Monthly Archives: April 2019

Here's a recent "behind the scenes" visit to Sesame Street done by 60 Minutes Australia. The featured Muppet/Puppet performer interviewed in this is Martin Robinson, who portrays (among others) Telly Monster, Mr. Snuffleupagus and Slimey the Worm. With the retirement of Caroll Spinney as Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, I believe Mr. Robinson has seniority among those who play characters made of cloth…

I'm trying to restrict my thinking about Donald Trump to fifteen minutes a day. Even that's probably too much because nothing I think, say or do is going to change anything. I feel certain that voters, en masse, will change things and I suspect there are investigators and law enforcement officials and, yes, even Congresspeople who believe in oversight who will change things. I am not, however, in those last three job descriptions.

A friend of mine called yesterday and wanted to discuss Trump and I said, "I'm sorry. I've already used up the fifteen minutes I am willing to spare today for that topic. Everything else I have to do today, including rearranging my sock drawer, is more important. Especially rearranging my sock drawer."

And what I was thinking in yesterday's fifteen minutes — and I'll take today's fifteen minutes to write it out here — is that I believe we overthink Donald Trump. We try to understand a mind that is way simpler than we expect to find in someone who becomes that famous and that powerful. All Donald Trump cares about is Donald Trump: The wealth of Donald Trump, the fame of Donald Trump, the crowds cheering Donald Trump…

Oh, yeah — and Donald Trump staying out of legal trouble. He seems to be thinking more and more about that these days. He may have fifteen minutes a day when he's not thinking about that.

The other day, he said something really, really stupid and untrue about abortion. He said, as I'm sure you've read: "The baby is born. The mother meets with the doctor. They take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully. And then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby."

I assume I don't have to tell you why that's false or, at best, grossly misleading. But people are spending a lot of time arguing why he said that, what his agenda is, what he proposes to do to stop this crime as it exists in his imagination, etc. They're debating what he was thinking and my take is that he was thinking one thing and one thing only: "Hey, that's going to bring cheers from the kind of people who show up at my rallies."

He read it somewhere or he heard it somewhere and he knew it would thrill his devout followers and that's as far as it goes. Maybe somewhere down the line, he could get pressured into taking some action based on that false premise but when he says things, they're just things he says for immediate gratification. At some moment, he thinks it'll help him to promise a great new health plan or to praise Robert Mueller or to damn Robert Mueller or he loves Wikileaks or he never heard of Wikileaks or Mexico will pay for the wall or whatever it is.

Trump's like a guy I worked for once who would promise you a raise because he liked how nicely you'd treat him right after he said it. Later when you didn't get it and asked about it, it would be like, "What raise?" or even, "Oh, come on. You didn't really think I was going to give you a raise, did you?" He'd act genuinely astonished that you didn't understand that his words were just words and only of the moment. The only way to deal with someone like this is —

Oops. Sorry. Just looked at the clock and I've gone ten minutes over today's fifteen-minute allotment. Tomorrow, I'm only going to spend five minutes thinking about that man. Tomorrow's going to be a good day.

This year's nomination list for the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Broadway Theatre has been released. Having only seen one of the shows in contention, I have no particular opinions on their merits. But I do see, of course, a lot of online chatter expressing outrage and/or amazement at who or what was "snubbed."  I wish we could find a better word than that to describe not being nominated for an award.

This kind of competition works like this: They pick an arbitrary number as the maximum number of nominations that will be in each category. In this case, it's five unless there's a tie for the fifth spot, in which case the list includes whoever or whatever tied for that place. One assumes that's what happened this year in the category of Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play, where there are six names.

We never know how many votes any nominee received but two of them got the same number to tie for fifth so they both got nominations. If someone received one vote less, that lady did not get a nomination and we somehow don't say, "She didn't make the cut." We say she was "snubbed," like the judges all sat around a table and someone said, "Hey, how about a nomination for Betsy?" and a majority of them said, like stuck-up frat boys, "Naw…let's not give it to her!" And then they all laughed an evil laugh, savoring the hurt she would feel when told her performance was utterly worthless.

And some would say she was robbed because the committee didn't take a nomination away from someone else to give it to Betsy. Then they could say that other person was robbed.

Look: Once you decide you're going to have five nominees, someone has to be in sixth place…and probably seventh place, eighth place and so on. If there are ten outstanding performances that year in the eyes of the judges, five outstanding performances get "snubbed." And I suspect that if there are three outstanding performances, they get nominated as do two that even the judges think aren't nearly as good.

In the category of Best Revival of a Musical, there are but two nominees since this year, there were only two revivals of musicals — Kiss Me, Kate and Oklahoma! This is one of the more controversial categories since Kiss Me, Kate is a rather traditional revival and Oklahoma! is a complete deconstruction or rethinking of the show. It has been celebrated by some but it has a number of folks wondering how the hell the Rodgers and Hammerstein Estate could have approved it. (Again, having seen neither I have no opinion on this but I've never been that fond of Oklahoma! in any form. I mean the show, not the state.)

