This piece first appeared here on 12/14/14 and there's nothing to update in it…

I attended Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School in West Los Angeles. Somewhere on this blog, I've doubtlessly used the joke I used all through my time there: That I was the only person on campus who knew who Ralph Waldo Emerson was. The principal thought he made radios.

There were things I liked about being at Emerson…and if I could think of one just now, I'd lead off with it. Mostly, I view my three years there as a waste of time, at least in the classrooms. Outside the classrooms, one could do a certain amount of the kind of growing-up you have to do at that age, learning (somewhat) how to get along with others. But inside the classrooms…well, I can't remember a whole lot that went in one ear and didn't trickle quickly out the other. Oddly enough, I may have gained the most valuable "taught" knowledge (as opposed to the self-taught kind) in a group of classes I absolutely hated at the time.

Students were required then to take half a semester of Wood Shop, half a semester of Electronics, half a semester of Metal Shop and half a semester of Drafting. That's if the students were male. The female ones took classes in Homemaking and Cooking and things like that. This was, of course, back when the best thing a female could aspire to be was a wife and mother. It did not escape me even then that boys could stand to learn some things the girls were studying and vice-versa. I still don't know how to sew a button on a shirt and I seem to have passed the age where that's learnable.

My problems at Emerson were not so much the classes as the teachers. Metal Shop was taught by Mr. Delak who was also a gym teacher and who talked like a prize fighter who'd taken one too many to the head. He talked in halting phrases and rarely employed a word with more syllables than letters. He was okay, I guess. My problem there was that I can't think of too many skills I've ever been less likely to need in my life than riveting.

Less okay was Mr. Platt, who taught Electronics and explained things with a thick Southern accent. He kept talking about "sotta" and I wasn't the only student who took half a semester to figure out he was referring to "solder." I had other problems with him but I had them all on a grander scale with Mr. Mitchell.

Mr. Mitchell, who taught the Drafting class and Wood Shop, was the least okay. Both he and Mr. Platt had this fixed idea of what a guy was supposed to like and be like. He was supposed to revel in the shop classes and there was something wrong with any male who didn't love that stuff. Their attitude was along the lines of "A man builds things with his hands" and you could detect the subtle insinuation that if you didn't run a drill press once a week, you were probably queer. (I typed that sentence before I realized how phallic it sounds…)

Mr. Mitchell took an instant dislike to me and I, therefore, took one to him. He obviously thought I was a smartass…which was probably true but I still think that's not necessarily a bad thing to be when you're 13. If you think you know better than everyone else at that age, there's a good chance you do…and if you don't, well, that's a good time to learn you don't.

I got through Drafting class with Mr. Mitchell and may even have shown a teensy flair for it. It was, after all, drawing of a sort and I had some interest in drawing. Also, I was the best letterer he'd seen in years. Well, why not? I'd learned from the masters, not of Architecture but comic books. At any rate, my lettering impressed him and I didn't broadcast the fact that I had zero interest in a career doing what he was teaching us.

It was when we got to the Wood Shop class that things splintered. Mr. Mitchell treated woodwork as some sort of sacred male ritual. I was not able to hide how silly I thought a lot of it was. What he taught was, to me, a potentially useful skill, not a rite of male passage and a future profession.

And yes, I know woodwork can also be an art and a very fine one…but not at the level Mr. Mitchell taught it. Over the course of our ten weeks, we were to build three items: A key rack, a memo pad holder and one project of our own choosing from a catalog of plans he had. Our grades were based not on how creative we were but on how precisely what we made adhered to the diagrams we were given.

My key rack got a "D," not because it didn't look nice or hold keys but because it didn't look exactly like everyone else's. And he further marked me down as a problem student because I couldn't hide my disinterest in Wood Shop. "We need to work on that attitude of yours," he'd say to me, once while he was holding a circular saw. It felt…threatening. My memo pad holder notched a "C-minus" and the less said about my elective project, the better. By that point, Mr. Mitchell thought I was the worst student he'd seen in years.

He reached that view about four weeks into the ten-week course. One evening, Emerson had this ghastly event called "Parents Go To School Night," designed to promote better teacher-parent communication. One or both of each pupil's parents would show up at Emerson that evening, hear an address from the principal in the auditorium, then go from classroom to classroom in a compressed version of their child's daily schedule. Instead of an hour, they'd spent fifteen minutes in each classroom listening to the teacher discuss the curriculum and then answer questions.

It made sense on paper, I guess, but whoever made up the timetable gave the parents the same barely-sufficient seven minutes we had between periods to get from classroom to classroom. We could do that each day because we knew where we were going and also, it wasn't nighttime on the campus when we were there, plus we were young enough to walk up and down stairs and between buildings that were often far apart.

My father had the fine sense not to go at all. My mother, like all those parents who did attend, got repeatedly lost and was late for most "classes." She missed one entirely because even with a huge map, she and many others couldn't find Bungalow B-22. I had a class in the well-hidden Bungalow B-22 and I thought you should have received an "A" in any course taught in it if you could locate it.

Alas, she was able to make it to the Wood Shop where she listened to ten minutes of Mr. Mitchell bragging how he taught the most important class at the school…the one that made capital-M Men out of small-b boys and gave them a profession that would serve them well in later life.

Finally, Mr. Mitchell took questions and my mother — and this will explain a lot about me to my friends — asked, "What do you do when you have a student who hates the whole idea of woodworking and is only in this class because it's required?"

