Monthly Archives: May 2017

I've gone way too long on this blog without an unusual rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody." Here's Storm Front, a popular barbershop quartet doing some barbering of Queen's masterpiece…

I've been kinda busy today and much of my blogging time has been spent finishing a very long post which will appear here in the next day or three. It's about…well, you'll see what it's about once it's up on this page. It's one of those serious ones.

The other day here, we were looking at the Carnation Rabbits and I said that the voice of Pete the Rabbit only sounded to me like Lennie Weinrib in the last of the linked cartoons. I thought two other guys did Pete's voice, one being Pat Harrington. Well, animator and historian Mike Kazaleh tell me that's correct. Harrington's the first voice, Lennie is the last and the one in the middle is Gene Moss, who kids of my age who grew up in Los Angeles will always remember fondly as Dr. Von Shtick on the short-lived but brilliant local kids' show, Shrimpenstein. Moss also had a prolific voiceover career including Roger Ramjet and many years of supplying the voice of Smokey the Bear.

No Trump Dump today but I recommend you read Fred Kaplan about how our prez is screwing up relations with Germany, and Daniel Larison about how in his foreign policy has abandoned the premise of "America First." He's now pursuing "Trump and His Friends First," which is really the only thing that man has ever cared about anywhere at any time.

You know, I really like Kathy Griffin when she isn't trading Being Funny for Being Outrageous. Funny is sometimes outrageous. Outrageous is sometimes funny. Neither is always the other. Trump, for example, is outrageous without ever being funny…or right.

This year's Comic-Con International kicks off in San Diego with a Preview Night on July 19 and then the con runs July 20-23. As always, the convention will be about many things but a key one this year is Jack Kirby.

Of course, in a way the convention is always to a great extent about Jack. His influence, his style and characters he birthed or co-birthed are all over the place. But this year, they're going to make an extra-special fuss, starting with the striking cover on the souvenir book, executed by Bruce Timm with the lettering magic of Todd Klein. If you aren't familiar with what this is based on — even though we discussed the Don Rickles issues of Jimmy Olsen recently on this blog — this will tell you more about it.

This may change but I'm currently set to host twelve panels at the convention. Four of them are specifically about Jack and I'm sure his name will creep into a few others. (The full schedule will be posted two weeks before the con and we're not supposed to announce things yet…but I don't think they'll mind if I tell you that most of mine will be the same panels as last year and most will be in the same rooms on the same days at the same times. Hopefully, the content will be different.)

I'll be at the con the whole time…and for those who were wondering: We'll be announcing the recipients of this year's Bill Finger Award in a day or so. Can't believe it all starts in less than fifty days from today. I'd better do some of last year's laundry.

A baby penguin being tickled…

There's a brouhaha raging about this year's Tony Awards.  Naturally, the producers want Bette Midler on the telecast to do a number from her sold-out, just-try-and-get-a-ticket revival of Hello, Dolly!  They especially want her and the male ensemble to do the title tune.  When asked, Bette and her producers said yes but on the condition that they not do it at Radio City Music Hall, which is where the Tony Awards are being presented.  They said the stage was too different from the one they have over at the Shubert Theatre where the show is running.  They said the number would not be effective at R.C.M.H. and because the number has a lot of acrobatics in it, the alien stage might pose a threat to the dancers.

The Tony Award producers said no, they don't want to create that precedent. There have been remote numbers before on the show but they want to stop that. Arguing ensued and at the moment, the plan is that Ms. Midler will not sing at all on the broadcast.  She will show up to present an award and possibly receive one but the number that will be performed to represent her show will be her co-star David Hyde-Pierce singing "Penny in My Pocket."

You may not know that tune because most likely whenever you saw Hello, Dolly!, that number wasn't in it.  It was cut from the original production but has been put back for this staging.  Frankly, I don't think it's a very good song and I wonder why nothing else from the show is being considered.  There are plenty of good numbers in that show, with and without Bette Midler, and most of them work just fine out of context.

Obviously, this is not a big issue and the way tickets are going for Dolly, it won't hurt them one bit.  But Midler doing the title tune would probably up the tune-in and do a little good for Broadway in general.  If I were in charge of the telecast, I'd let them do it on top of the Empire State if they wanted to.

