the lad to draw Spider-Man so the kid could go home with Todd McFarlane's career.
And yes, I do remember the young artist's name and now, a good fifteen years after that non-recommendation, I have yet to see it on a comic book. I just Googled to make sure I hadn't missed one.
Photo by Bruce Guthrie
I know people for whom an important part of conventions is a social scene that involves the downing of alcohol. One guy told me this year that his big complaint about Comic-Con is that the "bar scene" is not as good as it is at some other cons. For some reason, he faults the convention for this. I guess they should hold it near hotels where the bartenders know how to make a proper gin 'n' tonic.
Again, not something that interests me in the slightest. I like talking with people. In fact, it's one my favorite things in this plane of existence. But I don't drink and don't like being around excessive consumption. Several times in my life, I have had to depart social gatherings because one or more people whose company I enjoyed when they were sober would morph into one or more raving assholes after a few beverages…and yes, this also goes for recreational drugs. I'm not condemning something because I choose to steer clear of it…and it took me a while to learn how to avoid or escape such situations.
And as my knees, feet and the rest of me got older, I began to dislike just standing or walking around the exhibit hall for 3-4 days. There were times when I couldn't see a way to be there where I could encounter people I wanted to see while still being able to sit down. Not unless I let them give me a table…and if I took a table, I was expected to sit there and sign things or sell things and…well, you see the problem.
There were a few other realizations…and I hope I'm making it clear that I'm only talking about me deciding something wasn't right for me. Your mileage not only can vary, it probably will.
In the mid-to-late eighties, I began paring back my San Diego Comic-Cons. I went to every one but I'd arrive the second day and/or depart the morning of the last day. I also did that for other reasons, as well. In '88, I didn't stay for Sunday because Sunday was the big meeting in Los Angeles where the Writers Guild was voting to end what at this moment is still the longest strike in our history — a distinction it may lose in around seven weeks.
And then a few years later, I fell in love with Comic-Con all over again. I suddenly realized how to customize my con-going experience to suit my needs…which was a lot easier to do once I really understood what those needs were.
Wha' happened? Well, I had all the above revelations. Slowly but certainly, I realized I didn't have to sit behind a table, sell stuff, critique portfolios, hustle editors for work, be around drunks, stand for most of four days, etc. And two other things occurred, one being that it became easy to pre-plan my Comic-Con with the aid of the Internet. The con had set up a website that listed program items and which exhibitors were located where in the big hall along with other valuable info.
Before I got to San Diego, I could figure out where I wanted to be and when. I could ask myself a question I somehow hadn't felt I could answer before — a two-part question, actually: What do I want to do at this convention? And how do I find it?
I began making up a schedule. E-mail, which had become a very efficient way to communicate with people, could be used to set up breakfasts, lunches, dinners or even just "Hey, let's get together at 3:30" with folks I wanted to see. I'd list booths in the exhibit hall I wanted to visit and even figure out, via maps on the convention website, a plan to hit them in a sequence that would save me walking time. No more wandering that massive room aimlessly, hoping to stumble upon that which interested me.
My schedule, of course, included the two or three panels I might appear on at each Comic-Con. As their number began to expand, I finally realized what I enjoyed most about Comic-Con…hosting panels. That was the second thing that occurred and as I'm typing this, I realize that to explain how that happened, I'm going to have to take this series to a seventh (and final, I promise) part. Don't be shocked. I warned you this might happen.
Part 1 can be found here while Part 2 can be found here, Part 3 can be found here and Part 4 can be found here. Part 5 starts right after the line below and I think Part 6 will be the last part of this series, at least for a while. But don't hold me to that.
If you missed this past Comic-Con in San Diego, you can visit it from afar via YouTube. There are dozens of "walk-thru" videos online now showing what folks experienced while attending this year's gala event. Here are three such videos and as you'll see, they're all pretty long. Comic-Con is a vast environment peopled with unusual beings…
…and if you don't like these videos, you can easily find others. I've watched none of them in full but I've seen enough to know this: None of these even remotely resemble the Comic-Con I attended. I walked down some of those aisles. I saw some of those cosplayers. I glanced at some of those exhibitors and their wares. But I "made" my own Comic-Con — one tailored to what I wanted to see and do — and mine in no way resembled any of these videos. If you were there, you can probably say the same thing.