When she got home, she told me, "The minute I said that, Mark, I knew I'd gotten you into trouble. He scowled, jotted down my last name and said, 'If your son feels that way, ma'am, I think you have the problem, not me.'"

The next day, Mr. Mitchell called me over to his desk. "Evner," he barked — he always called us by our last names and mispronounced mine — I met your mother last night." Only Mr. Mitchell could make the word "mother" sound like an insult. "She said you hate the whole idea of woodworking. What are you doing in my class if you hate it?"

I said, "They make me take it. I don't like doing push-ups either but they make me take gym, too."

Once again, he told me "we" needed to work on my attitude. "I teach woodworking but I also teach discipline and learning to follow instructions." He then assigned me the messiest job he had during the clean-up session at the end of class: The paint locker. You had to be real careful not to get smears of flat gloss multi-hued latex all over your jeans. As I did it, I just told myself, "Well, if I do, my mother's the one who's going to have to get it off or buy me new pants. And it'll be her fault."

For the rest of the term, Mr. Mitchell snapped at me, snarled at me and generally acted like a bad actor playing "Sarge" in one of those Marine Corps movies about making life hell for the new recruit. And the less I cared about it — and I really didn't — the nastier he got.

I had a friend named Dave who was a year ahead of me at Emerson and one day, we got to talking about Mr. Mitchell. "Has he put you in charge of the tool inventory yet?" Dave asked. I told him he hadn't. "Well, he will," Dave explained. "And when he does, here's what he'll probably do to you…"

Sure enough, a week later, I was put in charge of the tool inventory. It was getting near the end of class and I think he thought this was his last chance to make me suffer for the sins of my mother.

When you were in charge of tool inventory, you had to check the cabinet at the end of clean-up and make sure it held the right number of hammers and screwdrivers and levels and scratch awls and such. Then you had to report to Mr. Mitchell that every tool was in its proper place. If it wasn't, everyone in the class was in trouble but you especially were. No one could be dismissed to go to their next class if even one tool was missing.

The guy in my position was in charge of finding it…and responsible if it was not located. And like I said, no one could leave even if it meant they'd all be marked tardy or A.W.O.L. for their next class or miss their bus home. Legend had it that Mr. Mitchell had once made an entire class sit there during their lunch hour because of a missing chisel.

As an alternative, he also had a piece of paper that the person in my appointed position could sign. On it, I would admit I was responsible for the lost tool and I would promise to pay the full cost of replacing it. Another legend had it that a couple of students over the years had had to cough up the cost of a hammer or two.

But Dave had warned me of how this game was played. The day I was placed in charge of tool inventory, I never took my eye off the cabinet. I wasn't watching my fellow students so much as I was watching Mr. Mitchell. And sure enough, at a moment when he thought no one would notice, Mr. Mitchell slithered over to the cabinet, took a screwdriver and one of those long metal files with a wooden handle, then put them in his bottom desk drawer. Dave had told me he'd do something like that.

Clean-up that day proceeded apace. When we'd all put our stuff away, all the other students took their seats in the classroom area to await my inspection, my report to Mr. Mitchell and then their dismissal. I marched up to him and in front of the class proclaimed, "All of the tools are present or accounted for, sir." The other students, assuming they were about to be released, gathered up their books and got ready to stand and go.

"Not so fast," Mr. Mitchell told everyone. He marched over to the tool cabinet, peeked in and then returned to his desk where I was waiting. "Evner," he said. "There's a screwdriver and a file missing and you're responsible for them. No one's leaving — do you hear me? No one! — until you either find them or pay for them!"

I opened my notebook and showed him a page on which I'd written, "Mr. Mitchell's lower desk drawer: 1 screwdriver, 1 file." Then I added, "They've been accounted for, sir. You have them."

He yanked open the drawer, pulled them out and turned to the class, accusingly: "Who put these in there?"

I said, "You did, sir. At 11:44."

Mr. Mitchell glared at me. Then he glared at the students, all of whom wanted to laugh and cheer but knew enough not to do that until they were at least a hundred yards from that building. Then he chuckled like he was pleased I'd outfoxed him (he wasn't) and said, "Class dismissed."

I tried to follow them out but he motioned for me to stay. When everyone else had gone, he said to me, "You know, learning to make things and work with tools can be a very valuable skill. Now, get out of here." I got out of there.

And y'know, he was right. In the half-century since I took his class, I have occasionally had to do things I learned how to do in his class. I can't say that for Chemistry or the Anthropology courses I took later at U.C.L.A. or even for Mr. Delak's Metal Shop class at Emerson. But I do occasionally have to do something with a hammer or a saw and I know better how to use them because of Mr. Mitchell. That doesn't make up for the hard time he gave me, quite unnecessarily. It's just something worth noting.

He never apologized to me or admitted he was wrong and I never did either of those things to him. He did give me a "D" in Wood Shop, the only one I ever got in any class. When my mother saw it on my report card, she said, "Son, I'm very proud of you…but why couldn't you have gotten that horrible man to give you an "F"?

I told her, "I'll try to do better next time."

Just watch this…

I am a fill-in-for-someone-else guest today on Stu's Show, that fabulous web-based program you can watch online or on its own Roku channel, or listen to online or subscribe to or buy ($) as a download or however you like getting your Stu's Shows.  Tune in and you just might enjoy a lively (and loooonng) discussion between Stu Shostak, his resident TV critic/expert Wesley Hyatt and me.  Among the topics will be the new Fall season TV season, the future of Jeopardy!, what I'll be doing at Comic-Con next week, the January 6 Hearings, Late Night TV, a bunch o' TV shows I worked on, the late Larry Storch, the late Robert Morse, Wesley's disgust about the new Magnum P.I. and many more issues of the day.

