I Doughnut Know What All The Fuss Is About!

As I’ve mentioned a few times here, I go to the Los Angeles Country Fair every year. Well, this isn’t a life-long habit, but more one that started when I moved to La Verne ten years ago. La Verne is in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, just a few miles from Pomona where the fair is held. I love the county fair environment I think that is from my upbringing.

I was raised in Muscoy, an unincorporated area of San Bernardino County, just outside of the city of San Bernardino. Berdoo, as those who live there have been known to call it, is celebrated for only a few things: Frank Zappa wrote a song about it; the Hells Angels motorcycle gang was founded there; it has been the drug-trafficking capital of Southern California more times than anyone would like to admit; the first McDonald’s was built there by the McDonald brothers; and each year the National Orange Show is held there. I grew up going to the Orange Show every year; it was a part of my life.

My brother Keith scared me shitless on the double Ferris Wheel at the Orange Show. Keith and I spent hours looking at the model cars at the hobby show at the Orange Show, I went down my first Giant Slide at the Orange Show, drank my first Orange Julius, saw my first stock car race, saw the Circus of the Fantastic (a sideshow with sword swallowers and fire eaters and the human pin cushion), spent hours watching the caricature artists, road my first roller coaster all at the Orange Show.

My brother Keith and I were in the 4H club; Keith raised a lamb and grew vegetables and I baked cookies and made lamps and all of our endeavors were entered into competition at the Orange Show. My lamp was so good it won a special award (a set of socket screwdrivers that I had for years). Like I said, I love the county fair environment (though the Orange Show was not the County Fair, it was the same breed of animal).

I don’t make it back to San Bernardino for the Orange Show anymore, but I do go to the LA County Fair. This may sound odd, but one of the reasons I love going to LA County Fair each year is to eat something strange.

This started two years ago when I tried deep-fried Twinkies and deep-fried Oreo Cookies. Neither impressed me much; the Twinkie was mushier than I expected with a heavy sauce that detracted from the taste of the Twinkie and the Oreo was even worse. But they whetted my appetite for the next strange food. Last year we tried deep-fried Snickers Bars. Now this is a winner! It looks like a corn dog sprinkled with powered sugar, but the batter is much sweeter. The Snickers is a molten mass of chocolate and caramel and nuts. They are heavenly. This year I tried the Krispy Kreme Chicken Sandwich. I kid you not.

The Krispy Kreme Chicken Sandwich is a fried chicken patty with a slice of cheese wrapped by a large Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut. In concept, this should be a winner, but the reality leaves something to be desired. I think the idea is great. I have a theory that really great, addicting food can be made with the combination of sugar and fat (think chocolate) and a fried chicken sandwich in a doughnut fits quite well with my theory. The problem the Krispy Kreme Chicken Sandwich has is that the chicken sandwich is horrible. It's a small, flat clump of flaked-and-formed chicken dipped in batter and deep fried. It needs real chicken, or at least better chicken, 'cause the idea works for me just like chicken and waffles.

Years ago my brother-in-law and his wife lived in Hollywood, just northeast of the intersection of Sunset and Gower. On Gower, just a half block above Sunset was a little place called Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles. It took them a few years to get up the nerve to go there, but one night they saw Los Angeles Laker basketball stars leaving the place with huge bags of food and climbing into a limousine and they thought, "Ah, what the heck, if it's good enough for Kareem we ought to give it a try." They became addicted.

Roscoe's serves amazing fried chicken and extraordinary waffles, and they serve them on the same plate, together. And they are a wonderful treat for your taste buds and as addictive as chocolate. Once you bite into the sweet waffle, drenched in maple syrup and the hot seasoned chicken, the fat juices dripping off and coating your fingers, you will be hooked too. It's fat and it's sugar together, the two things your body craves in one tasty meal. It is also some of the best fried chicken I have ever eaten and that is where the Krispy Kreme Chicken Sandwich falls flat on its face.