Anyway, it always strikes me that "snubbed" is the wrong word. If I order a meal in a restaurant and I have to pick two sides…and I pick beans and fries, did I "snub" the mac & cheese and the creamed corn, both of which I would have liked?

The dictionary defines that verb as "to rebuff, ignore, or spurn disdainfully." It's definitely a negative. If there are nine great actors on Broadway and I have to pick five, how do I not "rebuff, ignore or spurn disdainfully" four great actors? I'm not suggesting we expand the nominations to nine or ten or any number. I'm suggesting we not act like you got slapped in the face to not be one of the five. Someone decided there could only be five.

The awards are, by the way, the opinions of a rather small group. The nominating committee is made up of 50 or less theatrical professionals who meet in secret to decide who and what to nominate and, of course, who and what to "snub." Less than 850 theatrical professionals vote on the final ballot and they're asked not to vote in any category where they haven't seen all the nominees.

I guess that's enough to do a proper job but I'll bet most people think the Tonys are the consensus of the entire theatrical community. That community is way larger than 850 people so maybe the real answer is that we shouldn't take awards like this that seriously. But of course, we will.

This is for those of you who live in or near Los Angeles. I occasionally write here to rave about and recommend Puppet Up!, an outrageous and hilarious show done by the Henson folks on no visible schedule. They last did it last September and they've just announced three shows — two the evening of June 8, one the afternoon of June 9. Tickets just went on sale here (like, an hour ago) and since they haven't done this in a while, they will almost certainly sell out.

No one under 21 is admitted because they sell alcohol and because the puppets say and do naughty things…and you can read more about it here. I'll be at the late show Saturday night. If you'd like to be at the late show Saturday night — or either of the others — act soon.

Another Randy Rainbow extravaganza!

This is Part Two of I-don't-know-how-many of A Cranky, Rambling Rant about how some people can't cope with you not liking what they like. Part One was here. It was about how my non-love of Star Trek bothered some people. This part is about the opposite situation: "How dare you like something I don't?"

I love the movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and every so often, I get scolded by someone who has a real problem with that; who wants to argue with me like I've made a grievous factual error which demands immediate retraction. There's one guy in particular who writes me every time I express any fondness for the film and the fate of mankind hinges on him being able to convince me that it's a horrible movie without one laugh in it. I'm sure that before he even got as far as this sentence, he began composing a scathing e-mail to me.

Right after he read the first sentence of the preceding paragraph, he surely thought, "Why the hell doesn't Evanier listen to me?" Then he probably began writing me the same stupid message about how he is an infallible expert on comedy and he saw the film thirty-some-odd years ago and he walked out on it around the time Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney flew the plane through the billboard because he knows what's funny and that, by God, is that.

Apparently, he's a far greater authority on what I like than I am. And all those people in theaters I've seen howling at this movie over the years…well, they're just plain wrong and everyone ought to tell them that.

Oh, he says things like "Everyone's entitled to their opinion" but he gets pretty irate when yours isn't his. He sounds like me advocating the criminal prosecution of those who make cole slaw except that I'm kidding — parodying the folks who think not pleasing them oughta be illegal, in fact — and he's serious. (In case your ability to recognize humor is as bad as his: I don't like cole slaw. Due to food allergies, I can't eat cole slaw. I have no earthly reason to care if you do.)

We are not all the same people, people! We are not supposed to all like the same things. We are not supposed to all think the same way. And when we could be using the Internet for educational or entertaining purposes or even to discuss issues that matter, too many of us are cluttering it with outrage because someone loves or doesn't love some TV show or movie or play or CD or comic book or something.

In the next of these — or maybe the one after — I'd like to discuss people who are not quite on board with the premise that time moves in only one direction. Thank you.

That's right: It's like 79 days until the start of the 2019 Comic-Con International in San Diego — way too late for me to use my annual joke about how if you want to get a parking space, leave now. This will be the 50th one of these and I keep hearing people say, "Wow, it's gonna be mobbed." Well, it's always mobbed. It's been quite some time since every day of the con didn't sell out and, y'know, once a building is at capacity, it can't get any fuller. As far as I know, they'll be letting in the same number of people as they did last year and the year before and the year before…

Speaking of parking, you might want to tend to that now. Read this page on the con website and read this page over at the San Diego-Comic Con Unofficial Blog, a fan site that is very informative.

I keep getting questions about housing and where to get a hotel room. Here is my answer: I don't know. I have nothing to do with that and don't know how it works. Ask someone who does know how that works. That person is not me, nor am I that person.

However, I did hear from someone who manages a few small AirBNB units in the Golden Hill neighborhood. That's just west of downtown and the convention site. They haven't opened their calendar yet for July but they thought some congoer might be interested in this room at $175 a night, this room at $185 a night, this room at $235 a night or this room at $275 a night.

Proceed further at your own risk. I accept no responsibility for passing on these links. Matter of fact, I accept no responsibility for anything. I may not even admit this is my blog.