In fact, here's what I'd do.  The Shubert is about half-a-mile from Radio City Music Hall.  A person could walk it in about 12-15 minutes.  The Tony Awards show is three hours, commencing at 8 PM.  I'd have Bette present an award around 9:00 PM and after it, host Kevin Spacey would come out and tell her that the world is watching and the world would love to see her and her dancers perform the signature moment of her show.  Bette would explain that she'd love to but she would have to do it from the Shubert because they're used to that stage and this one's too big and so on and so on and so on…

Spacey would say that will be fine— "And we have you scheduled to do it at 10:45 as the last musical number in the telecast tonight — if you get there on time. If not, we have someone standing by…"

We then cut to a live remote from the Shubert where Nathan Lane, dressed in the Dolly dress with the wig, is waiting to go on in her place. "Take your time, Bette," he calls to her. (Obviously, it could be someone other than Nathan Lane.)

"Oh, no!" the Divine Miss Dolly proclaims. "Nobody's doing that number on this show but me!" She bolts from the stage and a live Steadicam follows her out the door where she is mobbed by fans and unable to work her way through the mob and hail a cab. For the next 90 minutes or so, every time the Tony Awards broadcast goes into or out of a commercial, we cut to Bette in a cab, Bette running up W. 50th, Bette calling an Uber, Bette running into construction work, etc. At some point in her journey, she is joined by her dresser who saw her struggling to get there and brought the dress out so she could arrive ready to go on.  We see her changing into it on the subway.

But she misses her stop and winds up way out in Central Park. Desperate, she appeals to a policeman on horseback and she (i.e., a stunt-person) hops on and the horse gallops down 7th Avenue with "Dolly" clinging to the cop for dear life. At 10:45, we cut to the Shubert where Nathan is cackling and getting ready to go on. Bette arrives just in time to shove him aside, make her entrance and perform the number to, of course, perfection. (Most of this — except maybe her leaving Radio City Music Hall and "her" arriving at the Shubert — would be recorded a few days earlier.)

Then back at Radio City Music Hall, they present the last two Tonys of the night: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical (Bette is nominated) and Best Revival of a Musical (Hello, Dolly! is nominated). If she wins hers, she accepts from the stage of the Shubert. If she loses, they cut to her mouthing "Fuck!" or something like that. The producers of the revival are at the Shubert so they can also accept from there with Bette and the cast if their show wins.

That's roughly the idea. It would get a lot of attention for the telecast…and keep people tuned in until the end, which doesn't always happen. They would have the big money number but it would not really create a precedent because they could tell other shows that wanted to do remotes, "Sorry, we only did it for this special routine." It could be very funny, especially if Miss Saigon and Eva Noblezada (who stars in it) win.

Will they do it? Probably not. But I had to throw it out there…

Hey, do you remember Pete and Harry, the two rabbits who used to appear in commercials for Carnation Milk? Yeah, me neither. Did they even air in the Los Angeles area?

Well, here's a bunch of them. These are from the mid-sixties and they were animated by Playhouse Pictures, which was founded by Ade Woolery in 1952. Until it closed down in 2002, it produced a stream of mostly-wonderful cartoons, animated commercials, industrial films and movie titles in a wide array of styles. They did the titles for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, for example…and the first animated spots of Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

You can find out more about these Carnation commercials over at this website. There's a newspaper article there that says the voices were done by Al Hammer and Lennie Weinrib. I assume we're talking about Alvin Hammer, a character and bit player who was in a lot of movies and TV shows back then, though I don't know of him doing any other voicing for animation. I'm not familiar with his voice but I'm going to assume he's playing Harry in all of these.

Pete is pretty obviously Lennie Weinrib in the last of these commercials but not the others. I think there's at least two other guys doing that rabbit's voice in them and one of them sounds a lot like Pat Harrington to me. Others may disagree…

Back when Jackie Mason was funny — yes, some of us can remember that long ago — he used to have a great line about when Richard Nixon was president. He said, "Every morning when I get up, I check and make sure my furniture is still there." In the Trump Administration, a lot of us get up each morning and check to see if the country is still there. I mean, you just know that the man would sell the whole United States and even toss in Puerto Rico if Putin offered the right price.  And then would come the bragging about what a great deal he made.

It's also amazing that each morning, we can check and see the latest story that someone in the White House felt compelled to leak about some Trump quirk that makes him look like an inattentive, self-obsessed dictator; someone incapable of reading even one paragraph of a briefing if he doesn't spot his name somewhere in it.

At a Memorial Day BBQ yesterday, a couple of friends were making the point that anyone who works around Trump has to be terrified that they'll have to spend their life's savings lawyering up — as did so many who worked for Nixon, Clinton or others — as investigations proceed. There's something to keep in mind as we watch the steady trickle of leaks from those in or around the Oval Office. They're not leaking that kind of stuff because they think Trump will be good for the country…or them.

