I love these Korean versions of American musicals. Here are a couple of numbers from Man of La Mancha…

In the last day or three, I've heard of three people I know who either have COVID or seem to have the symptoms and are awaiting tests. None of these was one of those "I'd rather die from the virus than the vaccine" people. All three are folks who had no problem with the vaccine except getting around to actually getting jabbed. Double sigh.

Greenblatt's Delicatessen up on Sunset closed its doors last night — maybe forever but maybe not. The owner is looking for a buyer so maybe it'll come back like Nate 'n Al's deli in Beverly Hills did. Greenblatt's was a great deli with awful parking. It's on the same block as The Laugh Factory so it was often full of comedians…and their parking lot was often full of comedians' cars.

A lot of restaurants I like have closed lately. The Enterprise Fish Company is gone, both locations — the one out in Venice and the one up north in Santa Barbara. I liked 'em both a lot. How much The Pandemic had to do with all these closures is unknown to me but obviously, it had some impact. It's had some impact on everything.

That's right. Evanier has another Korean version of an American musical for you today. I give you the opening and closing numbers from Hairspray…

Hey, remember all the way to this morning when I posted this? Well, longtime MAD writer Arnie Kogen, who was mentioned in my piece, sent me this…

That sure looks like 1960 to me. Even though I wasn't there (Yes, I didn't have enough pages), I remember it well. 1960 was MAD's very first trip and Gaines took the gang to Haiti. Some observations:

#6 was not Larry Siegel. (I know the top of Larry Siegel's head. This was not it.)

One of the four unidentified people, #8, #11, #12 or #14 could have been Larry Gore, the MAD publicist at the time. I'm guessing Gore was #8.

There was this great story about Gore that Frank Jacobs wonderfully described in his book, The Mad World of William Gaines.  On that Haitian trip, Gaines and the guys (there were no women. It was 1960) were visiting the sky-swept Citadel near Cap-Haitian. Each traveler mounted a burro and made the steep, slow climb up the mountain path, which was unspoiled by guardrails. Halfway to the top, at an especially tricky turn, Gore looked down and duly noted, "My burro just crossed himself." I wish I was there just to hear that line. (but, sadly, I didn't have enough pages)

Last Sunday was sixty years to the day since the first issue of Fantastic Four appeared on newsstands and forever changed the world of comics.  How much it changed it is hard to explain but a couple of us try it in a forthcoming hardcover book from Abrams Comic Art.  The book, which will be out this November, is called Fantastic Four No. 1: Panel by Panel.  It's a reprint of that fateful publication lovingly reformatted by ace book designer Chip Kidd to achieve, as the title suggests, panel by panel analysis of the material.

This was tried before but from what I've seen, this is a much better realization of the goal with superior reproduction.  There are also some new essays by Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort and me, and some other goodies.  You can advance order a copy here.

The expert reproduction has been achieved by locating a just-about-perfect copy of that first issue and then spending a lot of time and skill photographing and scanning and making it look as sharp as possible. How did they locate someone with such a copy? Easy: I asked here in this blog post last September. Here — I'll quote it here so you don't have to click…

This is not for me. It's for something I'm working with. They're looking for someone who has an unslabbed copy of Fantastic Four #1 — an original one, not a reprint — who will make it available to them for scanning…and yes, this is all approved by Marvel. It's for a forthcoming fancy book and they will pay a fee and give you credit and some free copies and take very good care of it. In fact, they may even be able to come to you and you can take it out of its Mylar® sleeve or whatever it's in and handle it. They just need to scan it for this big, impressive book.

Someone who is located in the Eastern Tri-State area would be ideal but they may be willing to settle for anywhere. Drop me a note if you've got one and are willing to share it with the world. I will pass you on to folks I trust.

Several volunteers came forward and the gent who loaned his to the project is very happy that he did. Meanwhile, the folks behind Fantastic Four No. 1: Panel by Panel are so happy with it that they're starting work on a similar book that would reprint Amazing Fantasy #15 with the debut of Spider-Man, and also Amazing Spider-Man #1…so now they're looking for someone with copies of those two books. They're looking for original, unslabbed first editions, not reprints and would prefer someone in or around New York. If you can help them and wanna do so, drop me a note and I'll forward it on.

William M. Gaines, the publisher of MAD magazine, used to take the folks who worked for him on an annual trip to some exotic place. It was a way, he felt, to engender loyalty and productivity and to take a trip with a lot of funny people and then write it off as a business expense. The gent labelled #13 below probably advised him on this.

