Monthly Archives: July 2024

And here's how they did it at Hillsboro High School in Nashville, Tennessee…

Among the reasons that Al Gore was never President of the United States was that a lot of people thought he was a "congenital liar" because of a confusion over the popular novel, Love Story by Erich Segal. Wikipedia's description of this confusion syncs up with what I remember hearing at the time…

It is sometimes said that Al Gore falsely claimed that the plot is based on his life at Harvard. In fact, Al Gore mentioned correctly, that he had read that the characters were based on him and his wife. In 1997, Segal confirmed Gore's account, explaining that he had been inaccurately quoted in the Nashville Tennessean and that "only the emotional family baggage of the romantic hero was inspired by a young Al Gore. But it was Gore's Harvard roommate, Tommy Lee Jones, who inspired the half of the character that was a sensitive stud, a macho athlete with the heart of a poet." Erich Segal had met both Jones and Gore at Harvard in 1968, when he was there on sabbatical. Jones would go on to appear in a supporting role in the film adaptation of the novel.

In other words, Gore didn't lie — or if he did, it was about something pretty trivial — but if you were against his candidacy, you could probably spin the confusion that way, lying to say he'd told The Lie of the Century. That did him some real damage to the man as did a similar twisting of a statement he uttered that made it sound like he was claiming he alone created The Internet.

That wasn't so long ago and I'm amazed at how it is now possible for You-Know-Who to lie openly about matters of substance and not lose the support of the kind of voter who was appalled at Gore's supposed mendacity. Here's a link to Fred Kaplan writing about some of the lies in Trump's speech at the Republican National Convention.

And while we're at it, here's a link to Politifact's fact check of that speech, here's a link to a long CNN fact check, here's a link to the Washington Post fact check, here's a link to the Associated Press fact check and here's a link to the New York Times fact check. You may notice a lot of repetition but no one caught them all.

New content follows this brief word from our sponsor…

The entire schedule can be viewed on this page.

I'm still seeing online discussions about the possibility of Comic-Con leaving San Diego and relocating to Las Vegas. This is another one of those topics upon which I don't want to squander a lot of time. I still think it won't leave San Diego because I still think San Diego would be stupid-beyond-belief to let it go. I also think that if it did go elsewhere, Vegas would be among the least likely places and not just because of the weather.

What I will mention here is that just about every online discussion I've seen arguing for Vegas says that the annual Consumer Electronics Show there is way bigger than Comic-Con and that plenty of cheap hotel rooms are available in Vegas during the C.E.S. Hmm…let's fact-check that: The official attendance count for the C.E.S. held in January of this year was — and you can verify this here — 138,789 attendees. All the reports on last year's Comic-Con in S.D. say it had 150,000 attendees.

The city of Las Vegas was famously built on people not being able to do math…but I still believe 138,789 is not way more than 150,000.

And really those numbers don't mean much in any debate because no one knows how many people would attend Comic-Con if it wasn't limited by the capacity of the San Diego Convention Center. The folks arguing for the con to move to Las Vegas think it would be way, way bigger there but assume increased demands would not lead to increased room rates. But hotels in Vegas love to raise rates when the town gets crowded. They do it on certain holidays — New Year's Eve, especially. And during the first of what will be several Formula-1 races in Vegas, hotels were charging thousands of dollars per night for rooms that usually go for a few hundred.

And lastly, let's remember that Comic-Con attracts more visitors to San Diego than the official attendance. Lots of people travel there during Comic-Con because there are so many events that are accessible even if you can't get a badge for the con itself. Here's a list of some of what's available to those folks this year.

Many of Bob Newhart's early stand-up routines involved him talking on an imaginary telephone. You heard his side of the conversation but not the other person. Before him, Shelley Berman did some popular stand-up routines talking on an imaginary phone to an unheard party. Well actually, Shelley usually did his sitting on a stool but it was the same idea. Mr. Berman was known to suggest that Mr. Newhart had cribbed the idea from him.

Shelley Berman was by no means the first comedian to do such routines. He might not even have been the thousandth. Just to name three, there was Arlene Harris, a popular radio comedienne…there was Georgie Jessel talking to various folks including his mother…and one of the oldest comedy records was a thing called "Cohen on the Telephone," recorded in London by Joe Hayman in 1913. Others recorded their version of Hayman's routine and you can hear one from 1916 on this Wikipedia page.

So Shelley Berman didn't invent that or even come close to inventing that. Now, is it possible that Bob Newhart got the idea to do routines like that from Berman? Sure. It's also highly likely that Warner Brothers Records decided to take a gamble on putting out an album of Newhart routines because they saw the sales figures on Shelley Berman's albums. But that's not plagiarism or theft or anything of the kind. It's just kind of how show business has always worked.