You can watch or listen at the Stu's Show website and over there, you can also find out how to watch it on your Roku-equipped TV and other places.  The fun starts at 4 PM Pacific Time (7 PM back east) and it will run for quite some time after.

Friday, July 22 — 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM in Room 10
COMICS FOR UKRAINE
Comics for Ukraine is a crowdfunded comics anthology through zoop.gg initiated and edited by Scott Dunbier to help relief efforts in Ukraine. Dozens of creators have stepped up to help. Alex Ross, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Johnson, and Arthur Adams have supplied covers. More than a dozen all-new stories will be included: Astro City by Busiek and Anderson, Groo by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier, American Flagg by Howard Chaykin, Scary Godmother by Jill Thompson, Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory, Grendel by Matt Wagner, Star Slammers by Walter Simonson, and Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai make up a portion of this book, But there are more, too many to list—so come to the panel (which will have several of the creators listed here) and find out about this very important book and what you can do to help this charitable endeavor.

Friday, July 22 — 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM in Room 10
WALT KELLY AND POGO
Some would tell you that Walt Kelly's Pogo was the cleverest, most wonderful newspaper strip of all time. It was certainly up there with them. It's now being reprinted in full for the first time in a series of lovely hardcover volumes from Fantagraphics Books and Volume 8 (of 12) is on the presses now. Hear all about Kelly's work from Pogo authority Maggie Thompson, Walt Kelly archivist Jane Plunkett, cartoonist (and creator of Bone) Jeff Smith, Fantagraphics editor Eric Reynolds and his co-editor and your moderator Mark Evanier.

Saturday, July 23 — 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM in Room 6BCF
QUICK DRAW!
Some say it's the fastest, funniest event at Comic-Con every year. It's the annual Quick Draw! game as three of the fastest, funniest cartoonists rise to challenges hurled at the by the audience and your host, Mark Evanier. Competing this year, we have Scott Shaw! (Sonic the Hedgehog, The Simpsons), Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucaracha), and Mike Kazaleh (Ren & Stimpy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). As usual, wagering is strictly forbidden.

Saturday, July 23 — 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 6BCF
CARTOON VOICES I
Every year (with two recent exceptions), animation writer and voice director Mark Evanier assembles a panel of some of the best and most-heard cartoon voice actors in the business to demonstrate their craft. This time out, the dais consists of Alicyn Packard (The Tom & Jerry Show, The Mr. Men Show), Phil LaMarr (Justice League, Samurai Jack), Gregg Berger (The Garfield Show, The Transformers), Shelby Young (Star Wars, Baby Shark's Big Show), Brian Hull (Hotel Transylvania, My Babysitter Story), and Townsend Coleman (The Tick, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).

Saturday, July 23 — 4:o0 PM to 5:00 PM in Room 23ABC
SPOTLIGHT ON PHIL LaMARR
Actor Phil LaMarr, known for Mad TV, Pulp Fiction, and his extensive voice acting career, with roles animated series including Justice League, Futurama, Samurai Jack, Static Shock, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, will be ruthlessly interrogated by Mark Evanier about his journey from an '80s comic book fanboy to the voice of iconic characters in the DC, Marvel, and many other fandom universes.

Sunday, July 24 — 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
It wouldn't be a Comic-Con without a panel tributing the man they still call "The King of the Comics," the man who created or co-created most of the Marvel superheroes and plenty of other comic book superstars elsewhere. Sit and talk about Jack Kirby with comic book superstar Frank Miller, comic book editor Steve Saffel, Rand Hoppe (acting executive director of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center), and Jack's grandson, Jeremy Kirby. And presiding over it all will be Jack's biographer and one-time assistant, Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 24 — 11:45 AM to 1:15 PM in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES II
Once more, animation writer and voice director Mark Evanier assembles a panel of some of the best and most-heard cartoon voice actors in the business to demonstrate their craft. Showing off their skills will be Jim Meskimen (Thundercats, We Baby Bears), Rosemary Watson (Let's Be Real), Fred Tatasciore (The Hulk, Family Guy), Kaitlyn Robrock (Minnie Mouse, Thundercats), and Zeno Robinson (My Hero Academia, The Owl House). There will be a reading of a classic fairy tale that will never be the same after these people get through with it.

Sunday, July 24 — 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM in Room 25ABC
COVER STORY: THE ART OF THE COVER
What is seen on the front of a book, comic or otherwise, is becoming of increasing importance, and some of the most amazing artistry is being seen these days on covers. This panel features five people who have been responsible for popular and even iconic covers in recent years: Comic-Con Special Guests Kevin Maguire, Lorena Alvarez, Mark Wheatley, Marc Hempel, and Bill Morrison. See how they approach their work. Hear what they use to create the magic. And learn how it all comes to be…with your moderator, Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 24 — 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 25ABC
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES
This is Mark Evanier's annual panel on how to break into the world of voice-over and how to avoid those who would charge you large amounts without helping you much, if at all. Joining Mark will be two of the workingest actors in the field, Alicyn Packard and Gregg Berger, along with agent Sam Frishman, who's with one of the top agencies in the field, Cunningham, Escott, Slevin and Doherty. Here's a chance to learn the basics of the business…and it's absolutely free!