Here come the links…

• What's less popular these days than Donald J. Trump? Well, as Jonathan Chait reminds us, everything Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are trying to accomplish is less popular than Donald J. Trump. Not many other things are.
• Matt Yglesias offers up an interesting theory as to why Trump says so many things that aren't true…and which don't even advance any political goals. The idea, sez Matt, is to test the loyalty of those around him. Are they loyal enough to blindly repeat and defend bullshit?
• Trump is still waffling on whether or not to pay the cost-sharing subsidies of Obamacare. What is his dithering accomplishing? Well, it's getting at least one insurance company to raise its rates substantially. Which may be why he's doing it.
• Daniel Larison summarizes what Trump accomplished on his first foreign trip: Nothing particularly good.

Another thing someone said at the barbecue yesterday: "Every time Trump attacks someone as 'failing,' their popularity soars. I wish I could get him to describe me as 'failing.'"

Had he been as immortal as his work, Jack Kirby would have been 100 years old on August 28 of this year. Conventions and comic book companies are doing all sorts of things to celebrate the life of this man I had the honor of knowing and working for.

Yes, I am still finishing that humongous biography of him that his widow Roz asked me to write decades ago. It was delayed a lot as various Kirby-related legal matters caused her, or after she passed, the family or their lawyers to ask me to stand down for a time. Other matters, some of which you know if you read this blog, slowed things further. But I'm now back completing a book that's too important for me to be rushed for any arbitrary on-sale date. Sometime next year looks very possible.

In the meantime, it should not be confused with this year's reissue/upgrade of my 2008 book on Jack, Kirby: King of Comics. The new edition is smaller (page-wise), slightly-longer (one new chapter/update) and has a number of new illustrations. It can be ordered here and despite whatever it may say there about a release date, I'm assured there will be copies aplenty at Comic-Con International which commences in — shudder, shudder — 52 days. Most of it is the old book, though I took the opportunity to clean up some confusing language here and there throughout.

Right now, I want to say a few things about this fine article by a writer named Mark Peters, one being that, yes, Jack really was that amazing.

Secondly, this is not a correction but a clarification. Peters writes, "Marvel settled a 2014 lawsuit with the Kirby heirs that was headed to the Supreme Court." True…but I have to keep reminding people that that was a lawsuit Marvel filed against the Kirby heirs. Neither Jack nor his family ever sued Marvel. He threatened it a few times but then Marvel reps threatened a few times to sue him. He did not sue Marvel. His heirs did not sue Marvel. They filed, as per the law, to reclaim some copyrights but they did not sue Marvel. I keep hearing from folks who should know better, including some who worked in high positions at Marvel, that there was this lawsuit from Jack that was filed and won, filed and lost or filed and settled. Never happened and like I said, his kids didn't sue Marvel, either.

Then I want to quote one paragraph and say one other thing. Here, first, is the paragraph…

At Marvel, Kirby worked with Stan Lee to create just about every significant Marvel hero, villain and concept, from Cosmic Cubes to the planet-eating Galactus. Lee has received disproportionate credit for their work, partly due to a misunderstanding of what the two creators actually did. As Marvel Comics was exploding in the 1960s, Lee had too many comics on his plate to crank out full scripts. So he would come up with short plot summaries and let his two visionary artists — Kirby and Steve Ditko — plot out the issues they illustrated. Lee would then return to fill in the dialogue. Known as "Marvel method" or "Marvel style," this process created many classic comics. It was also partly responsible for Kirby and Ditko not getting due credit or compensation for their work. Few understood that the illustrators were writing as much, if not more than, the writer.

This paragraph is basically true though I think it actually understates the artists' contributions. I have met and talked with just about everyone who was around then and who was available to talk about it — Ditko, Heck, Brodsky, Goldberg, Ayers, Stan's brother Larry, and even Stan himself. All of them (repeat: all) said it was like that and that when Stan came up with "short plot summaries," even Stan said that often, they were practically nothing — just a sentence or two and sometimes verbal — and that often they were the results of brainstorming sessions with the artists, meaning that the artists had the basic ideas.

Stan has said otherwise on some occasions but I choose to believe the more generous things he told me because (a) they match what everyone else said and (b) why on any plane of existence would someone overcredit his collaborators, especially to someone like me who he knew was writing about that history? I discuss all this in much greater detail in the next book.

• Remember that guy who told us his reps in Hawaii had found proof Obama was not born in the U.S.? He's now complaining about fake news.

