Monthly Archives: October 2023

I'd like to write something here not about Current Events since I know a lot of you come to this site to get away from those nasty things…but it's kind of a Tons o' News Day. It's hard to yank my brain away from the Middle East situation, Ukraine and Trumpian legal developments and write about old sitcoms. What little effort I can muster in that area has to be poured into writing stuff that producers and editors are waiting for. But this weekend, I'm determined to finish the next installment of the Gold Key comics series and a few other things I've left dangling here.

So Jim Jordan, who doesn't believe in accepting the results of elections that don't turn out the way he wanted, has accepted the outcome of his and is no longer the Republican candidate for Speaker of the House. Can't wait to see who they come up with next. I hear Mike Lindell needs money.

This past week, I spent some wonderful hours with my past (and it looks like future) employer Marty Krofft discussing upcoming projects. One in which I'm only peripherally involved is the forthcoming Sid and Marty Krofft Channel which will soon be streaming vintage episodes of H.R. Pufnstuf, Lidsville, Land of the Lost, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, The Bugaloos, The Krofft SuperShow, The Krofft Superstar Hour, The Far-Out Space Nuts and other Krofft Klassics.

The channel, which debuts early in 2024, will even air a few short things I did for Sid and Marty in the seventies that have never aired before. I'll let you know when it's time to see if you can get it via whatever system you get to get your television.

Every time I plug something I (theoretically) make money on, I want to post something that doesn't earn me a nickel. There's a new book out featuring loads of work from the files of my longtime pal Scott Shaw! How "longtime" is "longtime?" Well, in this case, we met at Jack Kirby's house in 1971 when Scott was just an aspiring cartoonist instead of the full-fledged, prolific one he became a few years later.

If you've ever been a fan of Scott's work, you will very much want a copy of Scott Shaw!s Comix & Stories.  If you're not a fan of his work yet, buy a copy and become one.  It's stuff he did from the days even before he and I met and it goes up through current work — posters, doodles, sketches, stories…even a few stories he and I collaborated on. If you're going to be at a con soon where Scott's appearing, buy one there and he'll draw something wonderful in your copy. But since you may not be, order one right now at this link. You'll be happy you did, miserable if you don't.

If I were him, I think I'd get up, claim victory and announce that the voting machines were rigged.

…and it's always nice when your day starts with watching Jim Jordan lose another election for Speaker of the House.

Dana Snow died a week ago, I'm told. I don't know the cause of death and I don't know his age…but he graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1970 so that should give you some idea. There was a memorial service for him the other night at the most appropriate place to hold a memorial service for Dana Snow…a comedy club. They were his natural habitat. If there is a grave for him, I know what he would have wanted on the headstone. He'd want it to say "Dana Snow, Comedian." Either that or a good joke.

I met Dana sometime in the early seventies at some local comic book mini-con or another. Comic books were Dana's secondary interest and they were a distant second. His first interest, far and away, was comedy, especially stand-up comedy. I had not seen much of Dana the last few decades but I find it hard to imagine that he ever had a third-place interest. He was an enormous fan of just about everyone who ever made an audience laugh and he devoted just about all of his life to trying to join their ranks…and succeeded here and there in his own way. If unrelenting persistence is a virtue — and in some instances, I don't think it is — Dana was the champ.

He could often be found in comedy clubs — usually the smaller ones, sometimes the ones that took him 90 minutes on the bus to get to. He'd sit there, watching other up-and-coming comics, waiting for his chance to go on even if it was at 2 AM in front of four patrons. He was a fierce taker of notes and extremely generous with everything he had. Some comics thought that when he was sitting in the back of the club scribbling, he was writing down their best jokes for purposes of theft. Never. He was studying, jotting down observations and thoughts that he felt might help his performance and his career. If he wrote stuff down about your act, he'd gladly share it all with you. Just trying to be helpful.

At times, he was. He worked for me for a few months — typing, filing, helping me sort the Groo mail, etc. He told some people that it ended when I caught him stealing…and that's not exactly true. What happened was that I found out he was working on his own stuff for too large a part of the time I was paying him by the hour to work on mine. I believe that was the reason he lost several other jobs around that time. He was just incapable of not working on his own stuff for very long.

That was in the nineties. The last decade or two, I ran into him here and there…usually at a tiny theater in West Los Angeles where a couple of different improv comedy troupes performed. When I went to see them, I'd see Dana in the back, taking notes like his life depended on it. I guess in some ways, it did. He was a benevolent presence and I know he helped hundreds of different comedian friends in whatever ways he could. His greatest regret was probably that when they had that memorial for him at the comedy club the other night, he couldn't sit in the back and take notes.

I have a bunch of these…pictures someone sent me or I stole them off the Internet…images I thought I might want to use on this blog and then I never did. I'm going to post a few of them here now and then.

I don't remember if it was at this past year's Comic-Con International in San Diego or the one before but I saw a cosplayer roaming the premises with this clever outfit. If you remember the end credits of the original Star Trek, you remember the credit line for Herbert F. Solow superimposed over an alien face. This is a more-than-reasonable facsimile of that title card. I spotted it, said "I have to get a shot of it and put it on my blog" and then I got distracted…I think by someone approaching me to get a Groo signed or something.

