Monthly Archives: December 2023

This is the most popular thing I've ever posted on this weblog. In fact, it's so popular that proprietors of other sites have thought nothing of just copying the whole thing and posting it on their pages, often with no mention of me and with the implication that they are the "I" in this tale. Please don't do that — to me or anyone. By all means, post a link to it but don't just appropriate it and especially don't let people think it's your work. This is the season for giving, not taking.

Yes, it's true…and I was very happy to learn from two of Mel Tormé's kids that their father had happily told them of the incident. Hearing that was my present…

I want to tell you a story…

The scene is Farmers Market — the famed tourist mecca of Los Angeles. It's located but yards from the facility they call, "CBS Television City in Hollywood"…which, of course, is not in Hollywood but at least is very close.

Farmers Market is a quaint collection of bungalow stores, produce stalls and little stands where one can buy darn near anything edible one wishes to devour. You buy your pizza slice or sandwich or Chinese food or whatever at one of umpteen counters, then carry it on a tray to an open-air table for consumption.

During the Summer or on weekends, the place is full of families and tourists and Japanese tour groups. But this was a winter weekday, not long before Christmas, and the crowd was mostly older folks, dawdling over coffee and danish. For most of them, it's a good place to get a donut or a taco, to sit and read the paper.

For me, it's a good place to get out of the house and grab something to eat. I arrived, headed for my favorite barbecue stand and, en route, noticed that Mel Tormé was seated at one of the tables.

Mel Tormé. My favorite singer. Just sitting there, sipping a cup of coffee, munching on an English Muffin, reading The New York Times. Mel Tormé.

I had never met Mel Tormé. Alas, I still haven't and now I never will. He looked like he was engrossed in the paper that day so I didn't stop and say, "Excuse me, I just wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed all your records." I wish I had.

Instead, I continued over to the BBQ place, got myself a chicken sandwich and settled down at a table to consume it. I was about halfway through when four Christmas carolers strolled by, singing "Let It Snow," a cappella.

They were young adults with strong, fine voices and they were all clad in splendid Victorian garb. The Market had hired them (I assume) to stroll about and sing for the diners — a little touch of the holidays.

"Let It Snow" concluded not far from me to polite applause from all within earshot. I waved the leader of the chorale over and directed his attention to Mr. Tormé, seated about twenty yards from me.

"That's Mel Tormé down there. Do you know who he is?"

The singer was about 25 so it didn't horrify me that he said, "No."

I asked, "Do you know 'The Christmas Song?'"

Again, a "No."

I said, "That's the one that starts, 'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…'"

"Oh, yes," the caroler chirped. "Is that what it's called? 'The Christmas Song?'"

"That's the name," I explained. "And that man wrote it." The singer thanked me, returned to his group for a brief huddle…and then they strolled down towards Mel Tormé. I ditched the rest of my sandwich and followed, a few steps behind. As they reached their quarry, they began singing, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…" directly to him.

A big smile formed on Mel Tormé's face — and it wasn't the only one around. Most of those sitting at nearby tables knew who he was and many seemed aware of the significance of singing that song to him. For those who didn't, there was a sudden flurry of whispers: "That's Mel Tormé…he wrote that…"

As the choir reached the last chorus or two of the song, Mel got to his feet and made a little gesture that meant, "Let me sing one chorus solo." The carolers — all still apparently unaware they were in the presence of one of the world's great singers — looked a bit uncomfortable. I'd bet at least a couple were thinking, "Oh, no…the little fat guy wants to sing."

But they stopped and the little fat guy started to sing…and, of course, out came this beautiful, melodic, perfectly-on-pitch voice. The look on the face of the singer I'd briefed was amazed at first…then properly impressed.

On Mr. Tormé's signal, they all joined in on the final lines: "Although it's been said, many times, many ways…Merry Christmas to you…" Big smiles all around.

