Rich Firestone writes…

You know, "The Four Seasons" still confuses me, because as I recall, when those guys started, there were four guys onstage, including Frankie. There's even an album cover showing the band lifting Frankie up on a silver platter, and one of the four guys lifting Frankie…is Frankie! I assume Frankie got a promotion, or the others got demoted at some point, but it still seems weird to see five guys on stage at a Four Seasons show!

I'm no expert on this — and it's been a while since I saw Jersey Boys — but my understanding is that at some point, Mr. Valli went solo and was replaced in The Four Seasons…and then there were bookings where it was advantageous to have him perform with that group. So it was like a former member of The Four Seasons performing with the current roster of The Four Seasons.

Certainly if I am wrong about this, I will have eighty e-mails by Noon telling me so.

Hey, how about another number from Frankie Valli and the current Four Seasons?

And here's an update on our post from this morning. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria announced in a press conference today that the homeless folks who've been sheltering in the city's Convention Center are being relocated. More details here.

In the press release announcing there'll be no in-person Comic-Con International this July in San Diego, the folks who run the con told us they were happy to announce — well, here, I'll quote what they were so happy to announce…

…we are happy to announce that San Diego Comic Convention is planning to present a three-day in-person convention in San Diego in November. At this time, we are still working on specific details as to attendance capacity, badge cost, and related information, and those details will be forthcoming.

This has led to many of you writing me to ask what I can divulge about this November event. I probably shouldn't reveal this but the folks behind the con are still working on specific details as to attendance capacity, badge cost, and related information, and those details will be forthcoming.

That's all I know. Honest. And this doesn't bother me because one of the ways I've kept whatever sanity and balance I've somehow managed to retain during The Pandemic has been by discounting all predictions beyond about the week after next. I recognize that all of them are guesses — occasionally semi-educated ones but guesses, nonetheless. They might turn out to be true but so might my hunches as to next week's winning lottery numbers. You can drive yourself banana-wackie by trying to plan for specific dates right now.

I'm getting e-mails and questions from folks who are asking, "Hey, if Texas and Mississippi can open up fully, why can't Comic-Con?" Well, first of all, it remains to be seen how wise Texas and Mississippi are being. But secondly, it ain't that easy.

One fellow who apparently is desperate to attend a comic convention a.s.a.p. wrote me that he went to the website for the San Diego Convention Center and looked at the calendar they have posted there of upcoming events. There, he saw several listings for conventions that are clearly not Comic-Con events but he found this: A "Private Event: Convention with Trade Show" for the weekend of 11/19 thru 11/21. It estimates a turnout of 7000 and says it's "Not Open to Public."

That doesn't sound like Comic-Con to me. Comic-Con is open to the public and I find it hard to believe they're talking about something that small. But based on his deduction, this fellow tells me he's booked a non-refundable AirBnB room in San Diego for that weekend. Even if he's right about the dates, he's gambling a lot to assume he'll be able to score a badge if only 7000 are available.

More interesting to me is that the calendar there shows real, non-mystery conventions booked there beginning June 9…quite a few of them, all with capacities below 12,000 until the end of August. After that, they don't go much higher except one for 33,000 at the beginning of September. We also see on the Cancellations page, everything before June 9 listed as canceled, postponed or virtual.

If you're going to try to figure this out — and I doubt you have enough info to do so or that any of it is that firm — keep this in mind: Like most convention centers, the one in San Diego was built to house many simultaneously. They can section off portions of it and move walls around to create the proper-sized spaces for up to seven (7) separate gatherings at the same time. Comic-Con with its 135,000 attendance is one of the few that ever uses the whole facility.

What's happening with most convention centers around the nation is that they're looking at opening cautiously and incrementally with small gatherings being scheduled, in some cases on a highly-tentative basis. Las Vegas, which depends on convention trade more than any other city, just announced they'll start allowing some (not all) conventions with a 1,000 attendee maximum this month. Before that announcement, no conventions were scheduled in the town before May 1. The Las Vegas Advisor says…

…the Tobacco Plus Expo is scheduled for May 12-14, but can't get approval from Clark County until May 1, which puts the organizers in a whale of a bind. The big World of Concrete show is scheduled for June 8-10. Normally, it attracts upwards of 60,000 conventioneers, but we'll see how many are allowed in the next couple of months.

What I'm trying to point out here is that having Comic-Con in any size is not just a matter of the convention organizers looking at the latest COVID numbers and saying, "Hey, let's take a gamble and do it!" They need a place to hold the thing. They also need a good selection of hotels and restaurants that are functioning at full capacity and there are probably a hundred other necessities including security and insurance.

But first and foremost, they need the venue and they need it to be legal to hold an event of some size. As we know, the San Diego Convention Center has been used as a homeless shelter for close to a year now. It is slowly turning back into a convention center. Back on February 11 when we last checked, there were 856 people living there. Today, the number is 735.

Reopening that huge facility will take time and it will not happen all at once. The announcement by Comic-Con that they won't be holding a full-sized event there this July is simple recognition that the building won't be fully available by then. There also seem to be some financial problems and, as I say, you also need the surrounding community to be ready to receive us.

