Love Network

Considering we only caught the last half hour of the MDA telethon, why do I want to comment on it? Especially, why am I pushing off other posts I wanted to write in order to do this? Partly, I guess, because of the great comments on the telethon that Mark Evanier provides. My comment is that what with Jerry having mellowed out considerably in his autumn years, there's one thing that consistently annoys me about the presentation, and it's on the local cutaways.

I suspect most of the nation now can only see the telethon on the WGN Superstation feed, but I'd sure like to know if any other stations do this: during the local cutaway segment, where we go to your local studio and see the Boy scouts and firemen answering phones, the 'GN folks announced the match challenge period from one of their big sponsors. As in, "Every pledge we receive during the next three minutes will be matched by our sponsor! $25 becomes $50! $50 becomes $100!"

All fine and dandy, but they demark this match challenge by shrinking the live picture into a corner so there's room for the sponsor's logo and a three-minute countdown clock and then...

• The live picture becomes jumpy and stuttery, like the picture-in-picture function on a TV set. But I'm sure this a special effect chosen by the production crew, because:
  
• Most of the live feed is now shown by the should-mounted news cameras, whose operators keep zooming in and out, tilting back and forth, panning way too fast, like a bunch of 13 year olds playing with a Fisher-Price Pixelvision. Maybe they think this effect will hypnotize us into calling in a pledge.
  
• Once the three minute countdown gets to about five seconds, they fade the clock off the screen for a few seconds, then fade it back in, and presto! It's starting again from three minutes. The same cheap trick they use on infomercials urging us to "call within the next ten minutes" for a "special offer" that's really being extended to anybody, anytime.
  
• To really get us in the mood to send in our money, during this match period they run a music bed that for the past 16 years has featured "Gonna make You Sweat" by C+C Music Factory played over… and over… and over. Does this 1990 chestnut stir anything in anybody's breast besides extreme ennui these days?

In the interest of disclosure, I have to admit that we did not phone in to pledge, so in some regards, we really don't have the right carp about it. We did, of course, throw some change in the fireman's boot here and there, but finances have kept us pretty tight these days. But the MDA telethon is after all, a landmark of our culture, and very soon that'll be gone, too.

I Spell My Name… Danger!

Catchup time. Should have written this a month back because I actually have a Mickey Spillane story. Rather, it's a story that Spillane told a lot, but it hasn't had much currency on the web yet. So here it is.

I saw Spillane at the 1995 Chicago Comics Convention (or as it's now known, WizardWorld Chicago. What was he doing at a comics convention? Well, it's well documented that Spillane got his start in comics (I believe it was Les Daniels' 1971 book "Comix" that reprinted one of his text filler stories from a 1940's Atlas comic). And it's known that his Mike Hammer character started out as an unsold comic called "Mike Danger." Well, that year, "Mike Danger" was seeing publication as a 40's gumshoe thrown into the future, courtesy of Tekno Comix, an imprint that was big on sci-fi comics "created" by big names (Gene Roddenberry, Leonard Nimoy, Isaac Asimov, John Jakes and Neil Gaiman) but scripted by others.

So to promote his comic, he was doing the convetion circuit. I saw him at a panel with Harlan Ellison. No doubt there was a third writer on the panel, but anybody sharing a panel with Harlan and Spillane is relegated to the "third Tenor" role. Whatever the title of the panel was, it should have been "An hour in a room with liquored-up Harlan Ellison and Mickey Spillane." I think you see where I'm leading.

So these old pros are regaling the audience with tales about writing cheap fiction back in the 1950's. Harlan goes on about a certain editor who wouldn't pay him for a published story until he hoisted a 50-pound office typewriter and threatened to cave said editor's head in. The crowd is heeding the warning in the convention program not to ask Harlan what the hell happened to "The Last Dangerous Visions." Following was Spillane's story. No way is this remembered monolgue verbatim, but the story only works told in the first person:

I'm in my editor's office and we're talking about mystery writing. At some point in the conversation, he wondered if it was possible to write a mystery novel that made no sense without the last paragraph. I said "I can write that." And I did.

So next the editor says "I'll bet a thousand dollars you can't write a mystery where the whole climax depends on the last word. I said, "You're on." I start the book, and a few weeks later, I mail him with manuscript, but I leave out the last word. A few days later, he calls me yelling "What was the word? What was the word?" I said, "Gimme my thousand bucks, you sonuvabitch!"

Hey, I may spoil a lot of things, but I won't spoil this one. If you don't know already, it's one of the Hammer books. I may read it myself if I ever have time for a whole novel.

Published again!

Yes, I do understand the rules of blogging. You've got to keep posting fresh stuff every day or so. Then people will come to read, then maybe they'll click the ad links. Maybe when we move to a new house I can find the time.