A baby polar bear trying to get up…

Increasingly, stars who have the clout to do so without creating empty seats at their live performances are banning cameras, cellphones and other recording devices. If you buy tickets for Chris Rock's current tour, you will be confronted with this alert…

No cellphones, cameras or recording devices will be allowed at Chris Rock's Total Blackout Tour. Upon arrival, all phones and smart watches will be secured in Yondr pouches that will be unlocked at the end of the show. Guests maintain possession of their phones throughout the night, and if needed, may access their phones at designated Yondr unlocking stations in the lobby. All guests are encouraged to print their tickets in advance to ensure a smooth entry process. Anyone caught with a cellphone in the venue will be immediately ejected. We appreciate your cooperation in creating a phone-free viewing experience.

I've been trying to figure out how I feel about this. In recent years, there have been times when I felt I had to be reachable — by my mother or her doctors when she was failing or because my friend Carolyn might need me, again for medical reasons. Cell phones made that possible.

Thinking out loud now…

When I've been in a show the last ten or so years, there have been many times when my phone vibrated to announce a call. I'd sneak a quick peek at the screen, shielding it so its light wouldn't distract anyone around me. 95% of the time, it was not a call that paramedics were en route to my mother's house or that Carolyn needed me urgently at the nursing facility…so I could ignore the call and direct my attention back to the stage. Quick, easy, unobtrusive.

But if my phone had been in a Yondr bag, I couldn't have taken the chance that it wasn't an emergency call. Not only would I have been derelict in my duty as a friend and loved one, but I wouldn't have been able to focus on the show. I would have been sitting there worrying the call was important. So I would have had to get up and unless I'd scored an aisle seat, crawl across people — "Excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me" — greatly inconveniencing them twice (once going out, once coming back) to go out and check.

That doesn't sound very good for me, my loved ones or the audience members around me. I guess I would have not gone to the show.

I'm not, by the way, questioning that the performing venue or the performers have the right to require this, unless maybe I'm not warned before I buy my ticket. I'm just trying to figure out what it means to me.

I'm also thinking about when my friend Amber and I went to see Idina Menzel at the Greek Theater a few weeks ago. From the time we got to our seats to the time the show started was more than 49 minutes and we were far from the first people to take our seats. Many people were there more than an hour. We passed some of our wait time on our phones, including practical things like figuring out where we were going to go to dinner after the show and getting the answers to a few questions that arose from conversation. Yondr doesn't just take your phone away from you during a show. It takes it away from you before the show and during intermission.

So I'm wondering if at a show that requires Yondr pouches, ticketholders delay going to their seats and then there's a mad crush, just before the entertainment commences.

Even so, I guess I'm okay with it but a few other things bother me, mostly in the realm of justifications for it. I read a lot of articles and watched several videos in which artists and promoters using Yondr defended it by saying it was for our own good. They're helping us break our unhealthy addiction to our cellphones or "You'll enjoy the show much more if you don't watch it through your phone." It's kind of insulting that you're presuming to decide that for me…

…and it's not even the real reason. The real reason is you don't want me putting pieces of your show up on YouTube.

And I'm fine with that, too. I think the Internet is a tidal wave of copyright infringement and I'm all for controlling that when the proprietors want it controlled. Some are fine with it. Some regard it as good promotion or a part of what we're paying for. (Then again: If the star engages in some copyright infringement of his own — say, it's a comedian and he does a big hunk of someone else's act — they don't want that to be recorded and used in a lawsuit. Or if the star pulls a Michael Richards and starts spouting racist crap or otherwise does something career-damaging. They're trying to prevent that from going viral.)

This isn't a big issue and it's only a temporary one at that because any day now, someone will come up with other technology to deal with this. Performance venues may have "jamming" beams that will prevent video or audio recording on the premises. Or there may be some app which you can install and it will prove to a guy at the door as you enter than you've disabled recording on your phone for the next X hours. Or something else.

But it's a little issue for now and I hope that if I go to a show where they require this, they don't keep us waiting an hour before they start. And I wish they'd be more honest about why they're doing it. It's not for our own good as audience members. It's for their own good as entrepreneurs protecting their product.

NBC has quietly announced a postponement of Bye Bye Birdie, which was to have been their "live" musical this Christmas. The stated reason is that Jennifer Lopez, who was/is to star as Rosie, is just too busy. I have no reason to think there is any other reason…but I do wonder if they're rethinking their choice of show.

