Monthly Archives: November 2017

I seem to have been announced as a Special Guest at next year's WonderCon Anaheim. Details are right here.

Coming soon to Broadway (probably): The Honeymooners as a musical! It recently completed a try-out at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, NJ and it got pretty good reviews, including about a fairly positive one from The New York Times.

That's Michael McGrath playing Kramden and they have Michael Mastro as Norton, Leslie Kritzer as Alice and Laura Bell Bundy as Trixie. McGrath sure looks the part in this trailer, and I saw the guy in Little Me and he was pretty good there. (He won a Tony for his performance in Nice Work If You Can Get It but I didn't get to see that.) Still, I can't help but think what a shame it is that my ol' pal Joe Alaskey isn't around to play the role. He did a Gleason that outGleasoned the real guy.

At the moment, the show doesn't seem to be playing anywhere. It's one of a number of shows that are poised to rush in and set up on or around The Great White Way if and when a theater opens up. I hope it makes it because it looks promising. For now, we have to content ourselves with this array of snippets…

It's a firm belief of most Republican leaders that a big tax cut for rich people will lead to a much better economy in ways that will benefit the lower and middle class. In fact, it will be so good for the lower and middle class that it's okay to raise their taxes to pay for the big tax cut for rich people. It almost never seems to work out that way but when it fails, the usual response is to deny the failure and say, "Well, everyone knows it works so let's do more of it!"

• The "Great Kansas Experiment" has failed so totally and disastrously that the Republican-controlled legislature has given up on the plan and passed tax increases over the objection of Governor Sam Brownback. This whole thing was his doing but no matter how far reality has failed him, he will go to his grave insisting it was a smashing success. Someone needs to explain to this man what the word "experiment" means.
• Meanwhile, we're close to trying much the same thing on a national level. Study after study has resulted in projections of tax increases for the poor and middle class, huge windfalls for the rich, soaring deficits and massive cuts to social services like health care…
• …but Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin insists it will be great for the country and that he has studies that show it will reduce the deficit by $1 Trillion. He just doesn't seem to be able to produce these studies. There are those who say there is no such study and there never was one.
• But enough Republicans — even "maverick" John McCain — say they're ready to vote for the tax bill so it'll probably pass…
• …even though they don't really know what's in it…
• …and even though the public is overwhelmingly against this plan…
• …because members of the "donor class" (i.e., really rich people, the ones who'll benefit from it) are demanding it.
• Some architects of this bill are even arguing that the key to making sure it works is to guarantee everyone that it will never be reversed and that it must be permanent. In other words, when it fails and it gets repealed, its failure will be the fault of the repealers.

And Donald Trump is dying to sign this bill.  Has it occurred to anyone that the reason this man is adamant about not releasing his taxes is not because he doesn't want us to see that he has received so much of his wealth from Russia but because he doesn't want us to be able to track how much richer he gets while in office?

Hey, wanna hear me talk about Hanna-Barbera (watching their cartoons and working there) for ninety-some-odd minutes? That's the topic when I guest on this week's edition of the We've Got This podcast hosted by Hal Lublin and Mark Gagliardi. More officially, the topic is "Flintstones or Jetsons?" and I'm expected to pick one without any guidance whatsoever as to what I'm supposed to decide here.

Is it which show was better? Which show lasted longer? Which show had the better theme song? Which show had more dinosaurs on it? I have no idea. Catch it on iTunes (I just gave you the link) and see how I weasel out on this one.

Garrison Keillor? Garrison Keillor???

So each morning now we rise and ask two questions…

1. What horrible thing has Donald Trump done to try and enrich wealthy people, pander to his base and/or just plain expunge something the Obama administration did?
2. What prominent person has been fired or forced to resign because of complaints of improper sexual behavior?

This morning, the answers seem to be "Retweeting Anti-Muslim videos" and "Matt Lauer."

On the second question, people are asking, "Where does it end?" I dunno.  It will end if and when people in power stop thinking they can get away with it so they stop doing it.  Doubtlessly today, a lot of human beings who might have committed assaults and infringements are looking at what's going on and deciding not to do what they might otherwise have done.  Good for them…but there are still a lot of past misdeeds that cannot be erased.  I wonder how many people, out of fear and/or guilt, are quietly apologizing or offering financial consideration to past victims to keep quiet about interactions in days gone by.

I do have a hunch that before we get to the point where the flood narrows to a trickle, we're going to see three things happen. We're going to see at least one prominent, powerful woman accused of sexual harassment by a male. We're going to see one prominent, powerful man who no one suspected was gay accused of sexual harassment by a male. And we're going to see at least one prominent, powerful man accused of sexual harassment by several people, some of whom are male and some of whom are female.