And not just from them. I looked and at all the tables surrounding the impromptu performance, I saw huge grins of delight…which segued, as the song ended, into a huge burst of applause. The whole tune only lasted about two minutes but I doubt anyone who was there will ever forget it.

I have witnessed a number of thrilling "show business" moments — those incidents, far and few between, where all the little hairs on your epidermis snap to attention and tingle with joy. Usually, these occur on a screen or stage. I hadn't expected to experience one next to a falafel stand — but I did.

Tormé thanked the harmonizers for the serenade and one of the women said, "You really wrote that?"

He nodded. "A wonderful songwriter named Bob Wells and I wrote that…and, get this — we did it on the hottest day of the year in July. It was a way to cool down."

Then the gent I'd briefed said, "You know, you're not a bad singer." He actually said that to Mel Tormé.

Mel chuckled. He realized that these four young folks hadn't the velvet-foggiest notion who he was, above and beyond the fact that he'd worked on that classic carol. "Well," he said. "I've actually made a few records in my day…"

"Really?" the other man asked. "How many?"

Tormé smiled and said, "Ninety."

I probably own about half of them on vinyl and/or CD. For some reason, they sound better on vinyl. (My favorite was the album he made with Buddy Rich. Go ahead. Find me a better parlay of singer and drummer. I'll wait.)

Today, as I'm reading obits, I'm reminded of that moment. And I'm impressed to remember that Mel Tormé was also an accomplished author and actor. Mostly though, I'm recalling that pre-Christmas afternoon.

I love people who do something so well that you can't conceive of it being done better. Doesn't even have to be something important: Singing, dancing, plate-spinning, mooning your neighbor's cat, whatever. There is a certain beauty to doing almost anything to perfection.

No recording exists of that chorus that Mel Tormé sang for the other diners at Farmers Market but if you never believe another word I write, trust me on this. It was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Coming in this year at #4 is Gayla Peevey singing her big hit record from 1953, "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas." If this holiday season you're someplace where carolers and carolling and they're taking requests, see if they know this one. I always ask for it and they usually know it and love singing it.  Better than falalalalaing all night…

Hanging in there at #5 this year is one of the best-selling Christmas songs of all time…"The Chipmunk Song" (aka "Christmas, Don't Be Late") written and performed by Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville). It was released on December 1, 1958 and shot to #1 in — no pun intended — record time. Here's Mr. Seville-Bagdasrian lip-syncing to the record on The Ed Sullivan Show and after you watch this, stay tuned for a two-for-one…

And here's a more modern representation of the song by a group called VoicePlay…

Here's a bonus video which I guess qualifies as a Christmas song but only barely. It was performed at a Christmas party in the Broadway musical, Promises, Promises — book by Neil Simon based on the Billy Wilder film, The Apartment… songs by Hal David and Burt Bacharach…choreography by Michael Bennett. The show opened in New York on December 1, 1968 and closed on January 1, 1972 for a total of 1,281 performances.

This number — "Turkey Lurkey Time" — joined a long line of song/dance numbers in musicals wherein employees at some company perform at an office party and in so doing, entertain but in no way advance the story. Every musical that could possibly have such a number seemed to have one after the success of "Steam Heat" in Pajama Game. I've heard that some choreographers demanded it as a condition of taking the job.

"Turkey Lurkey Time" is performed by the actresses playing Miss Polanski of Accounts Receivable, Miss Wong of Mimeograph and Miss Della Hoya of Petty Cash. In the original production, Miss Polanski was played by Margo Sappington (who later got famous in Oh! Calcutta!), Miss Wong was played by Baayork Lee (who later got famous in A Chorus Line) and Miss Della Hoya was played by Donna McKechnie (who also later got famous in A Chorus Line). A Chorus Line, I don't have to remind you, was directed by the choreographer of this number.