Bye Bye Birdie has great songs but a not-so-great book, which was heavily changed for the popular movie version of the show. It's revived in regional theater a lot less than other shows which were made into popular films and the one attempt to revive it on Broadway, which was in 2010, closed after 117 performances, which is not an impressive number. The 1995 TV-Movie version starring Jason Alexander also didn't do so well.

Anyway, if they do go through with it, I hope they try to get Nathan Lane to play the Paul Lynde role. And I'm still hoping that one of these days, someone does Damn Yankees that way with Christopher Walken as Applegate.

Norm Macdonald's podcast with his guest Carl Reiner…

People keep writing about similarities between Nixon's Watergate scandal and Trump's Russia scandal. The parallels only go so far but one is the slow drip-drip-drip where each day, you turn on the news and there's another puff of smoke to add to the sense that there may be a fire.

With Nixon, the constant revelations contributed to the sense that there was no end to the wrongdoing; that there had to be something highly illegal that was leaking out, piece by piece. Nixon kept explaining his version of what happened but each explanation would soon be undermined by further revelations.

I somehow can't imagine Trump even attempting a "come clean" explanation like Nixon offered. Nixon had to admit that something illegal had been done in his service, then argue that it was not at his orders and that no impeachable offense had been committed. Trump clings to the "never admit anything" position. Flynn didn't do anything wrong. Kushner didn't do anything wrong. No one who came in with him did anything wrong. If it gets to the point where he has to blame one of those guys and plead he made a mistake in picking them, that's when we'll know he's really in trouble. He may be even without that.

Hey, what do you say we check out some links?

• The Washington Post and the New York Times have both uncovered similar but not identical revelations about Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn meeting with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak to discuss setting up a secret communication channel between Trump's team and Moscow. Matthew Yglesias explains the scoops and how they do and do not fit together.
• And Kevin Drum has some thoughts about the two reports. He seems to think more has to be known before either or both will make sense.
• Candidate Trump was very critical of the deal that Barack Obama made with Iran…so it's not surprising that President Trump is doing almost everything Obama did and claiming it's a reversal of some sort. Daniel Larison notes this and also that the Iran "hawks" who were outraged at the deal seem to be constantly outraged at any deal with anyone. To them, anything short of total surrender by the other side is "appeasement."
• Eric Levitz tries to make some sense of reports that James Comey knew that certain evidence against Hillary Clinton on the e-mail issue was fake but decided to proceed as if it was real. So far, the sense is elusive.  Comey's got a lot of 'splainin' to do.

The F.C.C. cleared Stephen Colbert after complaints about him referring to Trump as Putin's "cock-holster." And recently, CBS chairman and CEO Les Moonves gloated about Colbert's ratings and asked, "Who would have predicted Stephen Colbert would be No.1 in late night and Bill O'Reilly would be doing a podcast in his underwear?" Now, there's a podcast you don't want to have be in video.

Last Monday morning, my pal Michael Schlesinger and I recorded a commentary track for the forthcoming release on Blu-ray of The Road to Bali. This was the sixth of the seven "Road" movies starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour.

It was made in 1952 (as was I) and it was the only film in the series to be shot in Technicolor. Because it's public domain now, it's available in dozens of different DVD versions, some only a few bucks in price, some taken from really awful prints. This new release is said to be a restored version but I haven't seen the final video yet. If you want to take a chance on ordering it, here's a link. It ships in early July.

And while it's not the best of the "Road" pictures, it does have all the elements that made those movies memorable — mainly, the snappy Hope/Crosby banter. You may not be surprised to learn that it was not shot on location, by the way. The role of Bali was played by the Paramount lot in Hollywood plus a lot of footage lifted from other movies, some of which might have been shot in or around Bali.

Also, the folks playing Balinese natives are an odd racial mix. One of them is Leon Askin, who was born in Vienna and is best remembered for playing General Burkhalter on Hogan's Heroes — a sitcom coincidentally (one assumes) owned by Bing Crosby's company.

Much of the humor is dated — we explain some references on the commentary track — but it does include a scene where Bob and Bing are wed in a same-sex marriage. Honest.

The picture runs 91 minutes and Mike and I recorded our track in…91 minutes. They ran it, we talked about it and then Mike and I went to get Chinese food for lunch. I had shrimp chow fun and it was a lot more authentic than anything in The Road to Bali. I was going to add "…and almost as funny" but actually the film is pretty funny in parts. If you only know Bob Hope from his late TV specials, you might well wonder why this man was hailed as a great comedian. You need to see some of his pre-1960 movies to understand.