Every bit of the above is subject to change for reasons that may defy comprehension and as usual, I will be exercising my constitutional right (until the current Supreme Court strips me of it) to not sit behind a table in the exhibit hall very much.

If you're interested in any of the books I've worked on for the fine people at Abrams Books, I will be signing those at their booth (1216, I think) for an hour on Friday commencing at 2:30 PM.  But if you see me and want to say hello, please do.  I am usually not as busy as I appear except before and after Quick Draw! when I'm a maniac.  At other times, I am approachable and easy to find.  I'll be the guy running around the hall wearing a KN95 mask.

Sorry. I wasn't able to post this before it became Tuesday.

Last week, I linked you to Jonathan Pie's unhinged (but awfully funny) rant about the exit of Boris Johnson. A lot of you wrote to ask me to link to a similar diatribe he delivered upon the unseating of the U.S. version of Johnson so here it is. In case you don't know, "Autocue" is the Brit term for "TelePrompter"…

Brian Dreger sends a follow-up question to this earlier one…

I have to ask this, and I need an answer…if you can, please!

When you had an opportunity, as a Voice Director to hire people that you admired previously in other works that you had nothing to do with, did you have to force yourself to refrain from bombarding them with "fan" questions? I mean…Howard Morris? You could've annoyed the hell out of him just asking questions about his career! If I'm not mistaken, at the time you started doing voice directing you were a "seasoned" (a dopey description, but you get what I mean) professional writer, but new at being a Voice Director and maybe meeting — for the first time — artists you admired? Or maybe that was never a thing with you…you just saw them as people who are simply talented and then moved on to the work…?

I'm going to expand your question a little to answer it. I've spent a lot of my life meeting and often working with people whose work I'd admired when I was younger. It's not just as a director of cartoon voices. It was meeting Jack Kirby and Groucho Marx and George Burns and Sid Caesar and Stan Freberg and Steve Ditko and Charles Schulz and June Foray and Jay Ward and Carl Barks and Jerry Siegel and Joe Barbera and Daws Butler and legions of others in comic books, comic strips, animation and other creative fields.

Darn near 100% of these people (if not every last one of them) were pleased that I knew who they were and what they'd done. Now, it is possible to make a fool of yourself with some such folks by slobbering and pestering and asking stupid questions…and I know I did that at times and probably did it many times when I didn't know it. But there is a way to talk with such people, especially when — as in the case of Howard Morris — the meeting would or could lead to a job they welcomed.

(I told the story of meeting Howie in this message. That was the second time I met him. The first was on the set of an episode of The Andy Griffith Show that he was directing and I probably made a fool of myself then. But I had a good excuse then: I was eleven years old.)

As an adult, you need to respect their personal space and not "crowd" them, physically or emotionally or at an inappropriate time. Remember that they are human beings and they weren't put there, wherever they are, for your personal amusement and gratification. Remember that they often get asked the same questions over and over and over.

And if they're a performer and you fancy yourself a performer, they're probably not all that interested in you performing for them or trying to equate what you do to what they do.

Chuck McCann once told me that when people met Stan Laurel, around 99% of them started by asking him how he and Oliver Hardy met. Maybe it would have been refreshing for someone to save that question for later (if ever) and ask about something else. If they have one towering credit in their life, maybe they'd be pleased to be asked about something else for a change. When I met Robert Morse, I did not start off our very-short-term relationship by talking just about How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. I asked him about other shows and movies he'd been in. I sensed that he liked that I didn't think he'd only done one thing in his lifetime.

Basically, it's like the way you'd approach someone who wasn't famous but just someone you wanted to get to know: Don't come on too strong. And I've also found that most famous people don't like being told how awesome and legendary you think they are. If you give them a compliment, don't make it a clichéd one and make sure it's at human scale.  I personally think the word "legend" has been so devalued by constant application that it's hollow and meaningless. It's like a standing ovation on a talk show. They give them to everyone.

Bottom line: Just don't be a jerk.  That's all it takes.  And if you can't manage that, try not to be too big a jerk.

Yesterday, we discussed a clip from The Lucy Show in 1965 where Lucy was involved with a show not unlike Shindig! or Hullabaloo.  As I mentioned, that episode of Ms. Ball's series guest-starred my favorite male singer, Mel Tormé as a struggling songwriter named Mel Tinker. Two years later, Mel was Mel Tinker for two more episodes of The Lucy Show that were pretty obviously an attempt to spin his character off into a new series called Main Street, U.S.A. Our clip today is a musical number written by Mel for one of those episodes.

A number of actors appeared in both episodes as characters who would have been in the series and you'll see a few of them in this clip — mainly John Bubbles, who was famous for his dancing, and Burt Mustin as Uncle Joe, and you may get a fast glimpse of Paul Winchell in old man make-up as Doc Putnam. The idea for the potential series seemed to be to catch the small town flavor of The Andy Griffith Show, which was coming to an end and being reborn as a series called Mayberry, RFD with some of the same players. By that time, they'd pretty much dropped the character of Otis the Town Drunk so Hal Smith, who played him, was available to be part of the cast of Main Street, U.S.A. also.

In the storyline, the town is threatened by a proposed freeway and Gale Gordon, who played Lucy's boss, had a financial interest in seeing the project go forth…but as you'll see, the song convinced him to join Lucy and the others in keeping Main Street, U.S.A. from going away. (In case you can't spot them, Winchell is to the right of the petition and Hal Smith is on the podium, eventually playing a tuba.)