I am absolutely not suggesting that mine was better than yours or that you would have enjoyed mine. But I started this series of blog posts by saying that to "do" Comic-Con, you need to figure out what you want out of it and then engage in enough research to figure out how and where to find it.
As you've heard ad nauseam, I've been to every mid-Summer multi-day edition of the annual event now called Comic-Con International. This past one was #55 for me. Contrary to what you might think, I did not love every one of them but I loved enough each year to return the following year.
At some point, what I realized was that whatever I hadn't loved was my fault for (a) not getting truly in touch with what I wanted out of Comic-Con and therefore (b) not adequately planning how to focus my convention on that. I also realized (c) that sometimes not getting what you want in this world is a matter of unrealistic expectations. And I even realized a (d), (d) in this case being that I had to fully grasp the concept that Comic-Con wasn't just there for me.
It was, for example, also for people who love Star Trek, a franchise which at no time in any of its forms and incarnations has had the slightest interest for me. It was also for people who loved Tolkien or Star Wars or zombie movies or certain kinds of gaming or even comic books I never liked. There's tons of stuff in that hall and on that programming schedule that doesn't interest me and there's nothing wrong with that…
…because there's way more than enough that does. There are also people around that I just plain enjoy seeing and in many cases, the only time I see them is at Comic-Con.
Photo by Bruce Guthrie
When I attended the early Comic-Cons, most of what was there was of interest to me. It was mainly — mainly, not wholly — about the comic books I was then following and the comic books I grew up on, all of which were the output of a relatively modest number of publishers. As the years passed, there were hundreds and hundreds more publishers and thousands and thousands of new comic books, most of which I didn't read. In 1970, the first year of what's now Comic-Con International, I probably knew 80% of all the comics then being published.
I'd be surprised if there's anyone who follows more than about 20% of them — and that percentage is probably high. A lot of attendees who love comics have very little interest in the current ones. A lot of those who love the current ones have very little interest in the older ones except sometimes as backstory to the current ones. So even if every single dealer in that hall was selling only comic books and every single program item was about comic books and you weren't even allowed to cosplay unless you were dressed as a character from a comic book, most attendees would not be interested in a majority of what's there to be seen, purchased and experienced.
Of course, that's only one way to look at it. I've come to think that most of what's there these days is about comics — maybe not comic books but comics. Because I've come to feel that the definition of comics has expanded over the years and this is not an original thought of mine. I kinda stole it from the same person from whom so many people stole so much: Jack Kirby.
Not long before Jack passed away in 1994, he saw the redefinition in progress, identified it for what it was and expressed total approval. He always wanted comics to be bigger and bolder and covering more subjects and reaching a wider audience, He especially wanted them to escape the ghetto of being printed on the cheapest-available paper by the cheapest-possible method. He didn't even think they had to be on paper at all.
To Jack, a certain kind of movie was comics — and he didn't just mean a movie about Superman or Spider-Man. He also meant the kind of movie that captured the energy and supercharged storytelling of many comics. He meant films that featured the imaginative visuals that a great comic book artist could create on his or her drawing board. To Jack, videogames could be comics, TV shows could be comics, sculpture could be comics, dance could be comics…just about any means of expression. It didn't have to be something stamped onto newsprint with its narrative conveyed through a series of drawings with word balloons all over them. It just had to be imaginative in the way the best comics were and are imaginative.
And when Jack said these kinds of things to me, I thought: "Well, he's the King of the Comics. He oughta know."
Once I started to think of Comic-Con that way — as a festival of imaginative arts spinning off and around certain fundamentals of comic books and other visual arts like cartooning and animation — I began appreciating it more and more. But I also had to take a hard look at what I was doing wrong…at certain erroneous assumptions and bad choices I was making. I'll try to itemize and explain them in Part 6…which like I said, will probably be the last part of this series, at least for a while. But like I also said, don't hold me to that. I made a lot of mistakes.
Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone is probably working hard now on a video that will explain the Georgia Indictments in the way that he explains things. If you can't wait, here's an article that seems to do a pretty good job of it.