Maybe by next year they will have perfected the sandwich by using a decent piece of chicken. I will be looking for it. Oh, the guy in the picture is Charlie Boghosian, creator of the Krispy Kreme Chicken Sandwich and the Deep-Fried Twinkie and the Deep-Fried Oreo.

The Dreamer of Muscoy

My childhood was not exactly normal (which may explain a few things about how I turned out). In fact, I can with great assurance say that I did things during my childhood that very, very few other children ever did.

I grew up in the community of Muscoy California, an unincorporated section of San Bernardino County, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles and in that community there was a barber, but not your average barber. Douglas Q. McMasters was one of a kind. He seemed rather bohemian: he had a beard and smoked a pipe and he played guitar. Doug swore that he could astral project and taught by older brother Jack how to do it (I'll go into this in detail at a later time, I promise). Doug was also a hypnotist and a damn good one. But the thing Doug liked to do most was solve problems.

You give Doug a problem and he would come up with a solution for it. He designed a phone that could only make local calls, an emergency big rig braking system that could stop a runaway truck on an icy road in a perfect straight line. He invented packing foam that he sold to a national moving company (I remember we used to play football with a cut-open ball that had a raw egg inside incased in Doug's foam). He designed a jump suit that you could wear to survive jumping out of a plane without a parachute. The more he thought about airplane crashes the more Doug thought the airplane was poorly designed, so he came up with his own design for an aircraft, one that could not be crashed.

Doug’s initial prototype was a square cardboard box set in the center of a hula hoop. He wrapped the whole thing in plastic wrap creating a saucer shape and then spent the afternoon up on his roof throwing the thing at the ground. No matter how hard he threw it, he could not crash it into the ground; it would swoop back and forth falling gently like a leaf.

Next Doug built a toy model of his flying saucer using an engine from a gas-propelled Stuka that my brother and I had. It flew like a bat out of hell!

Doug talked people in the neighborhood into putting money into his “saucer” craft and formed a corporation. My family was poor and we could not put up any money, so for a stake in the company my Dad offered to build the saucer. My Dad would take me at night to a barn where the saucer was being built and while he and Doug went over blueprints and modifications, I would climb up into the cockpit, grab a hold of the joystick and let my fantasies run wild. The cockpit sat directly on top of the airplane engine, the prop aimed down at the ground. The body of the craft was made of aluminum tubing and the skin was made of parachute silk, painted silver.


Once construction of the “craft” was completed, Doug kept the saucer at his home, sometimes in his back yard and sometimes in a lot next door. He had to chain the thing to the ground, not only for security, but because the thing had a tendency to take off during the Santa Ana winds. The first time this happened the saucer was in Doug’s backyard and by morning was in his front yard, having flown over the house during the night. That's me by the way standing to the left of the saucer; my brother Larry is manning the cockpit.

I remember the day that NASA came out to Doug’s house to see the saucer fly. It had a few bugs in it still and got no more than a foot or two off the ground. That was the only time I saw the craft fly at all. There is a lot more to this story, but I think I will save it for a later date. I'll leave you with a page from Doug's patent.

Peron! Peron! Peron!

Watching the news lately and remembering things from the recent past that some seem to have forgotten, I am astounded at how much Bush and his party sound like Juan Peron from the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice opera Evita. It's almost like Tim Rice was writing Bush speeches these days...

We can start with this video clip of Herr Bush.

It's annoying that we have to fight elections for our cause

The inconvenience, having to get a majority

Add to that Bush's demand that he be allowed to torture "enemy combatants," which could just as easily be me and you as Al Qaeda terrorists

If normal methods of persuasion fail to win us applause
There are other ways of establishing authority

There are the Diebold voting machines which are so easily rigged...

We have ways of making you vote for us

Then there are the voter ID cards...

Or at least of making you abstain

All I can say is this November vote like your life and all the freedoms you hold dear are at stake, because the just might be.

Not To Be Missed!