That clip from The Lucy Show is bringing me a lot of e-mail. Shelly Goldstein, April Wong and Elle Sanborn are all wondering if the middle lady in the group with the beehive wigs could be Lucy's daughter, Lucie Arnaz. Lucie (not to be confused with Lucy) turned up in a lot of her mother's shows before becoming a regular cast member of her next sitcom.

I honestly can't tell. Lucie Arnaz is on Facebook under the name Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill. How about if one of you — and only one; let's not nag the lady — posts a link to ask her?

I think one of the barefoot guys is the dancer who did the finished carpentry on my front door. When I moved into my current house in 1980, I had a lot of work done to it and my contractor brought in a guy he said was the best "finish carpenter" in the business. As I understand it, that denotes someone who does lovely detailed work as opposed to someone who just cuts up pieces of wood and then nails them together.

The fellow did a superb job and when we got to talking, I learned he was a professional dancer who did carpentry when he was between jobs on television. In the sixties, he was on every variety show in town, especially those that taped at Television City in Hollywood. I'm pretty sure I spotted him once on a rerun of The Red Skelton Show. I'd tell you his name if I remembered it.

I also wanted to quote this message I received from Carl Cafarelli, who blogs, mostly about rock music, here…

The "Wing Ding" clip you shared from The Lucy Show is a hoot. But, before even getting into its cheesy disconnect from what (as you said) "those kids today" wanted, I was immediately struck by how white it was. Shindig! is one of my all-time favorite TV series, and although I was initially drawn to it (after the fact) by its embrace of the British Invasion, the show always mixed in black performers, a Sam Cooke, Isley Brothers, or Martha and the Vandellas alongside its Kinks and Yardbirds. The Blossoms (with Darlene Love) were series regulars, and Billy Preston eventually joined the show's house band. Wing Ding was wall-to-wall Caucasian.

That said, the producers' disdain — or at least a lack of affinity — for rockin' pop of 1965 is as clear as you say. Visually, Wing Ding appears more directly modeled after Hullabaloo, a show I also love but suspect was created and produced with considerably less authenticity and sincerity than the creators of Shindig! brought to their show. Hullabaloo is closer to a variety show like Hollywood Palace taken over by its various teen sensations. Reb Foster does a good job channeling Shindig! host (and fellow DJ) Jimmy O'Neill, but I see way more Hullabaloo than Shindig! in Wing Ding.

There are so many examples of mainstream Hollywood just not understanding rock 'n' roll in the '50s and '60s. Even on Batman, a show with a sort of rock 'n' roll attitude, it was evident producer William Dozier considered himself smugly above the crass sounds of rock, just as he considered himself above the crass idea of superhero comic books. On the Batman episode where Catwoman literally stole the voices of British pop stars Chad and Jeremy, the TV host played by Steve Allen wonders if that's such a bad thing. Holy schisms! (In contrast, Chad and Jeremy's earlier appearance as the Redcoats on The Dick Van Dyke Show struck a more proper and appreciative chord.)

I'm sure some fans can't reconcile the contrast. Me? I'm delighted to know that I've lived in a time when both Jack Benny and Jimi Hendrix were contemporary parts of my pop culture. I'm going to need to track down this episode of The Lucy Show to watch in its entirety. And then maybe cleanse the palate with The Monkees. Or Shindig! Thanks for sharing the clip.

Thanks for writing, Carl. It's kinda fun to look at old TV shows and see how long it took some people to realize that rock 'n' roll was not a passing fad that would soon blow over like Brylcreem hair gel or hula hoops. And even the ones who accepted it sometimes seemed to not understand it. This was especially true of folks in the music business who specialized in one style, didn't particularly appreciate any others and certainly didn't embrace something that seemed to belong only to "kids."

One of the best "markers" of this kind of thing would be this 1958 spot on the What's My Line? game show where the contestants were Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wrote many of Elvis Presley's hits and others that topped the charts. The producers of the show assumed (correctly) no one on the panel would recognize their names and I think Vincent Price was planted with the question about whether their work inflicted pain. Someone thought that would be funny.

You see this in a lot of fields, certainly in comic books: People who want the world to stay the way it was at some point when they were very happy with it. Throughout the sixties, I saw all these folks on TV who were plainly distressed that the best-selling records in the country were by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones instead of The Four Lads. A lot of them never imagined that "those kids today" would carry their love of certain music into their adult years.

This is a good thing to remember if/when you find yourself alienated from what "those kids today" (meaning 2022) are listening to and watching. Much of it will not endure but some of it will.

This post may only help one or two of you but that's one or two more than most of mine do. It's for anyone who thinks they're going to get to Comic-Con in San Diego on Friday, July 22 by heading down from the north on the 5 Freeway…

Beware. That's Opening Day at Del Mar Race Track, which has been known to back traffic up to around Medford, Oregon. It also means a large number of people who ride the Pacific Surfliner train down from points north, disembark at the Solana Beach Station and take the free shuttle to the track. Similar problems can occur on the way home as well. This doesn't seem to cause a snarl every year but when it does, it does. Don't get trapped like I did a few years there.