This video is from The Ed Sullivan Show for February 8, 1970 by which time Miss Polanski was being played by Barbara Alston, Miss Wong was still being played by Baayork Lee and Miss Della Hoya was being played by Julie Stites. The gentleman on the desk introducing them is Paul Reed who played the Police Chief on Car 54, Where Are You?. Since no microphones are anywhere in evidence, I conclude they're lip-syncing and dancing to a pre-recorded track — but it's a great number…

This whole matter of Trump being taken off the Colorado primary ballot has me in a tizzy…not that the country can't survive me being in a tizzy. It always has and always will. But it's times like this I feel glad that I don't absolutely have to have an opinion on this.

I'm reading learned legal scholars explaining why it absolutely was decided according to the law while other learned legal scholars insist it wasn't. And there are kind of two different questions here: Is it legal? and Is it a good thing? Those two questions do not necessarily have the same answer and it's real easy to confuse one with the other.

I think I more or less agree with Jonathan Chait who says, "To deny the voters the chance to elect the candidate of their choice is a Rubicon-crossing event for the judiciary. It would be seen forever by tens of millions of Americans as a negation of democracy."

And I think I more or less agree with Josh Marshall. You may need a subscription to read him but he says, "I'm equivocal about the whole idea. Trump is going to win or lose the old-fashioned way — based on the votes. I have no time to be distracted by strategies to short circuit that electoral reckoning.

And I think we oughta acknowledge that Aaron Blake is right: "Trump has repeatedly pushed the idea that a candidate's eligibility for president shouldn't be left up to voters. The candidate who a court now says is constitutionally ineligible to serve as president once showed great interest in having people he disagreed with disqualified under the Constitution's standards."

So I dunno. It seems unlikely that Trump could win Colorado's electoral votes, on or off the ballot. Still, Colorado's actions, if upheld, might lead to him being kicked off ballots in swing states. It also seems unlikely the Supreme Court he stacked will deliver a decision that displeases the guy. I don't know what will get decided. I'm just happy I'm not one of the ones who'll have to decide it.

There are things I like and don't like about Facebook. Among those in the "like" column is that no matter what you're interested in, there's probably a forum where people talk about it…and if there isn't, you can start one.

I was always curious about Vaughn Meader, who in 1962 starred in one of the fastest-selling records ever made…The First Family in which he impersonated the then-current president, John F. Kennedy. Meader's career came to an understandable (and screeching) halt on 11/22/63…and I must admit: Though I know an awful lot, I think, about comedians and comedy records of that era, I don't know much about him or that record. But I hope to learn.

Announcer/Voiceover Specialist/Historian Christopher Bay has set up a Facebook forum to discuss and share info on the man and his megahit album. I hope to learn more about them and if you'd like to, join me over there.

New to our countdown this year is Allan Sherman and his version from 1963 of "The Twelve Gifts of Christmas." There have been dozens of record albums and CDs that collect comedic Christmas recordings and this selection is on about two-thirds of them, often called "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

By any name, I loved this song since I was eleven. Many years later when I was writing Garfield and Friends, I subconsciously stuck in a joke about an "indoor plastic birdbath" without realizing where I'd gotten that phrase. Several folks who saw the cartoon wrote to inform me but they were all nice enough to refer to it as an "hommage" instead of a "plagiarism."

This video may seem like Mr. Sherman and his singers are doing a clumsy job of lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track but I don't think so. As I recall, this was a number that he wrote and performed on some TV show taped several weeks before Christmas. Someone — Sherman or his record company — got the idea that it should be a record and they quickly rushed it out as a 45 RPM release using the music and vocals from the show. It was later included on one of his albums.