On Friday night I took my son Brian to see Grand Funk Railroad and the Doobie Brothers at the L.A. County Fair. I was supposed to take my wife, but Dayle is in Phoenix where her brother had surgery last week for a massive subdural hematoma that nearly killed him. I really wanted my wife to see the bands, but it was not to be... or was it?

Yesterday her brother's friend Steve shows up in Phoenix and someone mentions that Dayle has missed seeing Grand Funk and the Doobies. Steve says, "Hey, the Doobies are playing in town tonight and I'm very good friends with their manager." A quick phone call later and he has two free tickets for the show.

On Friday night I called my wife from the concert as the Doobies were playing Listen to the Music. Last night she called me as they were playing Long Train Running. The current DBs have their original lead singer Tom Johnson back with the band and they sound great!

They have three original members: Drummer Michael Hossack, guitarist Tom Johnston and guitarist Pat Simmons. But John McFee (guitar and strings) is also with the band and though not "original," he joined in the late seventies, he is definitely one of the guys I remember from the Doobies.

I wanted to take my wife to see them; their show is not to be missed, and she didn't!

My Newest Sticker

What this should really read is "Support the Torture of American Soldiers: Vote Republican," but I can't get it to fit on a bumper sticker. These are the Christian values the Republicans profess to embody? I guess I never read the Bible closely enough.

This administration argues for the rights, the rights to torture people in your name. They argue for this right because come Monday we will find out that they have already tortured people in your name in secret CIA prisons they claimed did not exist but now have admitted to, and they want to desperately cover their evil asses. The terrorist have won; the United States has become a rogue state and those who supported the Texas scum infesting the White House are complicit in their inhumane deeds. They are pure evil and if you support them, you support evil.

Miami Twice

A number of things have occurred in the past week or two to make me take a second look at CSI: Miami. When I first looked a this show, I spoke of just how awful it was; just how badly written and poorly acted the entire series was. So where could I be going now? Why would I come back for a second critical look? Well, three reasons really.

First, last week the A&E Network began running the show five nights a week, beginning with the first season, 2003. Out of curiosity I peeked in and what I found was shocking: it's good! For that first season CSI: Miami was really a good show. No over-acting hammy shit from star David Caruso. No suspects confessing at the drop of a hat. Real forensic work leading to the solving of crimes. No "baby girl, baby boy" shortcut to characterization nonsense, just good scripts being well executed. Like I said: shocking! If you get a chance to catch some of the first season, I think you'll like it.

The second reason for looking at this show again was an article in the Los Angeles Times that ran this week. It spoke of the show's season opener, which was filmed partly in Brazil, and how appropriate that was as the show has become a world-wide phenomenon. CSI: Miami is now the most watched U.S. television show in the world, seen by more the 50 million people each week. The article states:

"CSI: Miami" is the No. 9 show in the U.S. But it's the top-rated U.S. show in France, Italy and Germany and ranks second in Portugal and the Netherlands. Among dramas, it is No. 2 in Spain, No. 3 in Canada and Britain, and No. 7 in Australia.

Unless the rest of the world is watching three-year-old episodes, I just don't get it. But, with an open mind, I watched the first episode of the 2006 season, which is...

The third reason for this second look at this third-rate show. Ah, CSI: Miami, what a breath of stale air you are! Cheesy, laughable dialog, ham-bone over-the-top acting, cliches instead of characterization, plot twists you can see coming from across a football stadium, plot holes you can drive a large semi through, suspects confessing at the drop of a sombrero! This show has it all!!!!