Here's a musical number from a September 1965 episode of The Lucy Show entitled "Lucy in the Music World." She gets a job on a music show not unlike ABC's Shindig! (which went on the air in September of '64) or NBC's Hullabaloo (which went on the following January, obviously inspired by the success of Shindig!) It's a good example of what 1965 Show Business thought "those kids today" wanted.

The producer of the show, who you'll see in the first shots, was played by veteran character actor Lou Krugman, who turned up a number of times on I Love Lucy and again every few weeks on the next two of Lucille Ball's three situation comedies. He was also seen in darn near every filmed TV show done in Hollywood in the sixties. For example, he was Nunzio, the guy who tried to sell Rob Petrie a wholesale fur coat on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Take a gander at this IMDB list of credits.

Lou was just one of those actors who worked all the time without ever becoming a regular on a TV series. It was kind of the way Jamie Farr was before he got the role of Klinger on M*A*S*H. The guy worked everywhere but until he landed that part, there was no way you could tell anybody who he was and have them go, "Oh, I know who you're talking about." I was introduced to Lou at a party once and we spent a delightful half-hour talking about shows he was on. I think we covered about 8% of them.

And the host of Wing Ding — the show within the show — was Reb Foster. Mr. Foster was a Los Angeles disc jockey back then, bouncing back and forth between playing all the hits on KFWB and playing all the hits on KRLA.

Lastly, you might be interested to know who wrote that theme song for Wing Ding. It was none other than the great singer, Mel Tormé — best known on this blog for reading a newspaper at Farmers Market just before Christmas one year. Mel was in this Lucy Show episode, though not in this clip, as Mel Tinker, an outta-work songwriter who lived near Lucy's character. He played that part in later episodes of The Lucy Show in what obviously was an attempt to set up a spin-off into his own show. But somehow…it never quite spun. Maybe they should have tried selling Wing Ding instead…

This ran here on December 18, 2013 and I don't have anything to add to it except that Hollywood Park as we knew it is gone. Ah, but the memories linger on — or at least this one does…

The Hollywood Park racetrack — which is not and never was anywhere near Hollywood — will be closing forever shortly before Christmas. They'll tear it down and build condos and retail stores and other things on which people can lose money. It was a pretty old, shabby place in Inglewood that I gather will not be too missed. Horse Racing ain't what it used to be and Santa Anita Racetrack, which is still up and running 'em, is only about 30 miles away.

Hollywood Park was opened in 1938 by a bevy of stars and movie studio execs. Jack L. Warner was the first chairman and then Mervyn LeRoy took over and presided for the next 45 years. Al Jolson and Raoul Walsh were on the original board of directors and shareholders included Joan Blondell, Ronald Colman, Walt Disney, Bing Crosby, Sam Goldwyn, Darryl Zanuck, George Jessel, Ralph Bellamy, Hal Wallis, Anatole Litvak, Hunt Stromberg, Wallace Beery and Irene Dunne. I don't think a lot of movie people have frequented the place since most of those folks passed away.

One who frequented the track for a long time was Joe Frisco, a now forgotten stuttering comedian who was cast in a lot of movies because he was funny in front of the camera and even funnier off-camera. Denizens of Show Business loved having Frisco around for the anecdotes that resulted. He was always broke and always complaining in a hilarious (albeit, stammered) manner. One time at Hollywood Park, Bing Crosby was holding court with friends in a private box and Frisco wandered by and borrowed $100 which Bing figured he'd never see again.

A few races later, someone told Bing that Frisco had bet on a big longshot that had come in and had made a fortune. Mostly for amusement, Crosby told his pals, "I'm going to see if I can get my hundred back." He went into the clubhouse and found Frisco, who could never hold onto money long, buying drinks for everyone. He tapped his debtor on the shoulder and said, "Hey, what about the hundred, pal?" Nonchalantly, Mr. Frisco pulled out a C-note, waved it in Crosby's direction and said, "N-n-n-not so f-f-fast, B-B-Bing. F-first, give us a ch-ch-ch-chorus of 'W-W-W-White Christmas!'"

I have been to Hollywood Park, most recently when I was twelve. My Uncle Nathan never married and seemed more interested in horse racing than in women. And isn't that a premise for an entire Alan King monologue? Depending on the season, you'd find my uncle on the weekends at either Hollywood Park, Santa Anita, or down south at Del Mar.

One Saturday, he took me with him to Hollywood Park. On our way in, we passed through a mob of vendors selling mimeographed tip sheets.  My uncle purchased certain ones he believed to be of help and also bought a copy of that day's special Hollywood Park edition of a local newspaper that existed then, the Herald-Examiner. Inside, it was the regular Herald-Examiner for that date but wrapped around it was a special four-page section containing horse tips and articles for that day's races.

Once inside, we hunkered down in two seats with no one near us and he studied all this paperwork, made notes, did math, etc. I think we'd missed the first two races but he placed a $20 wager — not a small amount of money then or for a guy with his income — on a certain horse running in the third. He told me to pick a horse, any horse, and he'd place a two-dollar bet on it for me.

Well, what did I know from horse racing? The only horse in the whole world I really liked was Quick Draw McGraw and he wasn't running. But I scanned all the papers Uncle Nathan had accrued and decided arbitrarily to go with the tips of one particular columnist in the Herald-Examiner. But I didn't tell Uncle Nathan that's what I was doing. I made like I'd invented some sort of system and that I'd studied all the stats before making my selection.

He placed the bet on my behalf…and you can guess how it went. My horse won. His horse lost.