Me, I'm taking the view that I don't know when the hell anything will be open the way we'd like it to be. There may be Comic-Con in some form or size this November but I ain't clearing my calendar or booking my room for it until they say it's on…and even then, I'll assume it's probable, not definite.

Don't drive yourself too crazy. Wait and see. Wait and see.

It's a "virtual" performance by Frankie Valli and (I guess) the four guys who now comprise The Four Seasons. I love seeing a guy from another era — Mr. Valli is 86 — adapting to the world today…

So today is the day when, according to QAnon supporters, Donald Trump will be re-inaugurated as President because the U.S. government has been illegitimate since 1871 and he will today seize control of it and make things legit again. I look forward to this not happening and to all the QAnon folks wondering if maybe — just maybe — they've based some of their expectations on false premises.

Scanning the web this morning, I see messages from people in Texas and Mississippi celebrating the "freedom" they now have to stop wearing masks and to congregate in large groups. I wonder if any folks in those states feel less free to go into a supermarket now. On Twitter, I saw one of my favorite political writers, Will Saletan, say that in Texas, the main argument against masks is like, "Look, libtard: If you think brakes work, put them on your car."

I also see a lot of messages from people who think the government or The Biden Administration banned those Dr. Seuss books or forced Mr. Potatohead to go unisex. One guy was even ranting about how they'd banned Kermit the Frog who I don't think has been banned by anyone. I thought a core tenet of Conservative thinking was that private industries should be free to do whatever they think will maximize profits.

---

My TiVo, in recording John Oliver last Sunday, also nagged a hunk of the Woody Allen/Mia Farrow documentary. I will not judge it based on the few minutes I saw but what I saw seemed pretty loaded with music and camerawork designed to provoke emotional, as opposed to logical judgements.

Reviews like this one that list all the aspects of this case that went unmentioned have me sticking to my position: No one is honestly investigating this matter. I'm not sure if there's any reason to investigate this matter, given how few minds seem open to being changed.

If there is another documentary on the subject — and I'm not suggesting that there should be — I would pay attention if it followed this rule: That if the documentarians take the position that the painful memories and accusations of one allegedly-abused child must be heard and taken seriously, they extend that to all allegedly-abused children reared in the same house. (And yes, I know: These filmmakers asked for such interviews but reportedly at the last minute and not in a way that made those asked feel they'd be treated the same way.)

A problem I have with "Cancel Culture" is that the people who object to "Cancel Culture" — the loudest ones at least — all seem to have plenty of people and things they want to cancel, including but not limited to "Cancel Culture" and its enablers. They may not use the "C" word but they all have people they think should be shunned, ignored, censured…or whatever "canceling" them is supposed to accomplish. Every Republican has Democratic people and programs they want to see extinguished and vice-versa.

A Presidential election is, in a way, a massive vote over which of two candidates should be canceled. A vote for one is a vote to cancel the other. I have never heard anyone say, "Vote for my guy but I sure hope the other one sticks around and is influential." They all want the "other guy" to disappear with the totality and humiliation of Harvey Weinstein.

A lot of folks are outraged at the moment over this…

Six Dr. Seuss books — including And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and If I Ran the Zoo — will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author's legacy said Tuesday.

"These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong," Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator's birthday. "Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises' catalog represents and supports all communities and families," it said. The other books affected are McElligot's Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat's Quizzer.

I love Dr. Seuss and I grew up on some of those books, especially On Beyond Zebra! But I can't get too irate over this decision because, perhaps cynically, I think of a decision of this kind as going something like this…

"You know, we don't stand to sell very many copies of those six books these days but they could sure bring us a lot of grief from protests and maybe taint the whole body of Dr. Seuss work. Let's just exclude these for a while to protect his reputation and his better works and we'll wait a few years and take another look at the situation."

I believe some of those books actually have been outta-print at times without anyone feeling deprived or that they could never be read again. I don't think it's an ideal situation but I also don't think it's like Nazi Book-Burning, as some are suggesting. I think it's more of a marketing decision…and maybe someone at Dr. Seuss Enterprises has a legitimate concern about it affecting their brand.

And I want to amend something I said above. I said a lot of folks are outraged at the moment over this and that's true. But a lot of them strike me as outraged just because they thought it would be politically useful to act outraged about this. It's just a convenient way to complain about people who you think are engaging in "Cancel Culture" and you want to use it to maybe cancel them a little.

This is the 28,628th post on this blog. I know it seems like more but less than half of them have been about my buddy Frank Ferrante and his extraordinary one-man-and-a-pianist show…the one in which you see this Italian guy miraculously transform himself into Mr. Julius "Groucho" Marx. It's just like if Groucho was still alive and still performing except that Frank is not 131 years old.

In non-Pandemic times, much of Frank's career is "Have Mustache, Will Travel" and he tours the U.S. doing what he does so well. Many of you have gone to see him because of this blog's excessive plugging and many of you have written to me to say, basically, "You were right." Some of you have however written to express a frustration that Frank didn't come to a theater near you.