A few scattered observations:

• For a show set in Rio there was an obvious omission of women in thongs. I guess this is the result of the Gestapo tactics employed by the FCC, which is turning American TV into a bland, vanilla wasteland. This is just downright insulting.
• I have noticed that I don't really mind all the shots of David Caruso's carrot-top hair blowing in the wind, but the shots of his eyebrows fluttering in the breeze are starting to seriously creep me out.
• When you only show one suspect for a crime they have to be the one who did it. You can't pull someone out of nowhere (in this case a house painter you didn't know was there) and suddenly say "they did it." Actually, in typical CSI: Miami style, the house painter is the one who says he did it. He confesses when they tell him that an electronic nose detected that house paint had been near the victim. I'd be laughing if this show didn't consider that great plot acceleration.
• Even if they are supposed to be the "good guys," the stars of a show are not allowed to go to another country and murder people.
• You are not allowed to prolong a plot by not speaking what has to be said. In this episode they do just that; Horatio has an opportunity to tell someone something that will stop the plot in its tracks, but instead says, "We need to talk," giving the character an opportunity to leave rather than hear the truth. But then again, piss-poor writing is the hallmark of this show.

If you haven't seen the episode yet, I'm going to give away something that should be obvious after the first five minutes of the show, Horatio's brother is killed by the bad guys (believe me, you see it coming way before it happens), and Caruso is standing over his dead body all alone, posing for the camera, hands on hips, pushing back the coat and as he turns and walks away he mutters, "I love you" to his dead brother. It's so ineptly done I almost fell off the couch.

I'll be catching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip from now on.

Stuck inside of Mobile with the New PC blues again

Well, I am writing this from my new PC. It's a Dell XPS 410, their new "hot box." Surprisingly inexpensive in it's standard configur- ation, but I don't do "standard configurations."

My reason for getting this new box was the death of my last PC, a Sony VAIO I had for about four years. Still not sure what is wrong with the old box, but once I get this one set up I will have some time to deal with it. My VAIO died a horrible death four months ago when I was really in the middle of it with my son, so much so that I was hardly functioning. So instead of getting it fixed I moved to my wife's PC, but it soon died. So, I moved to my Dell laptop and have been using it since then.

I lost a lot of stuff on my VAIO hard drive, some artwork I had spent the better part of two years working on and a lot of writing, so when I looked for a new PC I wanted security of data. Dell offers dual hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration, one the mirror of the other. If one dies the other still works and has all of your data on it. So, my new Dell has two 320GB hard drives.

I do a lot of graphics on my PC so the more RAM I have the better. I splurged for 2GB of RAM and could upgrade to 4GB if I ever need it. It has the newest Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor, an NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE graphics card, a 16X DVD-ROM, a 16X DVD+/-RW drive, a 13-in-1 Media Card Reader, a Creative Labs X-Fi Sound Card and the big splurge, a 24-in 2407FPW Wide Aspect Digital Flat Panel Display.

When I buy the PC they say I should have it in a week or two. When I get my email confirmation, it says I will get it in seven weeks. A later email extends that to eight weeks. This does not make me happy, but I've had this problem with Dell before. In 1995 I bought a Dell Dimension 120 right after PC Magazine, PC World and Byte all declared it the best Windows 95 PC. I waited almost two months for that PC to arrive.

So after the long wait, it arrives early Wednesday morning. I work from home (currently on the Dell laptop), utilizing VPN to access the company's network and then using Remote Desktop to access my PC at work. This all works surprisingly well. So I am working and setting up the PC at the same time, doing the PC setup whenever I catch a break from work (compiling code or running long queries, etc.). What I mean is, my full attention is not really being given to setting up the PC. I get the hardware all together and rearrange my desk to allow for a 24-inch monitor. I also cleared out about 10 years worth of computer jetsam: cables, transformers, switch boxes, wiring, microphones, etc. that lapped up around my PC and entangled itself in a twisted mass behind my desk.

While working I let the system set itself up, turning on whatever it wanted (virus protection, Windows Update, etc.). To facilitate this I had to connect the PC to my wireless network. At some point one or more of these programs wanted to reboot my PC, so I let them. In response I got the Windows blue screen of death!

Not happy, I rebooted and went into Windows Safe Mode, figuring that maybe something was amiss with the driver that allows for the 1920x1200 resolution on the screen (it is an amazing monitor). I booted up, reset my screen resolution back to something reasonable and did a shutdown/restart. Blue screen of death. Back to Safe Mode. Blue screen of death. Normal Mode. Blue screen of death. Safe Mode. Blue screen of death.