But now, I must finally make time to post this bit of personal news: I've been published! Yes, I not only play a writer on the blogosphere, but I do it in real life! And sometimes I even get paid -- just not this time.

Almost two years ago, one of my college professors, Dr. John Lawrence, e-mailed that he was co-editing a book on Star Wars fandom, and that he immediately thought of me. I've always thought of myself more as an unreconstructed Trekkie, so my ideal topic was the current fan backlash against the newer "prequel trilogy" films (cough! cough! *Jar-Jar*). As you can see from the link just to the right, the book has finally been published -- it was originally to come out during the original hype for "Revenge of the Sith," but here it is, some 9 months after the DVD came out, instead. Such is the academic publishing world. The fact that I kept sloughing off my article until I dragged myself kicking and screaming to its completion only a few weeks after deadline had nothing to do with its lateness. Just check out "Finding the Force of the Star Wars Franchise: Fans, Merchandise, & Critics." Both editors keep flattering me that my little humorous piece was worth the wait. You can see for yourself with this PDF preview of my article. But of course I need to strike now while the book is fresh, so I've signed on as an Amazon Associate so you can buy the book directly from this link and I get an eentsy commission. Because in this line of writing, your usual form of compensation is a contributor's copy (but I can tell you there's also a paperback edition there). Can you guess that I'm also sticking in as many links to other Amazon stuff as I can? You betcha!

Meantime, the editor remind me that they have their own blog about the book itself, at LiveJournal.com.

The Sailorman Returns!

Best news I could get on my birthday yesterday was the announcement that all parties concerned have finally reached an accord that will allow the complete library of classic Popeye cartoons to come out on home video, starting sometime next year.

Be it known that except for a few shorts which slipped into the public domain, there has never been a legitimate home video release of the Popeye shorts. In the 50s, Paramount sold its film library to Associated Artists Productions, which managed the TV rights (and was responsible for the "a.a.p." title card on every Popeye we saw on TV in the 60s). AAP was bought out by United Artists, which merged with MGM, which was bought by Ted Turner, who was then bought out by Time Warner. None of these various owners could bring out a home video release because King Features, owners of the original Popeye comic strip and thus its trademarks, claimed only they had the home video rights. Now everyone has gotten together, and Warners will have boxed sets in chronological order starting in 2007.

It's worth noting that the Popeye DVDs will apparently be in chronological order, starting with his guest appearance in a Betty Boop cartoon in 1933. Consider that the Fleischer studios had been around for 12 years already, and the first Popeye cartoons are considered as good as any other in the series. If the Looney Tunes DVDs were released chronologically, you'd have to slog through lots of Bosko, Buddy, Foxy and Goopy Gear (not to mention many forgettable Warner Music-published songs) before you find the first Porky Pig.

Some time ago, I wrote some new rules of Cartoon Physics which codified many of Popeye's spinach-powers "feats of strenkth." I realized that many of Popeye's visual gags were alive and well in the films of Hong Kong director Stephen Chow (Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle). There I've seen characters, through computer animation, take on the appearance of the names of their fighting stances: a giant bullfrog, or a Buddha's palm, or summon a Yin/Yang symbol in the air before them. Is it possible Chow might admit being influenced by Popeye cartoons (or more likely, the martial arts manga)? I can just see the script directions in a live-action Popeye movies:

Although his limbs are tied to each of four elephants trying to pull him apart, the Mysterious Sailor manages to rub the bowl of his corncob pipe across the front of his shirt, causing a can of spinach to appear from beneath his collar, where there was none before. With the can balanced precariously on his skinny chest, The Sailor takes a deep breath and exhales through his pipe, superoxygenating the embers inside until they emit a blue-hot welder's arc. Quickly the arc cuts away at the top of the can, and The Sailor shift ever so slightly so that the spinach inside falls directly into his mouth. as he chews, he meditates on his mantra, conveniently set to a sprightly musical ditty:

Ommm... Popeye the Sailor Man
Omm... Popeye the Sailor Man
I am what I am and that's all that I am
Omm... Popeye the Sailor Man

As he hears the music, he flexes his fists, causing his wrists, and amazingly, his ankles, too, to swell to five times their normal size, easily snappng the manacle binding him. The Mysterious Sailor then flexes his right arm. In his mind, he hears a double-time rendition of "The Stars and Stripes Forever," while we see a huge mass of muscle form on his pipecleaner forearm. Within the mightly bulge of his bicep, we see a squadron of fighter jets taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. The Mysterious Sailor faces his tormentors with a smile on his face. We know that his vengeance will be terrible indeed. and yet comical...

In death, I leave my resume.

This came from a thread on cartoonist Scott Shaw!s excellent Oddball Comics forum. I'm turning it into an e-mailable post. If this comes back to your in-box a year later, I'm to blame.

---

So, which writer was most concerned about his reputation after his death?

• Charles Dickens?

• Walt Whitman?

