This is for those of you are sitting home wishing you could experience the "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyland. WARNING: Viewing this video will cause that song to reverberate in your head for a very long time. I'm still hearing it from the one and only time I rode through th … | Continue reading
Comedian John Regis died last night at the age of 94. He'd been living for some time at the L.A. Veterans Home and he recently took a bad fall there. I'm told John had a very distinguished military career — he was in the Air Force for nine years — but I never heard him [...]Read … | Continue reading
Sergio is fine. Just picking up a few things that fell over. [...]Read More... from Earthquake in Ojai | Continue reading
I've become a huge fan of Adriana DeBose. Wanna know why? Just listen to her belt this song from the show Wicked… [...]Read More... from Today's Video Link | Continue reading
It must gall a lot of super-right-wingers to see Donald Trump indicted, arraigned and generally treated like a criminal on the way to the slammer. Most of them fantasized about this scene, of course. They just wanted it to be Hillary Clinton. They wouldn't have called it "Weaponi … | Continue reading
From the 2/11/95 episode of Saturday Night Live: Here's host-for-that-night Bob Newhart performing one of his monologues… [...]Read More... from Today's Video Link | Continue reading
The indictment. I read excerpts the last two days but I decided I oughta read the whole thing. I'm no expert on the drafting of legal papers but this seems clean, direct and filled with evidence — most of it from Trump's Republican colleagues — to convince almost anyone that it's … | Continue reading
What kind of tree is this? Is there an expert on trees out there who can tell me what kind of tree this is? I would like to know what kind of tree this is. Thank you in advance if you know what kind of tree this is and you write and tell me what [...]Read More... from Name That T … | Continue reading
Comic-Con has instituted a few belt-tightening measures to make up (a little) for the money they lost during the COVID shutdown (a lot) and one of those measures is to no longer print the souvenir book. It's now available only as a downloadable PDF. This is good because it means … | Continue reading
Hey, do you own a good condition copy of the Marvel Super-Heroes Special #1 from 1966? Wanna loan it to someone for a prestigious event? A friend of mine is assembling an exhibit at Comic-Con next week and needs to borrow a copy. This friend is utterly trustworthy and will treat … | Continue reading
"Uncle Jimmy" Weldon (as he liked to be called) died last Thursday at the age of 99. Folks around my age who grew up in Los Angeles remember him as the host of Cartooneroony — I don't guarantee that spelling — a Monday-Friday afternoon kid show on KCOP Channel 13 locally. It was … | Continue reading
The good news is it that we're cautiously optimistic that Turner Classic Movies is going to more-or-less stay the Turner Classic Movies it's always been. And the further good news is that there's no good news for Donald Trump who just sinks deeper and deeper into that hole he ins … | Continue reading
The Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles — affectionately called "The New Bev" by many — is running a 35mm Technicolor print of my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on the evening of Sunday, July 16. So will I be there to see it for the umpteen gazillionth time? Probably n … | Continue reading
…so I didn't watch much of the news coverage of Trump's arraignment at the federal courthouse in Miami. I guess I figured I could miss this one because there'll be a couple more before long. What I guess I find fascinating about this story is how unsupported "his side" of the sto … | Continue reading
One of the all-time great comic artists, John Romita, has died at the age of 93. The son of a banker, he grew up in Brooklyn and broke into the comic book field in 1949, working primarily for the company now known as Marvel. Heavily influenced by Milton Caniff and a half-dozen ot … | Continue reading
Back in 2004 on his CBS show, David Letterman got himself into a little scuffle with CNN and the White House of George W. Bush. I admired the hell out of Dave when he was on NBC, in particular for his skill at connecting with his audience and finding humor in places where no one … | Continue reading
Someone — it was probably me — once said that Burnie Mattinson worked for Disney so long, he made Jiminy Cricket look like a recent hire. Actually, he started there right outta high school and worked on everything the animation department did after that — or at least everything g … | Continue reading
Someone named Laura assembled this nice little montage of clips from my favorite TV show. All I know about her is that she used Adobe Premiere to do it… [...]Read More... from Today's Video Link | Continue reading
This post is not about the guilt or innocence of Donald Trump in the Classified Documents matter. Not really. It's about all the messages and articles and conversations and such I see about how solid or not solid the case against him is. It was revealed today that — well, you pro … | Continue reading
David Peattie has a comics related question that he's hoping I can answer even though it has nothing to do with Jack Kirby… I have a comics related question I'm hoping you can answer even though it has nothing to do with Jack Kirby. In the Golden Age Plastic Man stories I've seen … | Continue reading
There are a lot of YouTube Lawyers online giving people very bad legal advice about things like how you don't need a driver's license if you aren't engaged in commerce, in which case you really aren't driving, you're traveling and your car is not a motor vehicle. Stuff like that. … | Continue reading
I'll get back to the topic of Western Publishing and its panel borders soon, I promise. Right now, we start with this question from Mark Palko… One of the dirty little secrets of Netflix, et al. is that, despite all the hype, viewers spend most of their time watching older shows … | Continue reading