The next race went exactly the same way. I pretended, like some handicapper savant, I had a formula for picking a horse…but really all I was doing was following the advice of this one guy in the Herald-Examiner. My uncle bet two bucks on that horse for me and another twenty bucks on the horse he'd figured would win. And of course, I won and he lost.

The fifth race went the same way and so did the sixth. My uncle, the expert horse player, was losing. The kid who'd never been to a racetrack before was winning…but really, the guy in the Herald-Examiner was winning. Still, despite the fact that I was making nothing but money, I couldn't conceal from Uncle Nathan that I found the whole experience utterly boring. The races themselves were kind of interesting but the periods between them each seemed to go on for hours. There was nothing to do but study for the next race, place bets and eat hot dogs. I had enough hot dogs that day to last me well into the Nixon Administration.  If I'd cut myself, I would have bled French's Mustard.

Uncle Nathan decided we'd leave after the seventh race and by then, he couldn't resist discarding decades of horse-betting experience and putting it all on one of his nephew's (so far) infallible hunches. His own methods told him to pick Horse "A." I, consulting my source, picked Horse "B." He put nothing on "A" and a big bet — I think it was a hundred dollars — on Horse "B." The odds were such that if "B" won, Uncle Nathan would leave well ahead for the day.

And of course, you can guess how this one went. "A" finished first. "B" should be crossing the finish line right about now.

I felt bad for him and on the way out, I told him how I'd picked all those winners. He was a good sport about it. He'd lost about $250 total — that was probably close to a week's pay for him then — and I'd made about $40…or as I figured things in those days, 333 comic books off the rack or 960 at the second-hand bookstore. He did say to me, "Maybe I ought to pay more attention to that guy in the Herald-Examiner." After the following week's sojourn to Hollywood Park, he told me he'd consulted that pony-picker and had more than won back all he'd lost on our outing.

Maybe that's true. Who knows? It sounds like the kind of thing you'd say to your nephew to make him feel good…and Uncle Nathan would do anything to make me feel good. He had trouble showing affection so he did it via gifts. My father (his brother) and my mother told me how proud he was of my career but he never really said a word of it to me.

When he died in 1994, he was residing in a small apartment about eight blocks from my house. He lived alone, as he lived his entire adulthood, and one of the few friends he had, who also lived in the building, found him dead on his bathroom floor. He was 82.

It fell to me to be in charge of Uncle Nathan's funeral and his affairs and belongings…and my mother and I, together, cleaned out that apartment. We found a whole shelf full of comic books I'd written — I'm not sure where he got them — and tattered news clippings that mentioned my name, mostly in connection with TV work. We found a letter he'd written to an acquaintance in another state that had been returned to him because the acquaintance had just passed away. It was all about how his nephews Mark and David were doing so well as professional writers. My Cousin David was the son of another of Nathan's brothers and there were copies of his books next to my comics.

We also found a ton of horse racing forms and tip sheets and little toys that would randomly pick a "sure winner" for you. It all prompted me to tell my mother the story of that day at Hollywood Park. Uncle Nathan had asked me to keep the story of our wagering "our little secret" and at the time, I did. My mother laughed when she heard it then said, "Now I understand why he asked us every week for years after that, 'Do you think Mark would like to go to the races with me again?'"  Maybe he liked being around me but maybe some of it was that I'd picked four winners out of five that day.

I've told a number of stories on this blog about prowling the premises of the old NBC studios in Burbank, first as a kid who had little to no business being there; later, as a writer who had actual, work-related reasons to be in that building and a real pass. In the earlier days, Johnny Carson's show was still based in New York but sometimes when I was there, so was it, broadcasting from the West Coast for a few weeks. Whenever possible, I tried to get by and hear the band rehearse.

They generally did it around 2 PM, though it could be earlier or later depending on guest stars and the amount of music that would be in the show taped later in the afternoon. Trust me on this: That band was incredible, way more thrilling than anything you ever heard come out of your home speakers. It was really the last of the Big Bands and its personnel included many of the top guys who'd played for the most famous orchestras of an earlier time.

Much has been written about the transition from Johnny hosting The Tonight Show to Jay hosting but I haven't heard much said about how Carson's retirement also meant the end of that band…and a very sweet gig for the men (no women except for the occasional harp player) who comprised the orchestra. Many of them had been roaming nomads for years, away from home for weeks at a time, moving from one gig to another. Getting into the band on the Carson show meant a stability that few in their profession ever achieve. They worked maybe six hours a day, often only four days a week. And at times, they got to play with a guest of the stature of Buddy Rich or Pete Fountain.

For that, they received a good paycheck and could be home in time for dinner. They could also supplement that income with occasional other jobs. Being in The Tonight Show Band was a very prestigious thing indeed. When I was writing variety shows or cartoons and we needed to hire musicians for the day, the guy who did the hiring would often boast, "I got four guys from Carson's band."

And though everyone knew it had to come to an end someday, few were prepared when that day came around. I know a lot of people on Johnny's staff didn't understand why it had to end…why Jay's show couldn't just be exactly the same operation with Leno subbing, as he had for years, for Carson. A lot of emotion came with the transition.

Here from the show for 5/12/1977 is a band number that was often played during commercial breaks, of which Johnny's program had many. Musical spots like these became rare in 1980 when Johnny cut The Tonight Show from 90 minutes to 60…though the band always had a couple of numbers rehearsed and ready to go in case something went awry and they were necessary to fill time. No matter how good this may sound coming out of your computer speakers, believe me: It was surely way better in person. Way, way better…

A couple of things have to get written this weekend so you won't find a lot of new writing by me here…a rerun or two and some video links maybe.