Folks on the Internet have been arguing over whether Shelley Berman's claim that Newhart stole from him has any merit and I've been asked my opinion. My opinion, as you can see, is "Not really."

Here's the way they did "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" on the TV series, Glee. The gent at the piano is my pal — with whom I sometimes write songs — Brad Ellis…

Just thought I'd remind you about the great short documentary that Judd Apatow made about the friendship between Bob Newhart and Don Rickles. It can be viewed here and I highly recommend it.

If the passing of Bob Newhart has made you long to see him perform, here's an hour of him — just him — from 1992…

A very funny man who had a very long career. There may have been someone somewhere who didn't like seeing or hearing him perform but if so, that person was pretty much alone in that opinion. I first loved his work on his record albums which, contrary to what you might think, were not an accumulation of material by a comic who'd been working for years, writing and testing and perfecting his act before audiences. George Robert Newhart was relatively new to the comedy business and the monologues he recorded for that first record were fairly new. The man just knew, almost instinctively, what an audience would laugh at.

That was why he had all those hit records and all those popular TV shows and some great roles in movies…and why he wasn't unemployed for more than a few hours here and there during that very long career. There are many performers who have one hit situation comedy and then never have another. Bob had another.

There are plenty of obits and tributes online like this one and this one and this one. So I'll just say that I met him a few times and had the pleasure/honor of writing on one of his many situation comedies and that he was just as nice and funny in person as you'd imagine.

And speaking of imagining: I'm kinda seeing Don Rickles waiting for his longtime friend at the Pearly Gates and saying, "Here comes the stammering idiot, late as usual." And Bob with all his deadpan might is saying, "Well, I certainly didn't expect to see you here!"

Hard to believe that one week from right now, I'll be in San Diego wrapping up the second of my fourteen panels. I'm going to start packing for the trip right after I get through unpacking from last year.

Let me amend my hunch about what's going on with Joe Biden. I don't think he's decided to step down yet. My hunch is that everything's been worked out so that if and when he does decide to step aside — as I expect he will — it will be as smooth and secure a process as it could be. That does not mean it will be wholly free of problems. I just think they have to have a plan ready and Biden has to know the important dates. He might still feel he can carry on but he can't be sure that won't change tomorrow. He would not want his legacy to be that he doomed the Democratic effort to keep the White House because he was too stubborn to face reality.

I was a little disappointed with Jon Stewart the other night for, first of all, having Bill O'Reilly on as a guest. I know the two of them have an entertaining rapport and a certain amount of mutual respect. But Stewart has always struck me as a guy who says what he believes and O'Reilly has always struck me as a guy who says what he believes will get him ratings. And Stewart allowed him to rattle off an inaccurate list of damages to this country caused, O'Reilly said, by the Biden administration. A guy like Stewart who faults reporters for not challenging those they interview should have pushed back harder.

I have no comments about this year's Emmy Nominations except that it looks like they've rearranged the categories so John Oliver can only win one this year instead of his usual two.

Please do not write me with your views on the Kennedy Assassination. Haven't I made it clear that I don't want to go there again except to learn from the mistake of those who followed it deep into Fantasyland?

I may not be back here until much later when I post Today's Video Link. It's a number from a famous musical and you'll never guess what it is. Bye now.

Here's a very different (but kinda effective) staging of "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" from something called The Michigan Musical Theatre…

…and then I hope to not address this kind of thing for a while here.

So I'm not saying the shooting last Saturday was exactly as it seemed or that it was staged.  Like I said, I'm not plunging down that rabbit hole…so don't try to convince me one way or the other.  I might listen a bit to experts who've done a serious and exhaustive inquiry into what happened that day and there will be one investigation — probably more than one — though mainly about what the Secret Service (and others involved in the protection of a political figure) did right or wrong.

Just to make it clear: I think both men are unqualified to be President of the United States.  I think Biden's done a way better job than Trump did and a way better one than Republicans have convinced America he did.  I wish he was the same Joe Biden I voted for last time…but he isn't and it seems unlikely he'll ever be that Joe Biden again.

This isn't a prediction but I'd like to think that President Biden has already made the decision to step aside and that he's just waiting until he and his people figure out how to do it and when to do it.  The "when" could involve all sorts of planning and getting everyone in position and also waiting for certain events — like the recently-concluded NATO Summit and the current Republican Convention — to be over.