A lot of folks online have been trying to identify all the folks in this photo taken on one of those trips. As a public service, I sent it to my partner Sergio Aragonés and asked him to help out.

The online folks are theorizing this photo is from the 1960 trip, which was the first.  1960 was when Alfred E. Neuman made his first real bid at the presidency; ergo, the campaign poster and pins suggest that year.  Well, maybe…but Sergio is also certain the man on the far left is Paul Coker, Jr. and Mr. Coker did not have work in MAD until 1961…so maybe this is '61 or '62 in spite of the poster and pins.  It would have to be one of those three years since Sergio isn't in it.  His first MAD trip was 1963 and he was a steady participant after that.

Bill Gaines later decreed that freelancers had to have contributed some specified number of pages to the magazine during the previous twelve months in order to qualify for each year's MAD trip but Sergio says that rule came along later.  (The policy led to a great quip by longtime MAD writer Arnie Kogen when Gaines' mother died.  Someone asked Arnie if he was going to the funeral and he said, "I can't.  I don't have enough pages.")

If you click on the photo, you can see it larger and with everyone numbered. Here are his identifications…

1. Joe Orlando (Artist)
2. Frank Jacobs (Writer)
3. Jerry DeFuccio (Editorial Assistant)
4. Nick Meglin (Editorial Assistant)
5. Almost Certainly John Putnam (Art Director)
6. Maybe Larry Siegel (Writer)
7. Al Jaffee (Writer-Artist)
8. Unidentified
9. Paul Coker, Jr. (Artist)
10. Leonard Brenner (Production Manager)
11. Unidentified
12. Unidentified
13. Sidney Gwirtzman (Gaines' Accountant)
14. Unidentified
15. Al Feldstein (Editor)
16. Bob Clarke (Artist)
17. Dave Berg (Writer-Artist)
18. George Woodbridge (Artist)
19. Nancy Gaines (Gaines' Daughter)
20. William Gaines (Publisher)

Sergio is reasonably certain that one of the Unidentified men has to be Gaines' lawyer Marty Scheiman, who was credited for years in the masthead where it said, "Lawsuits: Martin J. Scheiman, Esq." Sergio is also reasonably certain that this photo does not contain any of the following people who were contributing to MAD at the time: Don Martin, Wallace Wood, Mort Drucker, Sy Reit, Gary Belkin, Frank Kelly Freas or Tom Koch.  That is, unless one of them is the guy in the Alfred E. Neuman mask which seems highly unlikely.

It might or might not contain Larry Siegel, who was one of MAD's most prolific writers.  MAD's photographer at the time was a gent named Lester Krauss so it's possible he took the picture.  Or maybe someone else did and he's one of the Unidentifieds.  Or maybe he isn't there at all.  Who the hell knows?

Obviously, if anyone knows for sure what year this was or has corrections or additions, send 'em in.  And hey, take another look at the photo.  Doesn't it look like this is a bad, all-male road company of Guys and Dolls and Dave Berg is about to start singing "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat"?

Continuing with our festival of American musicals performed in Korea, here's six minutes of Barnum. Over there, it starts with the finale song…

As I explained yesterday here, I've seen the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World more often than I've seen some of my best friends. It gets written about a lot online and for some reason, many folks lately are discussing the now-classic cars driven in it. They may not have been classics when the movie was made in 1962 but if you tried to amass examples of those models today, it would run you a lot more than the $350,000 that the characters in that film were trying to get their mitts on.

Various automotive sites have identified all the vehicles. For instance, here's the one in which Phil Silvers took a lovely river voyage…

That's a Ford Super Deluxe convertible — either the 1946 model or the nearly-identical 1947-1948 model. Apparently, the movie used at least one of each in various scenes. No one seems to be certain how many they had of some of these cars but clearly with all the stuntwork, it was vital to have at least a couple of each around. And many of them had to be duplicated at least in part on the soundstage for rear screen projection scenes.

If this kind of thing interests you, the Hemmings site (which traffics in classic cars) has identified them all in a four-part article and they'll also show you what it'll cost to buy each car today. So go see Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four…and I'll warn you that all four parts are filled with SPOILERS, just in case you've never seen the movie.

And if you haven't ever seen this movie, make sure you read yesterday's post here. Thanks to the many people who sent me links about the Hemmings piece. I think Shaun Faulkner was the first.

So…how many of you had today in the "When will Andrew Cuomo resign?" pool? I thought he'd hang in there for another humiliating week or two but I guess the accusations were escalating to a point where he finally "got it." You'd like to think that somewhere in that decision, there was a smidgen of "I think it'll be better for the people of my state if I turn the job over to someone else" but I'm skeptical any politician ever thinks that way. It feels to me like most of them never budge from the concept of "what's best for the citizens of my city/state/country is that I be in office!"