I will be the guest live this evening at 6:30 PM (West Coast time) on the San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog Podcast. If the show's in progress as you read this, it'll appear in the window below. After the show's over, it'll replay in the window below. Ain't modern technology am … | Continue reading
My old pal Pat O'Neill sent me this the day after this year's Tony nominations were announced… The Tony nominations were announced yesterday and the ceremony is scheduled for June 11, to be broadcast by CBS. If the WGA strike is still going on that date (as most seem to be predic … | Continue reading
On this blog, I often tell you about talented people I know…and I know a lot of them. One of my more interesting friends is the international performance artist, Ptychka…a person who does so many things, it's hard to put them into any one category. Ptychka writes, she acts, she m … | Continue reading
My Great Interrogator, Brian Dreger, writes to interrogate me thusly… I am re-reading the DC Archive editions of the Legion of Superheroes (I find these old stories charming with their simplistic storylines, and I love this eras artwork). But on the inside page with the copyright … | Continue reading
Well, now that I'm officially on strike, let me say a few things. This is my fifth strike since I joined the Writers Guild in 1976. For the record, the previous four were in 1981, 1985, 1988 and 2007. The issues were different in each strike but in a sense, they were all the same … | Continue reading
Here's a short clip of John Mulvaney saying something that I believe is very true… [...]Read More... from Today's Video Link | Continue reading
I've gotten this question a lot in the last week: Will the Writers Guild go on strike when its contract expires on May 1? Here's the best answer I can give you at this time… A strike has long seemed probable. It became a tad less probable when the membership voted 97.85% to autho … | Continue reading
My pal Lee Goldberg is a fine writer of mystery novels and scripts. Once upon a time, he wrote a screenplay that was to star Dame Edna and if you click on over to Lee's site, he'll tell you all about it. [...]Read More... from Go Read It! | Continue reading
Jordan Klepper hosted The Daily Show last week and I thought he did a really good job. I dunno if the folks at Comedy Central are viewing the new "host-of-the-week" rotation as auditions for a permanent M.C. or it they've decided to go the Saturday Night Live route and change eve … | Continue reading
It's 86 days until Comic-Con International convenes in San Diego. I'm starting to plan what I'm going to be doing there and if you're going, you shouldn't wait too long. Planning Ahead is key to an enjoyable convention experience. Plan when you're going, how you're going to get t … | Continue reading
Sorry for no posting today. It's been busy around here. Yesterday in this spot, I linked you to a 1967 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show…the cast of the original Broadway production of Hair performing two numbers from that landmark show. My pal Vinnie Favale, who worked on Davi … | Continue reading
A person who asked to remain anonymous sent me this… You recently mentioned how thrilled you were to see your name in print for the first time in a comic book letter column. I'm fairly certain that you're referencing the attached that appeared in Aquaman #28 in 1966. Having to sp … | Continue reading
Apparently, one feature of getting to be as old as Al Jaffee is that everyone in the news business has your obit pre-written. I was amazed how swiftly they appeared today. I call your attention to the ones in The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, The Associated Press and Ro … | Continue reading
In the last years of his life, Buster Keaton appeared in any number of films, commercials and TV shows that were not wonderful. In 1963, he starred in The Triumph of Lester Snapwell, a 21-minute promotional film for the Kodak company. It's basically a history of amateur photograp … | Continue reading
So you don't feel neglected while I tend to other matters, here's a replay of a column than ran here on September 16, 2013. It's the story of one of my father's several heart attacks — not his first and not his last. It's another one of those… I was just getting out of the [...]R … | Continue reading
Back in 2005 here, we lamented the then-imminent closing of Tail o' the Pup, an iconic hot dog stand here in Los Angeles. It did indeed close soon after that post and the stand itself went into storage somewhere. There were many reports about it being about to reopen here or ther … | Continue reading
The reviews are in for the just-opened Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd with Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford and for the most part, they're raves. Now I really have to get back there to see it. [...]Read More... from Attend the Tale Soon | Continue reading
I needed a place to sit down for a while and Marv Wolfman was away from his table so I've been sitting here for a while signing his name on things. So far, I've signed it on 23 copies of Tomb of Dracula, 17 copies of Teen Titans, one Adventures of Superman, four promissory notes … | Continue reading
One of the nicest men I've met in comics, Joe Giella, passed away peacefully yesterday at the age of 94. His career in comics started in or around 1945 and he worked for Hillman, Fawcett and Timely before settling in to a more-or-less steady stream of work for DC Comics in 1949. … | Continue reading
We've been talking a lot here lately about Phil Silvers so my pal Bob Elisberg suggested I feature this video here. In 1967 — on a budget that looks like it was around $19.67 — a TV version of the musical Damn Yankees was produced for NBC. It starred Mr. Silvers as Mr. Applegate … | Continue reading
Here's a helluva find. This is color footage of Johnny Carson's monologue from The Tonight Show for Friday, August 24, 1964. To put this into context, Johnny started on that show on October 1, 1962 so he was in his second year. The show in those days was an hour and 45 minutes pe … | Continue reading