If you're going to Comic-Con (which starts in TEN DAYS!!!), you might want to go over to the con's website and study the programming schedules that are posted so far. They have the one for Wednesday, which is Preview Night. They have the one for Thursday, the one for Friday and the one for Saturday. The final day's schedule will be posted tomorrow, probably by mid-morning.

I'm doing panels on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and I'll post that list here in a few days. You can find those events now by using the programming guide's search engine and looking for "Evanier" — but I'll caution you there will be a few changes from what's presently on the con website.

And while you're over there, read about how to get the CLEAR app on your phone. It sounds like something you'll need to do if you're attending and you'll save yourself a lot of time to do it before you get to the convention. I'll be back when I'm back.

Here's a piece of animation history. It's July 7, 2000 and June Foray is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame…

Johnny Grant, a local TV personality who was some sort of unofficial Mayor of Hollywood, is officiating at the ceremony, which was on the south side of Hollywood Boulevard about half a block east of La Brea. Among the speakers are Steve Allen and Stan Freberg. I'm somewhere in that mob behind the platform with Keith Scott, Leonard Maltin, Frank Welker, Carolyn Kelly and all sort of other interesting people.

Here — let's watch the video and then I'll tell you what I remember about that day…

People wonder how someone gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The rules are here and a lot of potential applicants and nominators are scared off by the hefty fee that comes with it. I don't recall what it was in 2000 but today, it's $55,000. Sometimes, the honoree or his/her fan club comes up with the dough but I suspect it's usually paid by some TV or movie studio that has a show or film about to open starring the honoree. Agents have been known to say, when an in-demand star is in demand for a movie, "My client wants ten million dollars plus it would be nice (i.e., mandatory) if your studio would use all its clout to get him/her a star on Hollywood Boulevard and/or his/her footprints in the courtyard of Grauman's Chinese."

In June's case, she didn't have that kind of clout but Chuck Jones apparently did. He told Warner Brothers that he wanted it to happen and, sure enough, it happened.

Odd story about how I was present for the unveiling. At the time, I had written the script for a Scooby Doo videogame and although I was not voice-directing, I was required to be present at the session when the cast came in to record my script. Unfortunately, the session was the same day and hour as the star ceremony and I had promised June I would be there for the dedication.

I asked the studio to reschedule the recording session. They said no. I asked them to allow me to not be present for it. They said no. I stopped asking when I realized that — by one of those amazing coincidences in which my life abounds — the star ceremony was in front of a big office building on Hollywood Boulevard and the recording session was at a studio in that building commencing an hour before the ceremony. So we recorded for an hour, then took a break and all went out to watch June get her star, then we went back in and finished the recording. That's why Frank Welker was there.

(That Scooby Doo videogame, by the way, was never finished or released. I'll get someone very mad at me if I post the whole story about it. Let's just say a person involved in its production who did not work for Warner Brothers did something that rightly pissed-off the studio and they killed the whole project.)

Also present at the star ceremony was Larry Harmon, the proprietor of Bozo the Clown. Larry wasn't there because of June. Larry's office happened to be in that building and I ran into him in the lobby. When I told him what was happening outside, he came out, talked his way into the V.I.P. area with us, and spent the whole time telling me and everyone how unfair it was that he hadn't gotten a star on the sidewalk despite years of lobbying. Larry never worked for Chuck Jones.

But it was overall a very happy occasion with a lot of happy people. At one point in the video, Johnny Grant spotted Chuck McCann in the crowd and give him a big introduction…which was nice but it wasn't Chuck McCann. It was just a guy who looked a lot like him. One of those Chuck McCann impersonators you hear about all the time.

That's about all I remember. Thanks to Tom Knott, who I believe was the person who shot this video, and to Kamden Spies, who I know is the person who told me it was online.

Cartoonist (and historian of cartooning) R.C. Harvey died yesterday at the age of 85. He was a constant presence in the more prestigious magazines wherein folks preserve and analyze the history of comic art. He also did some very fine comic art of his own and the only negative comment I ever heard about him or his work was from folks who wished he'd spent a little less time writing about other folks' comics and do more of his own.

His daughter Julia Harvey McDonald posted the sad details to Facebook…

Last week Dad fell and broke 6 ribs. We did not know at the time how serious this would become. After he fell, he stood up, continued walking with us to a favorite restaurant. He joked with the waitress, drank his favorite martini (bombay gin, very cold) and told a couple stories. His last few days were in the hospital with his family as his body struggled with complications from the fall. We were with him for his last breath.

An awful story…but to go on walking and joking with people sounds like the Bob Harvey I knew. He was a fascinating guy…the kind you could talk to for hours about comic books and comic strips and never feel you were descending into the childish end of the business. His book on the life and career of Milton Caniff was daunting in its size — Bob never did a half-assed job on anything — but not one sentence of it wasted your time.

Bob was an important contributor to our current series reprinting the newspaper strip, Pogo. He would annotate the strips in each volume, noting the historical context in which they first appeared and explaining a lot of the obscure references and terms. Walt Kelly's work was brilliant but even on its original publication, some of it needed explaining. His last "Swamp Talk" section will appear in Volume 8, which is now at the printers and due out in a few months. He will be just about impossible to replace — in the Pogo reprints and in our lives.