Lastly: The convention is announcing an awful lot of Special Guests. Some folks complain that the con only cares about Big Movie Stars and Big TV Stars. Please note that the Special Guests they invite as the anchor of much of their programming are anything but. They're all people involved in comics or certain related arts like animation of the writing of fantasy. Why, I wouldn't be surprised to see my name turn up on that list before long.

Monty Python's Life of Brian recently made a brief reappearance on actual movie screens around the world. Our link is to a half-hour post-screening interview of Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam. What they say is quite interesting and the odd chemistry between them is also a bit intriguing…

• Today's Potatoes are from S&A Farms in Parker, ID.

Our friend Disney Legend Floyd Norman has something to say about the black crows in the movie, Dumbo. And of course by that, we mean the real movie, Dumbo. Accept no substitutions.

The only thing I'd quibble about in this piece is that I've pretty much abandoned the use of the term "politically correct" (or "P.C." for short) from my language. It's a term that is being used these days with so many different definitions that I'm not always sure what people mean when they say it. I know how Floyd's using it because I know Floyd and also because he makes his definition pretty clear. This is not always the case.

Happy to awake to the news that our fifth volume of Pogo reprints has been nominated for an Eisner Award in the category of "Best Archival Collection/Project — Strips." In fact, this pleases me a lot more than the times when my own work has been directly nominated. I'm only the co-editor on these books and obviously, they ain't voting for what I did. It's a collection of the work of one of the world's all-time great cartoonists and humorists, Walt Kelly. How inept would you have to be to co-edit a book of Kelly's best work and not have it be a great book? A rhesus monkey could do my job if he could write a legible foreword and say, "Oh, we need to clean up the smudges on that stat."

The design of this series required serious talent and skill but that was done by my late, lovely friend Carolyn Kelly. We are now following her template. The Fantagraphics crew and my co-editor Eric Reynolds handle all the tech stuff, formatting and restoring the material. Maggie Thompson and R.C. Harvey contribute vital, highly-researched supplemental text and we have other fine folks helping us out in a number of ways.

Me…I'm in on a pass. If the book wins, I get to go up on stage and pick up the trophy and make a little speech and everyone will congratulate me. If it doesn't win, my life is largely unaffected and I won't be hurt. It won't be my work that loses.

I'm quite serious about this. I think creative people often harm themselves by taking awards way too seriously…like they can't be proud of their work or secure in their chosen profession until someone has handed them a plaque or a statuette. With some, it doesn't seem to matter who gives it to them or what the selection process involves. It's an award, damn it, and that proves something good about you.

Of course, I'd rather see the Pogo book win as opposed to not win. It might sell a few more books. It'll make everyone involved with making the books happier in some way. Most of all, if by some chance Carolyn is watching from on high, it will show her we kept up the standards for the series she launched, and I'll get to say something nice about her in my acceptance speech. But if we don't win, I'll post it here…and Walt Kelly's work will be no less wonderful.

• At the moment, there are twenty announced candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Even without running, you and I will probably tie at least half of them in the total number of delegates won.

When the Beany & Cecil cartoons first appeared on TV in 1959, the show was funded and sponsored by Mattel Toys. Part of the financial plan was that Mattel put out a ton of Beany & Cecil toys, most of which were pretty good. Here's a commercial for one that I owned back then…

Gee, it looks like Herman Cain is not going to get that seat on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. It seemed so certain a few weeks ago.

And maybe it helps to remember back to September of 2011, Mr. Cain was the leader in the race for the Republican nomination, snatching that title away from the previous leader, Rick Perry. I believe this was before Newt Gingrich was the leader and actually went on TV to explain he was the "presumptive nominee." He had it all locked-up and no one could possibly wrest the nomination from him…certainly not Mitt Romney.

Right now, the Democratic field is these folks in this order: Biden, Sanders, Harris, Buttigieg, O'Rourke, Warren, Klobuchar, Booker, Gillibrand and Castro. Biden and Sanders are neck-and-neck and there's a big gap between the two of them and the rest. (I just accidentally typed "big gasp" and fixed it. Maybe I should have left it like that.)

Yes, someone could break out and steamroller the rest but it seems more likely to me that this is going to be one of those races where the lead's going to change from week to week. Just remember how the lead changed constantly in 2011 for G.O.P. contenders…and that was after the primaries started. The first primary of this election is still 292 days away.

With the aid of my colleague John Plunkett, I have succeeded in restoring more than 600 video links in past postings on this blog and labeling a few hundred others as dead-ends. Over the next month or so, another 200-300 might reopen for business.

I need to mention this every so often here: A lot of folks wonder why when someone in the entertainment field (including comic books and animation) dies, I sometimes don't write up an obit for this blog. That generally means I don't think I have anything interesting to say about the person that others aren't saying…and probably saying better. It could also mean that I don't have anything I think is proper to say at the time.

A lot of you send me links to articles or video clips that you think oughta be on this site. In some cases, a lot of you send me one…like I think twelve people sent the link to the Gwen Verdon number that I put up here yesterday and eight of them arrived almost simultaneously. Thanks to everyone who sends in every suggestion, even the ones I don't use. And if I post a link but don't thank you by name on the blog, it's because there were a lot of you.