• Mark Twain?

• Ernest Hemingway?

• or Bob Kane?

Now, to be fair, some of the authors' simple markers are next to much bigger and showier monuments, or inside mausoleums. And we're not sure whether this was Kane's choice for a memorial. And sharing turf with Bob in Forest Lawn are more than a few celebrities whose markers resemble their resumes. Some people just want to make certain they're remembered after they're gone. Perhaps they've seen the example of friends who were forgotten.

Attention Radio DJs!

Today, over one thousand morning jocks will be playing drop-ins of dialogue from the movie Groundhog Day. Five hundred of them will play the same piece of dialog over and over after every song or commercial.

We get it. The movie was about a guy forced to live the same day over and over. It's already been thought of. So come up with something new.

And replaying your entire show the day after Groundhog Day has been done, too.

Headlines After Deadlines

Wednesday morning at work, all three newspapers sold in our dining room -- the  Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, and USAToday—had the story that the 13 miners trapped in the West Virginia coal mine had been rescued. I saw these after driving to work, hearing that there had in fact only been one survivor.

I thought at the time that these were, after all, the suburban editions, which had to be printed earlier for delivery, and by now the city editions would have the later tragic news. But they didn't. If there was ever an opportunity for an editor to yell "Stop the presses!" and get an Extra onto the streets, this was it. But most papers just left the error until they had to explain the physics of deadline pressures the next day.

There's a nifty site called the  Newseum which offers a view of the days front pages from around the world. If you go to their "Map View" you could have followed the progression of headlines west across time zones, from the Eastern papers with the erroneous report, to the California papers that "went to bed" later, and had time to run with the bad news.

You can also download that front page as a PDF to look at or print out. I found it very handy to get some nice decorations of front page stories of the White Sox World series victory, printed in color on fresh white paper.

But Mr. Pryor doesn't know YOU…

Richard Pryor is on an odd personal list of performers whom I like or admire, but I don't possess a single copy of their work. There are many reasons why I haven't bought a Pryor album. At first, it was because I just didn't enjoy hearing the kind of language he used on his routine (that's, there's little prude hidden beneath my Rabelaisian exterior). Then, when I was in college and playing novelty records on the radio, it's for sure I couldn't play any of his records on the air. By that point, Pryor had gone on to movies and concert films, and the last era for comedy albums had passed.

I liked Pryor in the movies I saw of him, realizing that, of course, he had just a poorly written character in "Superman III." But I knew that wasn't what he was famous for. Sometimes I'd catch one of his live standup movies on TV, but always on a basic cable channel where it'd be heavily censored.

Yet I was pretty well aware of his role in the history of comedy and to American culture.

Go figure.

(And here's a bit of trivia I learned from Mel Brooks' commentary on the "Blazing Saddles" DVD: It's well-known that Brooks wanted Pryor for the lead in the movie, but the studio balked because Pryor was a controversial figure. So Brooks had him co-write the script with him instead. According to Mel, Pryor wrote the funny bits for Mongo and other white chracters, while Brooks wrote most of the black characters, and the result is as you see on the screen.)

Another performer I admire but don't collect would be Willie Nelson. At first because I simply didn't like his chosen genre. Now it would be because I simply don't know how to jump in. Buy all the original albums or be satisfied with greatest-hits collections. And you'll notice nowadays that most veteran musical performers' greatest hits can be had in the form of one CD, 2 CDs, or a four CD box set. Then they come out with a new box set with a DVD included. It gives me a headache. Just when when I finally started buying Dylan on CD, and then they finally released remastered versions of the albums I'd just bought. Makes my widdle head spin.

Set Sail That Day for a Five Hour Tour… A Five Hour Tour!

Those reading this blog in the far distant future on Archive.org may remember Chicago's Rush Hour Blizzard of 2005. Planes sliding off the runway, snarl-ups all over the place. I found myself trying to get from Downers Grove to Park Forest during the worst of it.

I had already needed to stop off for an oil change along the way, so I finished that while still on Ogden Avenue in Downers (Click the title of this post for a map of my route). I was down to about two gallons of gas, but decided to just head out and get some miles under my belt before I stopped again, as it was still 3:30 pm and rush hour was just starting up. I tried to stay off the tollway because I'd heard it was already jammed up, and tried to make it along the older two-lane highways. Of course that was a bigger mistake, because any place where the major thoroughfares met, it would take up to 20 minutes to cross that last block to the intersection. Add to that any old diagonal highways meeting in a "six corner" (like Joliet Road, the old Rt. 66 in the southwest suburbs), and I was looking at half an hour just to traverse the width of a Jewel parking lot. Could have just stopped somewhere for dinner, but I would have been overstuffed or overserved, and traffic still wouldn't have cleared up.