So why is it outta sync here? I can think of several possibilities, one being that whoever assembled this video for YouTube laid the stereo rendition from the record over mono (or silent) footage from the TV show and they didn't quite match up. Or maybe the record was made from an alternate take of the number from the show. Or something. Anyway, I think the audio you're hearing was recorded at the same time with the same singers but maybe not the exact same time. It's still a great song…

Here's "Legal Eagle" Devin Stone talking about how the many legal matters involving D.J. Trump are descending on the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It's that place where even as we speak, Clarence Thomas is planning some expensive vacation paid for by some rich Republican while grousing that he may have to postpone so it so he can be home to vote in favor of whatever Trump wants. If I were him, I'd go on the trip but leave a proxy for Justice Gorsuch…

A person who asked me to omit his name wrote to ASK me…

You've spoken a bit about Jack Kirby and his various inkers. I was wondering your feelings on Steve Ditko being inked by anyone other than Steve Ditko. Also, you once mentioned Stan thought Ditko was a great inker over Kirby's pencils in the relatively rare times he inked Jack. Would you agree?

My tastes evolve over the years and my thinking now is that most of the artists who drew comics before 1980 — and by "most," I mean like 90% or more — would have been better served by inking what they penciled and penciling what they inked. This is if we're only talking about what would have resulted in the best artwork, not what would have led to them making more money or not working too hard.

It would certainly include Steve Ditko. He was one of those guys who, when he did the whole job, added a lot of what was wonderful in the inking stage. Other inkers — even the best of them — only diluted what he did.

A good friend of mine in the business, the artist Doug Wildey, used to explain the worst possible way you could employ him. To guarantee you got the worst work he ever did, all you had to do was to have him ink some other artist or have some other artist ink him. In certain circumstances, he might make more money doing one and not the other but that would never result in the best artwork with which he could be involved.

There are times when it simply isn't practical from a deadline/production standpoint to have one person pencil and ink…and there are some artists who are way better (or even happier) doing just one and not the other. Often on forums, I see people arguing over who was the best inker for Curt Swan or John Buscema or someone else who almost always just did pencils. My theory is this: If the publishers had made it financially better — or at least equal — for Swan and Buscema (among many others) to ink their own work…and if they'd had reasonable deadlines and done it for a year or two get back into practice, they would have output work so good that we'd never want to see anyone else finish their artwork.

There were a few times when someone else inked Joe Kubert's work. The result was an interesting hybrid novelty but it was never anywhere near as good as Joe doing the whole thing by himself. I believe the same was true of most artists of that generation. I liked Neal Adams art inked by Neal Adams more than any Neal Adams art inked by anyone who wasn't Neal Adams.

That wasn't always practical…and at time, Neal might have wanted to do pencils only on certain jobs. There are also times when it's desirable to have the inker dominate…like on the old T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents comic which was largely built around the work and style of Wally Wood. Wood couldn't have produced all the necessary material by himself so a lot of it was him inking someone else…including Steve Ditko. On that book, it was right and proper that the finished product look like Wally Wood art. When Ditko was drawing Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, I think it fit the material better for it to be pure Ditko.

I don't think Stan Lee liked any of the zillion artists who drew for Marvel more than he liked Steve Ditko. He had more respect for Kirby and thought nobody beat Jack when it came to creating new characters and stories. But he told me, "If I could have drawn like anyone who worked for us, I would have wanted to draw like Steve Ditko." So he loved it when Ditko inked Kirby even though, as he also told me, Ditko was too valuable as a penciler to have that happen very often.

I used to like it more than I do now. I feel the same about either of them inked by Wally Wood or some other inker who merged and submerged their style except, as noted, when Ditko was essentially ghost-penciling for someone as he did for Wood on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents.

This discussion reminds me of a question I got from someone a while ago and didn't get around to answering.  He asked, "If a magic genie could grant you the power to draw like any comic book artist who ever lived, who would you have picked?"  I was going to say Wally Wood but then I realized that I'd never get anything done in life.  I'd just sit home all day drawing naked women.

It is a delight and quite the Christmas miracle that Brenda Lee — at one of those ages it's not polite to divulge — has a hit all over again with the re-release of her 1958 song, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." Here's a recently-made video of her lip-syncing to the original record and obviously enjoying the experience. And it even has a guy who looks like David Letterman in it…

And here's a recent version cover which manages to sound very much like the original, except that it took two women to do the job that Brenda did by herself. The performer is Josh Turner and his guitar and band are accompanying two fine vocalists called The Ladybugs…

Almost anything legal that keeps Donald Trump out of the White House is aces with me but I'm feeling odd about today's decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to not allow him on the ballot in their state. Of course, that's assuming this decision is not overturned and I have an inexplicable hunch it will be.