Oh, and I suppose there'll be a transgender case in there, eventually.  I don't even want to think how that will work.

I still don't believe this is a bad trend, even if some of the accusations turn out to be false or way overstated.  Everyone just needs to remember that punishments should fit crimes and that every crime exists in various degrees.   Patting the butt of an adult who does not want you doing that is not the same wrong as rape or pedophilia or sexual extortion.  It also helps to keep in mind that much of this is not about sex or only about sex.  Much of this is about abuse of power.

Mini Yuan Zi, the first panda ever born in France, attempts its first steps…

Should Al Franken resign? This is one of those cases where I see both sides. His "crimes" are small ones and I think it's unfair (in some cases, deliberately so) to lump him in with pedophiles and rapists or even Harvey Weinstein. And it's true that Republicans calling for his head are mostly of the mind that nothing should be done about the far greater number of complaints about Donald Trump and the far greater offenses of Roy Moore. Some of those points and others are made in this essay by Joe Conason who says Franken should not resign.

Against this, you have people like Michelle Goldberg who think he should…and I don't find those arguments without merit. The ones I think are without merit — and they're on both sides — are from the folks who are just playing for partisan advantage. But yeah, what he did was wrong in a couple of ways including the fact that it showed bad judgment.

So I dunno. Let's see what the ethics investigation says. And let's see if anything is done by the longer list of women who have more serious complaints about D.J. Trump.

An oral history of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, a show that got taken off the air for being a little too far ahead of its time.

I can't believe I'm writing posts now about registration for next year's Comic-Con International in San Diego but here we go…

Open Registration for the con begins around 9:00 AM on Saturday, December 9. Last year, all the badges sold out by 10:13 AM. This year, maybe they can do it in an hour. To get a shot at some, you'll need to go online and "enter" something called the Expo Logic waiting room and you can learn all about the process over on this page. I suggest you do that well before 12/9/17. Comic-Con International takes place from July 19, 2018 to July 22 with a Preview Night on July 18. Better start packing since it's only 233 days off.

In the meantime, you can attend an almost-as-good con run by the same people only 116 days from today. 94.3 miles to the North (if you take the 5 freeway) is WonderCon Anaheim, which takes place March 23-25 and badges for that are now on sale. It's not as big and crowded as Comic-Con but for some, that's a plus. The way I look at it, if you go for one day, you're not going to see all of either convention.

Getting back to Comic-Con: They have this thing called the Icon Award. A lot of awards are given out at the con in San Diego but that's the highest honor and it's presented to a member of the comics and entertainment community for outstanding contributions. Last year, I was pleased to aid in the surprise presentation of it to my friend and colleague, Sergio Aragonés and this past July, in the presentation of their first posthumous one to Jack Kirby. Well, as you can read here, they just presented another one to the wonderful Marie Severin, whose colors brightened EC Comics in the fifties and whose brilliant cartooning brightened Marvel's in the sixties, seventies and eighties. A fine, fine choice.

I will be at both conventions next year and also the unaffiliated San Diego Comic Fest in April. I may even make it to a few others depending on who invites me.

• White House ethics lawyer James Schultz has resigned. All right, everyone. Say it with me: "The White House had an ethics lawyer???"

As you know, reporters for the Washington Post broke the story about the first woman who came forward to tell of the sexual misdeeds of Judge Roy Moore. You all know Judge Roy Moore, that find upholder of Family Values and The Bible who has nothing but condemnation for those who do not rise to his definition of morality. His supporters have been trying hard to discredit the Post's reporting and haven't succeeded.

Take a look at this report on how an undercover "sting" agent, apparently working for James O'Keefe's Project Veritas, approached the Post with a bogus tale of an affair with Moore when she was underage. The Post did not fall for it.

I do not think the press in this country — any newspaper, any network — is even close to infallibility. I also believe that every time they get it wrong, the only possible explanation is not bias. Incompetence is also a big factor. So you should have a healthy skepticism about anything you hear or read…and a healthier one for those "too good to be true" stories that tell you just what you want to have be so.

But have even more skepticism for those who tell you that the press is biased and slanted and dishonest, so you shouldn't believe anything they tell you. That seems to be their only line of defense from when real bad, evidence-based stories come out about them. And they're expecting those stories.

The other day, I recommended watching reruns of The Danny Kaye Show on the Jewish Life TV channel.  Actually, I don't recommend trying to watch anything on that channel, which is like a restaurant that doesn't advertise, doesn't have a sign out front, doesn't have a menu and if you do stumble in there, they just serve you anything they like whenever they feel like it.

Also, someone there seems to occasionally decide that right in the middle of a musical number is a dandy time to cut away for three minutes of commercials.