Some folks who've written me seem to think I was trying to say that Rudy Giuliani was a good man who went bad. No. I was trying to say that Rudy Giuliani was a man with a good reputation, warranted or not, who pissed it all away in the service of a bad man who went badder. Here's a piece about how Trump is refusing to pay all of Giuliani's crippling legal bills. Hope you think it was worth it, Rudy.
As this article notes, lots of different political observers are offering theories as to the identity of the unnamed sixth conspirator in the Georgia case. The indictment describes this person as "a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding" and that description could fit a lot of people. It could, as the article notes, be Ginni Thomas…and wouldn't that have interesting ramifications? I, of course, have no clues; just wondering why none of the guessers are mentioning the name of Roger Stone — no relation (that I know of) to Devin.
If you're concerned about polling that says Biden and Trump are neck-and-neck in the presidential race, remember how worthless polls are this far ahead of Election Day. And if you insist on following polls, follow this one: As Ben Mathis-Lilley notes of a recent AP poll…
Overall, about both Georgia's vote count and "what happened at the U.S. Capitol," 64 percent of American adults said Trump's conduct was either illegal or unethical. And only 21 percent said he did nothing wrong in relation to Jan. 6, while 15 percent said he did nothing wrong in Georgia. If you boil things down to "what he did was bad" or "what he did was OK," Trump is a loser by margins of 64–21 and 64–15.
Those would be pretty lopsided scores in the United States' beloved sport of American football! And the numbers aren't even that great for Trump among Republicans. A combined 42 percent of Republicans told the AP that Trump's conduct in Georgia was illegal or unethical, while only 31 percent said he'd done nothing wrong. Regarding Jan. 6, 38 percent of Republicans said Trump behaved illegally or unethically, with 46 percent coming down on the side of "nothing wrong."
Trump may well get the G.O.P. nomination just because a whopping majority of Republicans are fierce about seeing someone of their party win and they don't see any other Republican who would have a chance. All they've got is this one guy who couldn't beat Joe Biden the last time around…and that was before that one guy was out on bail in four different matters and facing possible (maybe probable) prison time. Do we really think that one guy can win the presidency back if that much of his own party thinks he's unethical and/or a criminal?
I continue to be stunned by how Rudolph William Louis Giuliani went from being "America's Mayor" and a widely-respected figure to a laughingstock lawyer who's being disbarred one state at a time, an indicted co-conspirator in a major crime, an unindicted (so far) co-conspirator in another major crime, a guy who's likely to lose a huge defamation suit and the target of a huge sexual harassment lawsuit…and I think there are a few more charges and lawsuits beyond all this — or there will be. I feel like I've used this line here before but nobody likes this man. Democrats dislike him because he tried to steal the election for Trump. And Republicans don't like him because he did such a bad job of it.
One of my favorite online writers, Fred Kaplan, writes about the irony of Rudy, the King of RICO prosecutions, becoming the target of a RICO prosecution. Meanwhile, Andrew Kirtzman and David Holley write about how far Giuliani has fallen and Bess Levin writes about Giuliani's financial woes. It may not sound like it but I really find this very sad.
Recently at his site, Michael Barrier has been discussing Walter Lantz, the prolific animation producer who gave us Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, Chilly Willy and others. A reader of this site, Alan Willson, wrote to ask me, "Did you ever cross paths with Lantz? Any personal anecdotes?" Not many, I'm afraid. I met Mr. Lantz but once and I'll tell you about it in a second. But first let me tell you the way in which he was important to me.
As a kid, I was a fan of his cartoons. Of course, as a kid, I was a fan of most cartoons. As one gets older, one's interests and tastes evolve. At the same time I was avidly watching The Woody Woodpecker Show on Channel 11, I was also watching (and loving even more) the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons on Channel 11 and the early Jay Ward cartoons on Channel 7 and later 4. I still like and enjoy Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and other H-B programs of that era. I still love and admire Rocky and His Friends and other Wardian concoctions. Whatever positive feelings I have for Woody and Company are not unlike my emotions re: Bosco chocolate syrup and Circus Animal cookies. I can't and don't eat them today but I do remember how much joy they gave me at age 10. Somewhere downstairs here, I have a VHS tape of Woody Woodpecker cartoons that I picked up for a couple of bucks once in a KMart. It literally contains every Walter Lantz cartoon that I can recall ever really liking as an adult.