At the risk of agreeing with Chris Christie, I agree with Chris Christie: It would be better if voters defeated Trump, not a 4-3 judicial decision. I don't think Trump has a great chance to win Colorado anyway. He lost there last time by 13 percentage points.

My pal Kliph Nesteroff has a new book out — Outrageous, subtitled "A History of Show Biz and the Culture Wars." I haven't got a copy yet because Kliph wants to bring me one next time we have lunch but I agree with its central premise as discussed in this interview in Rolling Stone.

That central premise is that people are wrong to say that comedy is being massively repressed in this country…or to the extent it is, that's nothing new. There have always been some people profiting — financially and/or politically — for calling for the banning of certain kinds of humor. And I dunno if Kliph feels this way or says this in the book but I think a lot of comics who claim they're not getting booked because their material is too edgy and controversial are actually not being booked because they aren't that good. Or in at least once case that I can think of, are rumored to have priced their services way out of the market.

Anywhere, here's a link if you're not about to have lunch with the author and so have to order your own copy.

Here's this years "TCM Remembers" video from the network that sometimes seems to want to not remember what "TCM" stands for. And no, I still don't know why they release these around the middle of December when there are still plenty of days left for someone to die this year.

Someone asked me last year why the TCM obit reel is always so much better than the ones at the Emmy Awards and Oscars and why it covers more people. Well, one big reason is that the TCM montage isn't edited to be shown before a live audience that will want to applaud many of the people. Norman Lear has 2-3 seconds in this reel. The folks at the next Emmy Awards ceremony are going to clap for him a lot longer than that…

Jim Manley wrote to ask…

You commonly post your memories of some of the artistic folks you've had a chance to meet and work with. How about trying to get in more anecdotes and reminiscences while folks are still around to potentially chime in and enjoy the memories? One person I would like to hear more about is Joe Staton. I had a chance to meet him at a con this year, and he seems to be a lovely man as well as a great artist. I notice he contributed to Destroyer Duck back in the day. Do you have any experiences to share about Joe?

Joe Staton is a lovely man as well as a great artist. And lest Joe read this and get a swollen cranium, let me add that most people I've met working in comics have been lovely human beings and a pretty good percentage of them have been great artists. I've never made a list but I'll take a ballpark guess and say that 93.9% of those I've met — and I've met an awful lot of folks — have been good people. (A question I don't want to answer here so don't ask it is "How do you handle it when you like the person but don't like his or her work?")

Joe and I worked together on a short Blackhawk story and he gave me exactly what I wanted in every panel. A lot of people judge comic book artists by how cool individual panels or drawings are. I judge them more by how right they are: Did the artist draw the right thing or just the pretty thing? Joe always does both.

Joe was the penciler of a Superman-Bugs Bunny mini-series I wrote for DC and it was a rough assignment, juggling all those different characters who live in different worlds and putting them together into the same world.  And adding to the difficulty was that the folks at Warner Animation can be really fussy about how Bugs and Daffy and all the rest are drawn. And to further add to it, we'd been told we could use one particular character in it and then once most of the series was drawn, someone found out there was a legal problem with including that character so finished pages had to be rewritten and redrawn…

…and oh, there were a lot of problems but not because of Joe. Joe did everything right. I don't know him as well as I'd like but I do know that I've never heard a bad word about him anywhere. And you can see for yourself how good he is at drawing just about anything.

Making its debut on the countdown is this number by my favorite a cappella group, Voctave. It's "We Need a Little Christmas," written by Jerry Herman for the Broadway musical, Mame…

And while we've got these folks on stage in front of microphones, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you…