They've revamped their website and it now actually purports to tell you what they're showing and when…but my sporadic checking finds that what they say they're airing and what's actually on the channel rarely match.  Worse for some of us is that the listings they send out to others don't match either.  My cable company (Spectrum) has no idea what airs when and my TiVo listings (which come from a separate source) are different and also wrong.

Until early today, my TiVo listed no shows of any kind this week on JLTV.  It said that each day, the network was running a 24-hour program called "To Be Announced."  Today, they changed and began listing individual shows with The Danny Kaye Show airing each day at Noon, my time.  As I write this, it is just after Noon and today's episode of The Danny Kaye Show is over because it actually aired at 11 AM.  I think, if I've figured it out right, they're actually airing Monday-Thursday at 11 AM Pacific Time but TiVo still thinks they're on at Noon and Spectrum is thinking 2 PM.

By the way, here's the writing credits on today's episode, which originally aired October 2, 1963: Herbert Baker, Mel Tolkin, Sheldon Keller, Saul Ilson, Ernest Chambers and Larry Gelbart.  A pretty impressive roster.  If they run what the website says they're going to run — unlikely but not impossible — tomorrow's should have Gwen Verdon as a guest star, Wednesday should have Art Carney, Thursday should have Louis Jordan and the Amazing Carl Ballantine, and Thursday should have Julie Newmar and (again) Howie Morris.

In any case, my friend Bob Elisberg just sent me a link to a sketch that ran at some point on the series.  It's a long one with Danny plus Buddy Ebsen (in his Beverly Hillbillies role), Howie Morris and Harvey Korman.  Howie is playing pretty much the same character he played on The Andy Griffith Show, Ernest T. Bass. Contrary to what most think, Ernest T. only appeared on five (5) episodes of that show but he sure became a memorable character.

In the last decade or so of his life, a goodly part of Howie's income came from appearing as Ernest T. at autograph shows and screenings connected to The Andy Griffith Show. By then, his residuals had long petered out and they weren't much to begin with, but he was able to buy groceries and pay alimony thanks to those five appearances. There have been many actors who were similarly supported. I worked with Roger C. Carmel on what may have been his last acting job. He told us all how amazed he was that after appearing in dozens and dozens of TV roles and films, his best source of funds was appearing at Star Trek conventions, where he was welcomed because of the two episodes of that show on which he appeared.

Anyway, here's the clip. The person who uploaded it to YouTube wrote in his notes, "Howard Morris gave me a copy of this years ago. He enjoyed doing this sketch but didn't like working with Danny Kaye at all." Like I told you.

It's like every morning now, I wake up and say to myself, "Well, let's see what horrible thing he's done today…"

• In his maniacal campaign to undo everything Obama did, Trump will be making Obamacare less affordable for everyone but mainly for those who voted for him in the last election. Kevin Drum explains this and notes that "Most of these folks don't seem to realize it, though. They'll either blame Democrats or else shrug and figure that at least Trump hates the same people they do."
• And as Hannah Levintova reports, he's set off a war at the Consumer Protection Agency. I don't think there's anything Trump dislikes more in this world than Consumer Protection. In fact, the whole goal of the Republican Party now seems to be to ensure that nothing ever stops a large company from maximizing its profits. Not health concerns, not environmental concerns, not truth in advertising…
• Ed Kilgore reports that as vital as Trump says it is to elect Judge Roy Moore and keep that Senate seat for the G.O.P., he won't go to Alabama to campaign for the man. He'll probably stay in Mar-a-Lago and compose tweets to use in case Moore loses…tweets explaining why that's not a loss for Donald Trump.
• Here's a Visual Guide to the Key Events in the Trump-Russia Scandal. For an administration where everyone said they had no contact with Russia, there sure are a lot of them.
• Ryan Lizza runs down some of the things Trump and the Republican Congress are going to try to enact next month so they don't end the year with no major legislative accomplishments. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
• And by God, it looks like Trump is really trying to sell the idea that that Access Hollywood tape of him — the one for which he apologized — wasn't really him after all. Maybe he's going to insist it was Alec Baldwin.

Are there still people left who think this guy is a straight-talker? I can understand those who think — and I have some friends who feel this way — that the guy's a supreme bullshitter but that he's going to accomplish things they want to see accomplished. I really don't get those who believe he stands for truth or integrity or anything resembling a Christian Value.

Here's a good profile of Dave Smith, who founded and built the Disney Archives for the studio. Other companies I've worked for will occasionally decide "We should have something like that" and they hire someone and spend a few bucks on it before someone else decides to save money and start slashing its budget…and pretty soon, it's gone. But the Disney Archives are quite extensive and valuable. I wish more companies had done that.