Some of the cartoons he produced have expertly-done musical numbers and I suppose most were as well-animated as the budgets of the time allowed…but I feel scant connection to the characters or the jokes or the storylines. And to the extent that I even like the characters, that's mainly because of their appearances in the Dell comic books that were created and printed by Western Publishing Company. I liked a lot of those comics…which Mr. Lantz and his immediate staff didn't write or draw. In fact — and this is a visceral feeling, not a logical one — as a kid, I felt the cartoons were wrong and the comics were right. The Road Runner in the Dell comic books didn't match the Road Runner of the cartoons and there, it was clear to me that the comic book version was the aberration. With Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda and other Lantz properties, it felt like the cartoons were wrong…and also wildly inconsistent, whereas the comics had one generally clear vision.
But what I really did like about Walter Lantz was that he taught me the basics of cartooning. He taught them in little film segments on the Woody Woodpecker TV show like this one…
I would sit there with my pad and pencil and follow along. Even though I never carried it to the point of real professional cartooning, doing that had a lot to do with the fact that I now work at all in the creative arts. I can interface with the best cartoonists in the business and understand what they do when we collaborate…but I also think that whatever flair I have for writing is connected to having filled many a pad with cartoons at an early age.
Where I really learned something ostensibly from Walter Lantz was when I acquired a book called Easy Way to Draw. I wrote about it back here and I still consider that volume to be as important to my life as any book I ever owned. An idea I've toyed with for some time is to grab friends like Sergio Aragonés and Scott Shaw! and to try and do a new book that will work the same magic on kids in that age bracket. I would start by resolving that the book was for ages 6-12 and that I really didn't care if one person older than that would buy or could even understand it.
So when I finally met Walter Lantz, it was a very special moment for me — one of those encounters when you feel the need to say to someone, "You have no idea what you did for me…but thank you for what you did for me." And that's pretty much what I said to him.
It was at the opening of an animation art gallery in West Hollywood around 1984 or '85. (Mr. Lantz passed in '94 at the age of 95.) I saw him there and got June Foray to introduce us, and the first two things I noticed were that he was very short — not a whole lot taller than I was when I was watching his drawing lessons — and that he talked exactly the same way in person that he'd talked in them. He really did sound like he was reading off-camera cue cards and that was somehow comforting.
He'd been standing for some time shaking hands at the gallery and was looking for a place to sit down for a spell. Recalling a bench a bit away from the mingling area, I suggested that and led him to it. So I got to sit with Walter Lantz for maybe a half-hour of Q-and-A. Unfortunately, it was mostly Q's from him and A's from me. June had introduced me glowingly as a great friend and important person in the cartoon business (half-right — the first half) and once I told Mr. Lantz that I'd gotten into cartoons because of him, he really just wanted to hear more about that. It was clearly a big deal to him that he'd been responsible for the "next generation" — or maybe I was a generation or two past his — but it felt odd to sit there and be peppered with questions about where I went to college and how he'd inspired me.
Most of what I did get him to talk about was the relationship between his operation and Western Publishing. He dearly loved Chase Craig, who'd been my editor when I wrote Woody Woodpecker comics and others, and he'd been delighted with Western's comics and activity books of his characters. He admitted to me that at some point, they were the creative force behind much of what he was doing in his own studio. The evolution of Woody's official design, for instance, was influenced as much by what the Western artists were doing as by anything done by folks on the Lantz payroll…and many talents went back and forth between the two employers. (In this article, I explain how a character created by folks at Western for the comic books became a semi-valuable Lantz property, much as Disney got Uncle Scrooge out of their relationship with Western.)
Mike Barrier says that when he interviewed Lantz in a more formal context, he also got little out of him. People in animation often develop what I call "talk show versions" of their history…little abbreviated anecdotes that are simplified down to be quick and comprehensible to folks outside the business and which come with built-in punchlines. They tell them so often to reporters that they often can't shift back to the real stories. This was often a problem if you spoke with Mel Blanc, as well. Asked about Porky Pig's stuttering, he'd launch into the same tale he told in Johnny Carson's guest chair and so many other places about going out and studying pigs until he decided a grunt was a stammer. Unless you reminded him that he was the second voice of Porky, replacing a guy who really did stutter, that was all you got out of Mel. At one point in our half hour and with zero inquiry from me, Mr. Lantz launched into the oft-heard-but-apocryphal saga of creating Woody Woodpecker when a real woodpecker kept interrupting his honeymoon.