Now I'm really not happy. I locate the special tech support number for XPS machines and call Dell. I get a really nice guy who walked me through a number of things, none of which helped. We even tried to reload the system to its original configuration and that failed. He had me boot to the special diagnostic partition that all Dell PCs have and start running the hard drive tests, since he figures the problem has to be with the hard drives. I remind him that I have two 320GB hard drives and he gives me his direct number and says, "call me back when you are done with the diagnostics." He also says I should run the "Windows Blue Screen" diagnostics as well. It is 5:00PM when I start the HD diagnostics. They finished at a little before 1:00 the next morning.

Later that same morning I ran the blue screen diagnostics (which just so happen to also have in them the HD diagnostics). I start them at 7:00AM. They finish at 10:00PM. I've now run 23 hours of diagnostics on my new PC. It has passed every test. "Fuck it!" I say and reboot one more time. This time I tell it to go back to the last configuration that Windows knows worked.

My PC has been running ever since, even after a number of reboots just to be safe.

One of the things I remember Windows Update installing was the Windows Genuine Advantage Notification tool, a "feature" from Microsoft that ensures you have paid for your copy of Windows. This "tool" may be the culprit, because it wants to install it again now that I have reset my machine. I don't think I am going to let it.

I'm slowly adding software to the new box and will add some hardware (WinTV and my new Wacom Intuos 3 tablet) this weekend, crossing my fingers the whole time. I'm also going to set up my emails, I have a bunch of them, in Outlook and see how many I have gotten over the past five months (so if you wrote me an email in the last four to five months, I didn't get it yet!). Wish me luck!

Idiocracy

Run don't walk to your neighborhood theater and see Mike Judge's Idiocracy, that is, if it is showing in your neighborhood. It might not be and if it is, you most likely don't know about it since it has a advertising budget of $0. Not even newspaper ads folks, nothing. Really sad too because though not as good as Judge's Office Space, Idiocracy has a lot to say about America and the dumbing down of society.

It's a science fiction tale of a one-year cryogenic suspension experiment gone wrong. Mr. absolutely average, Luke Wilson, wakes up 500 years from now to find out the human race has been taken over by trailer-park idiots and he is now the smartest person in America. It's lewd, it's crude and it's funny. The laughs would have been bigger if they didn't hit so close to modern reality.

How dumb is America? Everyone is starving because of a food shortage. Crops don't seem to grow anymore now that the FDA was bought by a sports drink company and some sort of Gator-Aid is being used to water the crops. The #1 movie in the country is Ass, one and a half hours of a guy's ass farting. It won eight Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay.

There are still Starbucks on every corner, only now they serve hand-jobs, not coffee. Carl's Jrs motto is no long, "Don't bother me, I'm eating," it's now "Fuck You! I'm eating!" Fuddruckers name has changed. First is was Buddruckers, then Buttnuckers and now it's just plain old ButtFuckers.

According to Wikipedia, the film has only been released in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Toronto, Chicago and three cities in Mike Judge's home state of Texas--Dallas, Houston, and his hometown Austin.

But if you can, see it while you can and pray you don't live in a country where the president is a WWE wrestler/porn star. It's bad enough living in a state where the people were idiot enough to elect a two-bit actor governor (geeze, we did that twice; once in the 60's [whatever happened to THAT hack] and now again in the 2000's).

The Heart of the Matter

This evening my wife and I saw Heart perform for the first time. It's been 30 years since Dreamboat Annie was released, but the Wilson sisters are still in fine musical form. Anne's voice is just as big and impressive as ever, and oh, can Nancy play guitar.

It was an interesting set they played; mostly Heart Top Ten hits, but they strayed from that from time to time. Near the end of the set they played an amazing version of The Who's Love Reign O'er Me. They followed it with two Led Zeppelin tunes, as only the Wilson sisters could do them. It seems for 30 years now they have been trying to be the next Led Zeppelin, even in their other persona, the Lovemongers.