By the time I was undistracted, the cosplayer had gone elsewhere. I never spotted him — I assume it's a "him" — again. I didn't get my photo but I spotted this one on some site and grabbed it. It matters to me not just because it's well done but because Herb Solow was the guy who gave my partner Dennis Palumbo and me our first TV writing job. A lovely man. I think he would have been flattered…

Well, I think I have my streaming service set up properly…and today, I subscribed to Apple TV largely so I could watch The Problem with Jon Stewart. Then about twenty minutes later, I saw headlines on several sites that proclaimed some version of "Jon Stewart's Show on Apple Is Ending." What timing. I assume though that if Mr. Stewart wants to continue with it, Mr. Stewart will find a willing buyer.

Lately, I've seen and heard of an awful lot of damage done by medical advice that did not come from someone who attended medical school, received a diploma, took some modernized version of the Hippocratic Oath and has years of experience in his or her chosen field. To me, everyone else is like Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies who insisted she was a doctor because she knew how to cure leprosy with raccoon sweat or something like that.

The fourth and final issue of the four-issue Groo in the Wild mini-series is either at your local comic book shop or it will be any day now. I don't plug Groo often on this site and it's not because I'm not proud of the comic or don't want you to buy it. It's because I have to be in the right frame of mind to plug something that pays me. I usually get out of that frame by seeing the online offerings of folks who think the Internet was invented just to promote their current products. Today, I feel like telling you that this is out and I think this mini-series is one of the best things Sergio and I have ever done. I won't mention it again.

So my first thought was that Today's Person I'm Glad I'm Not should be Sidney Powell, the Trump lawyer and election denier who pleaded guilty this morning in a Georgia courtroom. But then I realized: This woman has just done the single intelligent thing I've ever heard of her doing…the thing that will keep her out of prison if she doesn't do something else illegal and foolish. So maybe today's P.I.G.I.N. is Donald Trump who's now had this attorney and close associate flip on him like a cheese omelet.

QUESTION: Should Donald Trump's January 6 trial be televised?

MY ANSWER: No because I might want to do something besides watching television all day on those days.

Here's two really good hours of really good singers and a really good orchestra performing really good show tunes…

Sorry I've been away from the blog a bit. It's been a couple of really crowded days but I'll make it up to you.

Recently here, I announced with a heavy heart that I was abandoning my beloved TiVos and my not-beloved cable company. I still believe TiVo makes the best Digital Video Recorders — or at least, the best I've seen. The trouble is that every cable company now has their own DVR and they make it very, very difficult to use their service with any DVR but theirs. Adhering to the old maxim that I wish wasn't true as often as it is — "If you can't beat 'em, surrender" — I've surrendered. So that's why I've stopped using TiVo.

And my reason for getting rid of my cable service is that their service has been really terrible. I have revenge fantasies in which the heads of the company are trapped for all eternity in the company's phone system, trying to get an actual human being on the line.

Well, it looks like my timing was spot-on. Stu Shostak sent me a link to this article about how this very cable company is taking a big step away from offering cable service. It will no longer be available to new subscribers. Can we all see where this is heading?

Today's Person I'm Glad I'm Not should probably be Jim Jordan who doesn't look like he's going to get the job of Speaker of the House. He seems to be the only person who wants it but even some members of his own party thinks he'd be a disaster…and these are people who think Trump wouldn't be.

My friend Greg Ehrbar knows just about everything about cartoons and he hosts an audio podcast called "The Funtastic World of Hanna and Barbera" that focuses on that studio. A few weeks ago we sat down in our respective homes and I forget if we used Zoom or Skype or one of the other ninety options but we had a nice conversation about my days working there. Wanna hear it? Go here and click where they tell you to click. You may need to sit through an ad or three to get to us but it's free.

If you're interested in understanding the conflict in the Middle East at the moment — and I sure wouldn't blame anyone for looking away in helpless frustration — you might want to keep an eye on Fred Kaplan's posts on Slate. This man has a good track record as an explainer and for realistic assessments of these kinds of problems. Here's his latest.

I have this lovely friend named Gabriella Muttone. She's a model and a photographer and a designer and she's running to win some sort of online beauty/grace/smarts competition to benefit the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Here — I'll let Gabriella herself tell you about it…

You can vote once a day for free if you either have a Facebook account and use it to verify you're a person or if you give them a credit card number. As I understand it, they will only charge your card if you explicitly agree to donate the amount you specify to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. And for every buck you donate, Gabriella gets another vote…which sounds to me like a WIN/WIN deal for everyone. Here's the link. Use it well and use it often.

Today's Person I'm Glad I'm Not would be anyone whose life is being ended or made hellish by what's going on in Israel and especially Gaza — horrible, horrible inhumanity. It's a conflict that cannot end well for anyone and it's sickening to watch even a few seconds of it. I'm not going to talk much about it here because I have nothing to say besides the obvious. That doesn't mean it doesn't horrify me.