But you know what? I loved it. It was like hearing Tony Bennett sing about leaving his heart in San Francisco…which probably also didn't happen.
So I didn't extract a lot of historical data or wisdom about animation from Walter Lantz but so what? I got to tell him that he was a good teacher and that he'd inspired one more kid to move towards his life's work. I'm sure there were a lot of us and that he only got to hear it from a very small percentage.
It's been a while since I featured one of those clips of an American musical being performed in Korea. Here from a Korean production of Les Misérables is "One Day More." I almost like it better this way…
P.S., ADDED LATER: Okay, okay. Les Misérables is not an American musical. But you all know what I meant.
I just spent two hours I really can't spare reading the latest Trump Indictment and various articles about it. Oh, my God. If I were Donald Trump, I'd be phoning Putin to ask if I could spend the rest of my life living in his spare room.
Wouldn't you have liked to be the person who had to tell Trump, "You know, even if you win back the presidency, you can't pardon yourself or anyone convicted of state crimes in Georgia"?
And in Georgia, they have cameras in almost every courtroom…so I guess I have a few weeks ahead of me struggling to not watch every minute of the trial. It's going to be distracting enough to get through the coming weeks of one Trump associate after another flipping on The Big Guy. Some of his co-defendants in this matter have already rolled over on Trump in matters being prosecuted by Jack Smith.
As Trump himself said of the then-upcoming January 6 demonstrations at the Capitol: "Will be wild!"
I'm working today on a script for a cartoon show…and I don't know why the producers want it right now. They can't do much of anything with it until they have voice actors to record it and they're on strike. I'm also working on a couple of real long posts for this blog.
Realizing that the sooner I hand in the cartoon show script, the sooner I get paid, I've decided to devote most of my time today to that. I love writing for you folks but I just had to shell out beaucoup bucks for a new sprinkler system for my front yard. One of the long posts is what will probably be the last installment — at least for a while — of "How to 'Do' Comic-Con." The other is the next installment of "Borders Crossing" and yes, I know I have other pieces I've promised. I'll get to them, I'll get to them. First comes paying for the damned sprinklers.
If I had time to write about "What new trouble is Donald Trump in today?" it would be about the new revelations in the looming Georgia indictments — indictments plural because it looks like Rudy and Sidney and the entire Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight will probably be named with him. One expects they will soon commence rolling over on one another.
I hope at least at some point, at least one of them is frog-marched. Since 2005 when someone said they were going to do that to Karl Rove, I've been waiting to see someone in public life be frog-marched just so I could find out that that is. (Don't believe me? See here.)
I'll be back to you soon. But do let me know if you hear of anyone being frog-marched even if it's just a frog.
P.S. ADDED A LITTLE LATER: Just got a note from my lovely friend Jewel Shepard reminding me I should clarify: Most animation voice jobs are not impacted by the strike because they're done under a different SAG-AFTRA contract. The project I'm writing is affected by the strike and I've gotten the producers to agree it will not be voiced non-union…so no actors will be engaged until the strike is settled. I should mention that it's also not covered by the Writers Guild, of which I am a loyal member.
You have to watch this amazing footage from World War I. It's been tweaked and colorized and they added a fake soundtrack that's probably not too far off what it really sounded like. But it's real World War I film. My grandfather on my mother's side could have been one of those men…
I've never been fond of the term "guilty pleasure," at least the way most people use it which is like saying, "I know this movie is awful but I love watching it." It seems to me that if something brings you enjoyment, you owe it a little more respect than that.
That said, my "guilty pleasure" these days is starting each morning by walking towards my computer for the first time that day, asking myself "What new trouble is Donald Trump in today?" and then logging into a news site to find out. There's always something, at least Monday through Friday, and lately we even have them on the weekends. This morning, I wasn't necessarily expecting anything but I found…
Prosecutors investigating potential shadiness relating to Trump's team making efforts to fiddle with the 2020 election results in Georgia have gained access to text messages and emails proving that to be the case.