If I'm wrong, I'm wrong…but then I don't do this for a living.  I'm allowed to be wrong about this stuff.  Anyway, please stop sending me e-mails about these issues.

And so help me, as I was typing the above paragraph, I got a news flash on my iPhone that Biden has tested positive for COVID-19.

As I've mentioned here before, there was a period in my life when I took a way-too-deep dive into the world of J.F.K. Assassination Conspiracies. I couldn't read all of the books because there were just too many but I read most of the books. My interest — and my belief that the conspiracy "experts" were on to something — was shattered one weekend when I attended a little convention of them down in (I think) Downey.

I found myself surrounded there by a hall full of men — all white, all male, all absolutely certain about everything — ostensibly devoted to proving who killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy. What's more, every one of them was determined to achieve that most fruitless of goals for this kind of thing: Settling the matter once and for all.

That might have been a noble, albeit unattainable goal but there was this problem with it: They were all determined to find the answer as long as the answer wasn't that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.

That answer was off the table because it didn't get them anything. Didn't make them money, didn't advance any political agenda, didn't allow them to feel superior to the uninformed masses who believed what the government told them, didn't validate all their loudly-expressed suspicions. Every other answer was up for discussion but not that.

You were at best an idiot and more likely part of the conspiracy if you even had it on a list of maybes. Had you gotten up at that meeting and proclaimed that sentient avocados from Saturn had offed J.F.K., the assemblage would not have believed you. Each one of them had one or more theories of their own — some, equally batshit — and since theirs were unquestionably right, yours by definition could not be. But they would have at least treated your avocado conjecture with respect and a few "Nice tries!"

If however you'd said Oswald could have maybe, possibly dunnit by himself, they would have chased you through the streets of (I still think) Downey with tar 'n' feathers. I dared not so much as allude to the possibility.  The truth about 11/22/63 was not to be found on that premises for two reasons, one being simple math…

There was one true answer to the question of who killed J.F.K. and how they pulled it off. We might not ever know what it was but whatever it was, there was only one. There were somewhere between 300 and 500 different theories in that building that weekend. Let's be generous and say there were 300 and that one of those theories was correct. That meant that at least 299 of them were wrong.  How do you find the right grain of sand on the beach?  Especially when you're not sure it's even there?

And the larger reason was that there were just too many people who had their lives invested in conspiracy theories some of which weren't much more feasible than the one about the sentient avocados. Some were advanced by folks making their livings off denying The Warren Report. Others simply loved the attention and/or took the position that if the government said it was Tuesday, that alone was incontestable proof that it was any day other than Tuesday.

In short, the search for The Truth was fatally compromised by so many people with emotional and/or financial reasons for wanting it to be a certain way. Which of course brings us, as you've already figured out, to last Saturday's alleged assassination attempt on You-Know-Who. A number of investigations and inquiries have been announced that will try to achieve that most fruitless of goals for this kind of thing: Settling the matter once and for all.

I don't know why they're bothering. The folks who want to believe what they want to believe are going to believe what they want to believe. If the facts lead to some other conclusion, it's a lot easier to deny — or simply ignore — the facts than it is to say "I guess I was wrong." An Alex Jones might grudgingly say that if/when he thinks his stubbornness will cost him a lot of money but not when there's no penalty.

Within an hour of last Saturday's incident, my e-mailbox and iPhone started filling with messages suggesting — to put it politely — that what was being reported might not be the truth. And some of it surely wasn't. The first "news item" I saw about it didn't mention a shooting at all and made it sound like Trump had tripped. Even now, there are aspects of What We Now Know that seem suspicious. You'll have no trouble finding people writing about them on the Internet…plenty of 'em, saying it was staged, faked, not what it was made out to be, etc.

I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong except maybe to think there is some truth everyone will accept.  I'm just saying, for my own benefit more than yours, that I'm not plunging into that rabbit hole. There may someday be firm, inarguable facts but so what? There are firm, inarguable facts that Biden won the last election and there are still plenty o' folks who go with their guts and will insist 'til their dying days he didn't.

Back at that Assassination Buffs conference (which I'm less sure now was in Downey), there was one speaker who claimed to have viewed the Zapruder Film over a thousand times in search of the truth. I submit that if you watched any fuzzy 26.6 second video of anything a thousand times, by about a third of the way through, you'd be seeing any damn thing you wanted to see in there.

There's a lot of video out there of the supposed Trump shooting and right now, experts and non-experts are watching it and rewatching it and doing computer enhancement, looking for…something.  Anything.  There are other avenues of investigation being pursued and while they may lead to clicks and book deals, they won't lead to many (if any) changed minds.