Well, you'll be able to see his show now, not in person (which is better) but on video (which is still damned entertaining). A video directed by the wonderful Dreya Weber has been made of Frank's show. I have seen it and it's delightful. Frank Ferrante's GROUCHO will have its world premiere on March 10 at the Blue Starlite Drive-Ins in Austin, Texas and it will continue to play there through April 7 on a double bill with Monkey Business starring the real guy and those brothers of his.

Frank will be there the first week for post-screening talkbacks and such. You can get tickets at this link and you can see a preview of it below. I will post info soon about other places you can see it if you're not up for the drive to Austin…

Back in this post, we linked you to a jazzy, relatively-recent interpretation of "The William Tell Overture" by the timeless composer, Gioachino Antonio Rossini.  Actually, as my pal Pat O'Neill reminds me because I didn't know this, the part we all know and love from the Lone Ranger shows is just the final fourth part of the Overture.

And as another pal, Bruce Reznick (who's been a pal since around tenth grade at University High School) reminds me, one of the places where folks today learned of the works of Mr. Rossini and many other great composers of classical music. That would be in cartoons…especially cartoons made for theatrical release in the thirties, forties and fifties.  Here, suggested to me by Bruce, is a page that will remind us of some of the places where we first heard these magnificent merrie melodies and long-lived looney tunes.

And e-mail pal George Haberberger told me about this rendition of Rossini's Greatest Hit. It's performed by Glen Campbell, who everyone remembers as a great singer…but we sometimes forget how for a long time, he was hired to play, not sing. The man could work magic with one of them geetar things…

As I celebrate my birthday and we seem to be creeping up on the one-year anniversary of me staying home most of the time…

Thanks to all for the nice notes and e-mails and shout-outs I'm getting for making it to 69 years old. I have to think about what I'm going to do a year from now when I hit the big Seven-Oh. Maybe I'll declare an end to my current second-childhood and start on my ninth or tenth second-childhood.

And maybe Facebook will be redesigned so that when I have a thousand public messages, I can navigate my way through all of them instead of only finding about a fourth of them. I can't be the only person who has this problem.

Not a lot to report here today except that I'm grateful for all the communications. Thanks, all!

Here's the Fifth Dimension (without Frank Sinatra) singing one of their biggest hits…

And I posted this before here long ago but I thought I should also show you Peter Lawford demonstrating the right way to sing this song…

To the surprise of…well, not you or me certainly…Comic-Con International has announced they will not be holding Comic-Con 2021 as planned in San Diego in July. You can read the entire statement here about why (which won't surprise you) or how it will be "virtual" like it was last year, so that won't surprise you either. The only news is that they will attempt to do some sort of in-person event in November, details to follow.

Actually, I'm a bit surprised that they announced this soon that Comic-Con won't be a live event in July. It takes a lot of work to not put on Comic-Con and I would have thought it would take longer for this announcement to be made. I'm glad it is so we all don't have to think about if it could maybe possibly happen.

And I've already received one e-mail from a guy who has always wrongly thought that I'm the Complaint Department for Comic-Con. He also apparently thought for a while that the Coronavirus was a hoax and then he thought it was no big deal and it would just kill a few old people who were going to die soon anyway and then go away in a matter of weeks. Now, he apparently thinks that because the infection and death rates are heading down — you know; like they did last April for a while — COVID-19 is history and we can all resume doing everything he's mad that he can't do because of it.

He wrote, "Don't these people realize that by July, nobody in this friggin' country will be dying of this supposed virus?" I would love to think he's right for once but the sheer fact that this guy believes this makes me skeptical.

February 29th is the day which only exists every four years. I was actually due to be born on a February 29th but for the first and only time in my life except for all the others, I was late. So a few days later, they went in and got me.

If we did have a February 29 this year, we could note it as the 229th birthday of Gioachino Antonio Rossini, the great Italian composer whose most recognizable piece is probably "The William Tell Overture," aka "The Lone Ranger theme song" aka the song used in many other places like in the TV commercial for Lark cigarettes and in the TV commercial in which Stan Freberg parodied the TV commercial for Lark cigarettes…and hey, it just dawned on me that Lark cigarettes are gone as are most of the people who smoked them and…

Sorry. Got a little heavy into Free Associating there. This is just an intro to this new rendition of Mr. Rossini's tune, which I'm sure perfectly captures what he had in mind when he wrote it…

I just recorded a Jack Kirby Tribute Panel which will be online in a few weeks — on a day when WonderCon would have been happening at the Anaheim Convention Center were it not for you-know-what.

This Kirby panel involved coordinating between time zones because it was afternoon where I was, evening where Jonathan Ross was and morning of the next day where Neil Gaiman was. But it was worth doing math for because it came out great — and how could it not with those two smart guys talking about Jack? I can't wait for you all to be able to see it.

Here's a Bugs Bunny moment you may never have seen. It's from the movie My Dream is Yours, a 1949 Warner Brothers release starring Jack Carson and Doris Day. It was directed by Michael Curtiz, though Friz Freleng handled the animation you'll be seeing here. The film wasn't memorable but Bugs is…