I remember the first time I heard the Lovemongers' version of of Zeppelin's Battle of Evermore. I was truely impressed. If you've never heard it, have a listen. You have to listen to a very short commercial first, but after that I think you will like.

Lovemongers - Battle Of Evermore
Music Video Codes By Music Video Code

Things That Might Have Been

One of the many things I am known for is the site listed to my right, the Art of Don Newton. Don was a professional comic book artist for about nine years in the 70s and 80s. Don was one of my favorite artists. I first encountered Don's work years before he became a pro, when he produced a prodigious amount of artwork for comic book fanzines. Don was really THE fanzine artist, producing hundreds of illustrations for dozens of fan publications. A lot of fanzine art was crap, but Don's art was something you could study and learn from. No small part of my early style was gleamed from looking at Don Newton artwork.

It was fun to watch a guy grow in the ranks of fandom and then slowly make it as a professional, first at Charlton Comics and then at DC and Marvel. After Charlton folded Don mainly worked for DC, spending six years drawing Batman and three years drawing Captain Marvel and Aquaman. At DC Don also drew The New Gods, The Brave and the Bold, Green Lantern, the Vigilante, Blackhawks, Hawkman, and Infinity Inc.

But there was a time when Don wanted to work for Marvel. He sold Marvel a single painting for Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, but he also tried to sell them other paintings, beginning with a cover for The Rampaging Hulk. It was not to be; there were some at Marvel who did not appreciate Don's style, who thought Don did not belong there. The cover above is not real; it is a mock-up I created of what might have been had Don found a more receptive audience at Marvel. It is based on the painting Don tried to sell to Marvel in 1976, a painting which I own and love and which has a place of honor on the wall in my office.

I love the painting and think it makes a great cover. Too bad there were people at Marvel who did not feel the same. Had he sold this second painting, who knows how long his career as a painter might have lasted, what masterpieces he might have produced. Ah, the things that might have been....

The One and Only

A few weeks ago I wrote about the problems I was having with my Sony Cyber-shot DCS-P92 and how I had discovered that there are a large number of Sony products out there with defective CCD components. On the 21st of August I shipped the camera to Sony using a pre-paid UPS label from Sony that I printed at home. OK, it wasn't exactly free; I did have to pay $5.00 to Staples for a box and wrapping it securely, but that was it.

On August 29th I received email from the Sony Repair Center in Texas that they had received my camera and today UPS delivered my repaired camera to me. It took someone suing Sony to get them to repair this stuff for free, so they may not have willingly done the right thing, but they did do the right thing none-the-less.

If you have a Sony product that is causing you problems, visit the www.sony.com and look for "repairs." I think it may just be worth your while.

One for the Ages

Another amazing display of guts. Another astounding display of tennis. For 21 years now Andre Agassi has been treating us tennis fans to a show.

OK, maybe not for 21 years; that's just the length of his career. But for a good number of years Andre has been showing us what it means to be a champion and what it means to be a man.

Yeah, sure, he started out as the brash, "image is every thing" court smart-ass, but over the years, we have watched him grow from that young kid into quite a man. He has won over $30 million in his career. What do you do when you're rich? Well, if you're part of the George Bush set, you hoard your money, only using it to make more money or to buy power; you become the ugly American at home personified. If you're Andre Agassi however, you use your fortune to help those less fortunate than you.

You start and personally fund the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy. That's a long way from marrying Brooke Shields. But I digress.

In the last tournament of his career Andre has now put on two exhibitions of tennis magic, two stunning three-and-half-hour-plus displays of the intelligence of the mature player defeating the strength and energy of the young. If you haven't been watching the US Open, you've been missing history.

But it's not too late. Agassi takes the court again in the third round on Saturday. Can he do it again? Can his agonizing back hold together one more time? Can it hold together five more times to get him into the finals? Only time will tell, but I think the 23,000 who watched him last night in New York are all rooting for it.