I'm watching all the virus/vaccination news the way my father used to watch a local TV station in L.A. that ran stock market prices all morning. He'd be reading a book or doing something else with one eye on the set, ignoring 98% of what they said because it wasn't relevant to his life…waiting for something that was, like his stock going down another half-point. Next week, I'm scheduled for a routine physical with my main doctor and I'll ask him if/when my Moderna might need a booster jab and I'll probably go with what he says. I could read every last word on the Internet on this topic and I wouldn't know as much about it as he does.

If I were following the Corona News more closely, I'd probably inaugurate a daily feature on this blog. It would be called something like "Today's Right-Wing Figure Who Called The Virus A Hoax and Told People To Not Wear Masks Or Get Vaccinated But Now He Has COVID And He's Changed His Message." There would sure be enough material to fill it.

---

There's a line I occasionally find myself uttering when someone insists I make a decision about something where I don't feel I have all the facts I need. It goes, "If you have to have an answer now, the answer is No. If I have more time to decide, it might become a Yes."

As you know, Comic-Con Special Edition is being held Thanksgiving Weekend down in San Diego. The above response applies to the questions of whether I'm going to be there and if so, will I be hosting a batch of panels? The convention starts 107 days from today.

107 days from now, the Virus may be under such control — and the precautions the convention will be taking may be so reassuring — that I'll feel safe to attend. I may even feel that way far enough ahead of that date to organize some panels and arrange with certain folks to be there and be on them. But I certainly don't want to promise panels and recruit panelists and then decide it's not safe for me to be there.

If we've learned anything during This Pandemic, it's how unpredictable This Pandemic is. Not that long ago, people were stowing their masks away along with the Christmas and/or Hanukkah decorations they don't expect to need for quite a while. Now, we've gone ten steps forward and about three back.

It feels like things are going in the right direction where I live…which is not Florida or Arkansas or anywhere the problem has gotten seriously outta control. But "it feels like" is not a good basis for deciding on something important. And "it feels like" can change quickly as we've all seen. So I really don't know what to do except to wait and see how things change between now and whenever I absolutely have to commit or not…and I don't even know when that is.

When I do have to decide, I'll be fascinated to hear what my decision will be. Right this minute, I truly do not know.

We seem to be taking a tour of Broadway by way of Korea. Here's eight-and-a-half minutes of Mamma Mia! I think I like it better in this language…

On this blog, we talk a lot about one of my favorite movies…It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I wrote a post about it that I'll be putting up here tomorrow but I realized I had something I should say first, especially to anyone who's been thinking of buying a copy of it or watching it via home video.

What I have to say to them is: Don't do that. Not unless you've seen this movie the right way.

Don't, I implore you, watch it for the first time on home video. Don't watch it on TCM or stream it or see it in any way on a small screen at home. Do not watch it alone. Do not watch it with just a few friends over. Wait until some theater near you shows it (a) on a big screen and (b) with a packed, hip audience. It's a very different film that way. You may not love it in that situation but you will love it a lot less on a small screen with a small group…and it will probably cause you to not ever go see it the way it was meant to be seen.

Once you have seen it that way then your small (or smaller) screen at home without a big audience is okay. I watch it that way all the time…but I fell in love with it on a big screen with a big audience.

Several companies have put it out on DVD and Blu-ray…and I even have copies of it on LaserDisc, VHS and Beta. By far, the best version anyone has released — and it might be the best we will ever have — is the version put out by the Criterion Collection. And actually, I should make that plural: versions.

Originally, they put it out as a multi-format set that contained both DVDs and Blu-rays. The set contained two different copies of the movie and all sorts of extras and you got all of that in both formats. You can buy that set from Amazon here and as I write this, the price is $40.81. I have plugged this multi-format set here before.

But what I haven't plugged is that they have since issued a set with all the material only on DVDs and another set with it only on Blu-rays. At the moment, you can order the DVD set here for $15.87 and you can order the Blu-ray set here for $39.99.

These prices may fluctuate from time to time but the point is that if you only need it in DVD format, you can save a lot of money. And if you only need it on Blu-ray, you can save — at the moment — less than a buck. Again, these prices may fluctuate.

So I call your attention to that and I call your attention to the fact that Amazon also offers a cheaper DVD version and a cheaper Blu-ray version, both from other companies, but the transfers aren't nearly as good and you don't get all those nifty bonus features. One of them is a commentary track by three Mad World experts, one of whom writes this blog. Be careful you order the version you want.