I finally stopped for gas somewhere in Hickory Hills... I just managed to drive for three hours on only one gallon of gas. Another hour and five miles later, I had to park under a viaduct and get out to clear a snowdrift that had built up on my trunk just behind my rear window.

The end result was, I left work at 3 pm, and got home at 8 pm. Average speed: 8 miles per hour. Next moring, I got back to work only a little later than normal, and found that everyone else had the same horror stories.

In a time like that, best I can do is keep some favorite tunes in the car CD and console myself that every other driver on the road was having the same conniptions. And at least an errant 737 didn't hit me.

SOX WIN!!! SOX WIN!!!

Boy, the whole World Series came and went before I even had the time to write anything about it, mostly owing to a heavy, heavy deadline. Should I carp about Fox Sports dismissing the Astro's "homer" in Game 3 instead of replaying it five times a minute like they did for every bad call that went the Sox' way? And with failed president Bush in the crowd, too. Gues Fox Sports is every bit as "fair and Balanced" as Fox News.
Oh, wait, that was Neil Bush with Barbara Bush right behind home plate in Game 3. Jeb wanted to be there, but he had hurricane victims to ignore. GHW was there for Game 4, and got to take part in another big loss. Still, that has to rattle any pitcher looking to the batter and seeing a President behind him.

I cracked open a John's Generations White Ale to celebrate, because the White Sox, like this beer, had their origins in Iowa. Yes, 110 years ago, Charles Comiskey started managing the Sioux City Cornhuskers of the Western League.

Of course now I feel silly about claiming the Sox would win in six, but at least I haven't had money on it. I was sitting up waiting and holding my breath because now matter how well they are doing… THIS… IS… CHICAGO… BASEBALL… It would have been just like us to find a way to fail after getting just one out away from the World Championship. But no, the Sox put togehter a whole string of wacky plays: Pierzynski steals first! Uribe goes into the stands to snag a pop foul (no Bartman in this stadium)! And game 3 becomes the longest World Series game in history, Mark Buerhle, a starting pitcher, gets a save in relief, and Ozzie runs through everybody in the roster but for Pablo Ozuna (apparently, this utility infield was being saved to pitch in caseit went to 15 innings). I know "Ginderball" was just an advertising phrase made up by the Sox agency, but that describes exactly how they broke an eighty-seven year World Series drought!

Separated at the Inkpot

All right, I'm seriously behind on a paper about "Star Wars" that I had promised over a year ago, but having just re-watched "The Phantom menace," I must get this out of the way:

Sebulba

Dick Dastardly

Surely other people have commented on this. Sebulba did absolutely nothing in the movie that Dastrdly didn't do in "Wacky Races." And Sebulba was no Paul Winchell, either.

Keywords: New Orleans Katrina Hurricane Red Cross

The theory is that if I use the words New Orleans and Hurrican Katrina and Disaster enough, the ads above me will show links that you can click on to donate money... without my having to spend anything. Or maybe you'll be told that just clicking on an ad banner somewhere will bill the advertiser money that will be earmarked for hurricane relief in New Orleans and Mississippi (there, I've said it again!), and you can do it all without breaking into your checkbook.

And I'm not naming the supplier of the ad bar above, because then all the ads in it might be for "services" to make your business appear on the first page of any search results.

These are examples of "slacktivism," a term not coined by, but referenced in snopes.com, the site devoted to debunking urban legends. Other examples include displaying magnetic ribbons and rubber bands, signing on-line petitions, forwarding e-mails, especially those suggesting you not buy gasoline on a certain day to protest high gas prices (If you have to buy gas nearly every day, you're the reason prices are high in the first place!!!), or sending business cards to some sickly child who wants to set a World Record (that was years ago, he's all grown up and doesn't want 'em any more).

I'm guitly of this very same practice. I spend 50¢ more for fair trade coffee and feel good know that the extra pennies will make a difference in the lives of small coffee growers around the world. And I've sent along the form letters to my elected representatives to let them know my agreement on some issue I've been e-mailed about (yeah! Stickin' it to the man!).
Most of the time, though, when faced with the enormity of some problem like disaster relief or world poverty, it seems that even sending money or volunteering hours doesn't make the problem any nearer to going away. So you might as well make a symbolic gesture.

BTW, it appears that even though I don't use the b-word in my posts, its presence in the sidebars is enough to trigger ads for you to get your own, um, online diaries.

And since I have made a monetary contribution through the Faithful America site, I can, as a slacktivist, claim that gives me the right to make these tasteless jokes:

New shows for the fall season: Gilligan's Superdome and Survivor: French Quarter.

What's the difference between Iraq and Hurricane Katrina?
Bush admits that Katrina was a disaster.

(And it seems the Army Corps of Engineers was working to shore up those levees in New Orleans. The project ended too soon because its funding was diverted to pay for Bush's tax cut for the rich, and the war on Iraq. Bet'cher glad we got rid of all those WMD's now!)