I know I am.

I Know Ruinous sir, and you are no...Oh, Wait you ARE!!

So, Dick "Wadd" Cheney says that leaving Iraq would be "ruinous" to our county's security. Well Wadd, it isn't going to fly this time you pustulant fuck-face.

What has been "ruinous" to our security was going to Iraq for no reason whatsoever. What has been "ruinous" to our security was your constant spewing of one bogus reason after another for why we invaded Iraq. What has been "ruinous" to our security was to show ourselves to the world as a country hell-bent on dominating and bullying the rest of the world. What has been "ruinous" to our security was squandering all the goodwill around the world directed toward us after 9/11. What has been "ruinous" to our security is the Bush administration and this cretinous thug Cheney. What has been "ruinous" to our security is anyone who still supports these evangelists for fear, these lying cowards, these despicable loathsome swine.

These shit bags like to say, every time they bogus up another "terrorist plot" against us, that the terrorists are after us because they "hate freedom." Well, if they hated freedom so much they would attack Canada and Mexico and Germany and Sweden and Switzerland and Iceland and any of the other "free" countries around the globe. But they don't because it isn't freedom they hate it's fat fucks like Dick Wadd here sticking their noses into the business of the middle east countires. They don't attack anyone who stays out of their countries. They don't hate freedom, they hate the warmongers and war profiteers that have been in charge here for far too long. Come November, I see some indictments and some impeachments just around the corner.

Now your mileage on this scum may vary, but if it does it simply means you have not been paying attention.

This is What's Happening!

I have been a fan of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar from almost the first time I heard it so many, many moons ago. I've seen the film a number of times (most recently in a stunning letterboxed version on the Sundance Channel) and on the stage four or five times as well (once with Carl Anderson as Judas and once in an absolutely brilliant outdoor production at the Universal Amphitheater.

The Universal show was produced by Tom O’Horgan who did the Broadway production, and the stage set consisted of three stone outcroppings backed by an 80-foot tall cross draped in cloth. On closer examination, the two small stone groups near the sides of the stage were gigantic hands, palm up with fingers reaching for the sky and the large stone structure in the middle was Jesus's face screaming. When Judas dieed, he stood in Jesus's mouth, which flamed bright red and descended into hell screaming "You have murdered me! Murdered me!"

Pilot reigned from a throne of human skulls that was frantically whipped around the stage while he laughed manically. Herod was wheeled onto the stage in a contraption made out of nude alabaster manikins, whose arms raised on que to allow the white-suited Herod his entrance.

For the crucifixion Jesus and his disciples climbed the uncloaked cross and, as Jesus got into position, the disciples made a halo out of their open hands surrounding his head that glowed in the spotlights. As they played John 19:41 the cross began to slowly move back from the stage until by the end of the song it had disappeared in the darkness.

A spectacular production (O’Horgan is the guy who originally wanted to crucify Jesus on the handlebars of a Harley, but was talked out of it) of a spectacular opera. As much as I enjoyed the "spectacle" of that show, I think I would have loved this one even more...

Last week, August 13 to be exact, there was a one-time only benefit production of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre in Los Angeles. Oh, how I wanted to go. Here was the cast:

Jesus - Ted Neeley (the Jesus from the film, now 62 and beginning his farewell tour of JCS)
Judas - Ben Vereen (who played Judas in the original Broadway production [Carl Anderson who played Judas in the film died in 2004])
Mary Magdalene - Yvonne Elliman (who played Mary on the Original London Cast album, in the original Broadway production and in the film)
Pontius Pilate - Barry Dennen (who played Pilot on the Original London Cast album, in the original Broadway production and in the film)
King Herod - Jack Black (star of School of Rock, King Kong, etc.)
Simon Zealotes - Clint Holmes

Oh how I wanted to go, but the tickets were a little steep.

What's the Fuzz, Tell Me What's Happening!