According to a CNN exclusive that broke early Sunday, "Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach was not an organic effort sprung from sympathetic Trump supporters in rural and heavily Republican Coffee County — a county Trump won by nearly 70% of the vote." They've also "gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump's team to access sensitive voting software," per sources familiar with the matter.
All by itself, this might not be much but with an indictment looming in Georgia, it makes that indictment more serious. Who knows what the morrow will bring?
Meantime, I have a number of e-mails asking me to predict whether Trump will show up for the first debate of Republican candidates on August 23rd. I don't know why anyone thinks the hunches of a guy who works on Groo the Wanderer comics are any better than anyone else's. Why not ask your gardener? Or the kid at the counter at Arby's? But okay. I'll play…
Predicting what Trump will do is always challenging because he so often doesn't do what you'd think any rational person would do. Any rational person would think that he doesn't have to savage those other aspirants to win the G.O.P. nomination; not when he's a jillion points ahead of all of them put together. But this time I'll venture a guess that he'll do the logical thing and he won't be there. He'll say something like, "I would love to be there and to especially take on that [INSULT REFERRING TO CHRIS CHRISTIE'S WEIGHT] Chris Christie but I have this [INSULT REFERRING TO INSANITY, RACE AND/OR GENDER] judge who's trying to silence me on one of these phony indictments that [INSULT REFERRING TO JOE BIDEN'S MENTAL CAPACITY] Joe Biden has personally ordered so my lawyers insist I refrain!"
And then he'll say that if he were free to speak, he could tell us about all the overwhelming evidence he and his lawyers have amassed that proves he's 100% innocent, all those conversations were perfect and he beat Joe Biden in a landslide.
That's what I think he'll do…but since I also think he has no idea yet what the hell he's going to do before he does it, I wouldn't bet a nickel on this prediction or anyone else's. But I will wager that tomorrow, there'll be another great answer to the question, "What new trouble is Donald Trump in today?" I'm hoping it'll be one of the ones involving Rudy Giuliani. Those are my favorites.
My local Costco is clean outta Rao's Marinara Sauce. Apparently there was a run on them because people are afraid the company's new owners will not only ruin the sauce but that they'll ruin it before the month is out.
Here's the thing though: Yes, it's possible that the new owners will make some fatal change in the product. But it has also always been possible that the old owners could do that; that someone high up in that company would suddenly say, "Hey, I've got an idea that would save us a lot of money!" Or that someone within that company who always thought the product needed High Fructose Corn Syrup would abruptly be promoted into a position of power and get his way. Rao's could also suddenly not be able to get their chosen kind of tomatoes or their preferred olive oil from their supplier.
I've worked with a lot of companies that ruined their businesses without a change of ownership. I think it's good to let the Campbells Corporation know that a lot of us love Rao's sauce just the way it is and are wary of it being changed…but let's not pretend that it would surely have stayed pristine if it had stayed with the old proprietors. Maybe the new owners now have a special incentive to not tamper with it.
Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone explains all about the latest Trump indictment — not to be confused with the Trump indictment that's coming shortly in Georgia or some others which may be in the offing. The way Trump's going, if he set foot in most Vegas hotels now, he'd probably be indicted in the Food Court.
This is a long video but I understood more about the matter after viewing it and you may, as well. I watched it on Nebula, a subscription service that offers an ad-free and slightly longer version of Mr. Stone's remarks. At the close of the YouTube version below, he delivers a commercial for Hello Fresh. In the "pay" version, he talks about the complexity of the case and how it may not be possible to wrap it up as soon as some people would like.
Reading the indictment and listening to Stone's summary, it sounds like a pretty solid case whenever it goes to trial. I've seen Trump's attorney John Lauro on TV giving a brief summary of their defense and they seem to have abandoned completely the premise that there is any real evidence that Trump actually won the 2020 election. I mean, you don't go to that length to arrange for fake electors if you have any argument that would stand up in court that you're entitled to real electors. So what we're left with is "He was allowed to arrange all this because he honestly thought he'd won."
Good luck with that…although Mr. Lauro has scored a victory of sorts. He is now The Person You Can't Turn On Your TV Without Seeing, wresting the title away from Steve Harvey. And now, I'll let The Eagle soar…