Some of it may tell some of us something but folks who love Trump will continue to love him. Those of us who think of him as perpetually-lying slime will just figure he's so desperate to win this election that he'd willingly sacrifice a piece of ear for a great photo op. And maybe some of those studying the videos over and over will even spot some Saturnian sentient avocados armed with AR-pattern rifles.

Here's guess-what-number from the 2009 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls. This, obviously, is from the Tony Awards telecast of that year…

The San Diego Convention Center offers 204,000 square feet of meeting space, approximately 72 meeting rooms and one men's room. No, it actually has plenty of men's rooms but at times it feels like there's only one and it's as far from you as it could possibly be in that facility. The number of meeting rooms is approximate because some of those rooms have movable walls so they can be carved up or combined.

Room 6 is the largest room on the upper level of the main building and it's 4000 square feet if you don't divvy up that space. In the early days of Comic-Con inhabiting that building, I interviewed Ray Bradbury in an unpartitioned Room 6 and it was so big — how big was it? — that about two-thirds of those in the audience couldn't really see us on the stage and had to watch us on huge projection screens hung at intervals from the ceiling throughout the hall.

These days, they chop up Room 6 into three rooms — 6A, 6BCF and 6DE. The largest of these is 6BCF which, depending on how they space the rows of seats, can often accommodate 2,160 audience members, give or take a Klingon or two. Each year on Saturday of the con, we pretty much fill it with two back-to-back panels I host — Quick Draw! at 11:45 AM, then it's almost immediately followed by Cartoon Voices I at 1 PM. There's a fifteen-minute interval between the two which I sometimes refer to as the busiest fifteen minutes of my year.

A lot of people come for Quick Draw!, then stay for Cartoon Voices 1. In fact, a lot of people enter 6BCF during the panel before Quick Draw! to claim good seats for the double feature. In case you're interested, this year the panel before us in there is for the animated series, The Dragon Prince. But let's talk a little about Quick Draw!

Each year, I lasso three cartoonists who are good at drawing under crisis conditions and they're challenged to create silly pictures instantly based on suggestions from The Moderator (that would be me) and The Audience (which might include you). Traditionally, two of the three are usually Sergio Aragonés and Scott Shaw! We plagiarized Scott's exclamation point and stick it at the end of the name "Quick Draw!"

This year, Sergio won't be on the premises. He's in fine health, which is more than I can say for the current nominees for President of the United States — and that includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But my buen amigo has chosen to sit out Comic-Con again this year, as is his right, and we hope to have him back next time. Fortunately, we have Scott and two other contenders…

The man on the left is Floyd Norman, often referred to as "Disney Legend Floyd Norman" because he received that prestigious honor. Floyd started with the Disney organization in 1957, just in time to be an "in-between animator" on Sleeping Beauty and he later worked as an artist and/or story guy on 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, Mary Poppins and other classic films. He was, as Wikipedia put it, "…the first African-American artist to remain at the studio on a long-term basis."

The gent in the center is Lalo Alcaraz, nationally-syndicated editorial cartoonist and the creator of the syndicated daily comic strip, La Cucaracha. Those editorial cartoons of his won him the 2022 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning. His work has been featured in numerous museums, galleries and various publications, and his graphic novel and cartoon books include the New York Times bestseller A Most Imperfect Union; Latino USA: A Cartoon History, 15th Anniversary Edition; Migra Mouse: Political Cartoons On Immigration; and La Cucaracha.

And on the right we have Scott Shaw!, who's been my friend since…well, we met at Jack Kirby's house a month or two after Mister Miracle #1 came out. That's how long. Scott was then a beginning cartoonist and not that many years later, he became the professional kind with credits on comic books (including Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, The Simpsons and Sonic the Hedgehog) and TV shows (including Muppet Babies and The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley) and a lot of his own creations. He was also one of the founders of Comic-Con.

These three fellows will not be the only cartoonists on that stage this year. We have a few surprise guests lined-up to draw also. In fact, the whole panel is just one danged surprise after another. They never know what I'm going to tell them to draw and I never know what they're going to come up with. I also don't know what you in the audience are going to tell me to have them draw.

Come early to get a good seat for Quick Draw! because it usually fills all 2,160 chairs in there. Then stay for Cartoon Voices I where six gifted professional voice actors will work a different kind of magic right before your eyes and ears. Its annual sequel, Cartoon Voices II, is Sunday morning at 11:45 AM in Room 6A, which is not as large a chunk of Room 6 so you'll want to arrive early for that one too.