As I said, the Criterion version includes two copies of the movie. Let me explain why there are two. When this film was first released, it was very long. Four to six weeks later, various folks decided to trim it a lot and they created what we usually refer to as the "General Release Version." It was later trimmed further for some exhibitors but when you see it today, what you generally see is that General Release Version and it's fine. In fact, it's more than fine. It's wonderful. The producer-director of the film, Stanley Kramer, often said he preferred it. I think most lovers of this movie do.

The original, uncut version no longer exists. There are film buffs who insist there are copies around and some of them claim they know someone who has one…but they're starting to sound like Mike Lindell, claiming he has proof he never seems to be able to produce. Folks working with Criterion did an exhaustive search and found as many of the cut scenes as possible. Some of that footage was not in pristine condition and they did as much reconstruction and enhancement as was technically possible. The "extras" on all the Criterion sets include a documentary about this restoration and as you'll see in it, what they were able to do was amazing.

But this longer version is not perfect. Some of the video could not be brought up to the standard of the rest and in a few spots, there's audio but no picture or picture but not audio. It's fun because some of that restored footage is delightful and it's interesting to see what they chose to cut, and also our commentary track can only be heard on an alternate audio track of this version of the movie. But Criterion's restoration of the General Release Version is a better viewing experience.

(The one thing that is not on the Criterion set which some people wish it included is a documentary on the making of the film that was done back in 1999 for the LaserDisc release. A lot of the cast and crew members were still alive to be interviewed and you just might be able to find it on YouTube.)

Obviously, I love this movie. Obviously, not everyone does. There are some people in this world who have chosen this as the hill they're willing to die on: The premise that the movie is not funny and that all of us who laugh at it, even the umpteen-millionth time we see it, are wrong. I don't think there's anything more pointless than arguing that something isn't funny, especially when you're arguing with someone who's laughing. Nowhere here am I saying you'll love it as much as I do or even one bit. I'm just telling you what I think is the best way to watch it if you do watch it.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World debuted at the Cinerama Dome here in Hollywood in November of 1963. That's where and when I first saw it — the longer version! — in a theater that was more or less built to run it. I have since seen it several times in that building which was recently the subject of many news items saying it was closing down, going away, never showing movies again. Rumors abound lately that that's not true. We're hearing — though not yet officially — that it will reopen and resume showing mostly classic films.

I hope that's so…and I hope that if it is, they show Mad World soon, like maybe in November for its anniversary. If they do, I'll go and it might just be the first time I've ventured inside a theater for more than a year and a half. That would be a nice way to break my fast. More on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World tomorrow.

I know what you've been waiting for. You've been waiting for me to post three numbers from the musical Guys and Dolls in (mostly) Korean. Well, your wait is over…

One odd thing about revisiting the songs on my old mixtape is that I sometimes find myself thinking, "Why did I include that?" I guess because it didn't cost anything but twenty seconds of tape-splicing time, I threw in a number of tunes that I later fast-forwarded through or would have if the tape player had been within easy reach.

Case in point: "To Sir With Love," the title song from the 1967 movie starring Sidney Poitier and Judy Geeson. I had no affection for the film because I never saw it. I had no affection for the song sung by Lulu, who was also in the film. But it got played a lot on KHJ radio back then and I had it so I stuck it in.

I see on Wikipedia where "it made Lulu only the second British female artist to top the U.S. charts during the listing's Rock era after Petula Clark's 'Downtown.'" I remember at the time thinking that Lulu was being sold to American audiences as the next Petula Clark…which was fine. We then had eighty-seven thousand groups being marketed as the new Beatles so an extra Petula Clark didn't seem like too much duplication. Here's the song because it was on my mixtape, not because I loved it…

I was and am a big fan of a musical that came out a few years ago called Something Rotten. I never got to see it on Broadway but I saw two different national companies of it — one in Los Angeles and one in San Jose — and I enjoyed it a lot both times.

The best number in it by far was "A Musical," a slightly-cut version of which was performed as the opening of the Tony Awards in 2015. Here's a video of that number as performed by a touring company that was, at the time this video was made, in Korea. Don't worry. It's in English. But if you know Korean, you can sing along with the subtitles.

I don't know who anyone is in this clip and it could have benefited a lot from being recorded in front of a live audience, which would have loved it as every audience loves it. This is the actual staging from the U.S. version and it's probably the same sets and costumes from one of those touring companies…

• I wonder how many people who have been insisting they will never get vaccinated would go do it if those of us who got vaccinated right away would all promise not to say, "Told you so, told you so!"