I have an article coming out in the December issue of Back Issue magazine. The article is on the late, great comic book artist Don Newton, a man who I have been a fan of for almost 40 years (Don died in 1984). Anyway, I emailed my article in mid-July and talked to the editor at the San Diego Comic-Con and everything was OK. I had till August 15 to get him copies of the tons of Newton artwork I own or have copies of.

Well, some of the stuff is small and can be scanned, but some of it needs to be photographed, uploaded to my PC and massaged before sending in. I own a Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-P92 digital camera which I was going to use to take the pictures. But when I tried it recently, the viewfinder only shows blackness or blackness with fuzzy white streaks through it.

Running out of time I borrowed a Cyber-Shot DCS-P72 from a friend at work, but when I started to use it, before I got a single shot, the viewfinder went black! Am I bad with cameras or what?

I got an extention on getting the artwork in, but have no idea how I am going to get it done. I know that I won't be borrowing anyones Sony camera though. When I went to the Sony site to find out about repairing the camera I was sent to a page about a class action settlement regarding just the problem both cameras are experiencing. If you own a Sony digital camera or camcorder and are also experiencing the same sort of issue, the link above can bring you relief. Sony will fix your camera for free.

This isn't a problem with one or two products, here is the full list:

Camcorders

CCD-TRV118; CCD-TRV128; CCD-TRV318; CCD-TRV328; DCR-DVD100; DCR-DVD101; DCR-DVD200; DCR-DVD300; DCR-HC20; DCR-HC20 M; DCR-HC30/S; DCR-IP5; DCR-IP55; DCR-PC101; DCR-PC105; DCR-PC120BT; DCR-TRV18; DCR-TRV19; DCR-TRV19M; DCR-TRV22; DCR-TRV240; DCR-TRV25; DCR-TRV250; DCR-TRV260; DCR-TRV27; DCR-TRV33; DCR-TRV340; DCR-TRV38; DCR-TRV39; DCR-TRV460; DCR-TRV50; DCR-TRV740; DCR-TRV840; DCR-TRV950; DCR-VX2000; DCR-VX2100; DSR-250; DSR-250/1; DSR-PD150; DSR-PD170; and DSR-PDX10.

Digital Still Cameras

DSC-F717; DSC-P10/S; DSC-P2/S; DSC-P31; DSC-P31M; DSC-P32; DSC-P32M; DSC-P51; DSC-P51M; DSC-P52; DSC-P52 M; DSC-P7; DSC-P71; DSC-P71M; DSC-P72; DSC-P72M; DSC-P8/L; DSC-P8/R; DSC-P8/S; DSC-P92; DSC-P92M; DSC-U10/S; DSC-U20/B; DSC-U20/LJ; DSC-U20/S; DSC-U30/H; DSC-U30/LJ; DSC-U30/S; DSC-U60; DSC-V1; MVC-CD250; MVC-CD250 M; MVC-CD400; MVC-CD500; MVC-FD100; MVC-FD100 M; MVC-FD200; and MVC-FD200 M.

Love has everything to do with it

Last week, Arthur Lee, frontman of '60s psychedelic legends Love, died of acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of 61.

I had heard on Sirius recently of a New York benefit concert having been put together by Robert Plant, Yo La Tengo, Ryan Adams, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah to raise money for Lee's medical expenses, so I was aware that he was ill. I just didn't know how bad it was.

Love's 1967 album Forever Changes is widely considered one of the greatest of its era, and remains hugely influential nearly 40 years later.

I remember Love because my brother Jack had their first three albums: Love, Da Capo and Forever Changes and we would listen to them from time to time.

The Da Capo album contains a song with some of my favorite lyrics of all time: Seven and Seven Is:

Seven and Seven Is
by (Arthur Lee) Love

When I was a boy I thought about the times I'd be a man
I'd sit inside a bottle and pretend that I was in a can
In my lonely room I'd sit my mind in an ice cream cone
You can throw me if you wanna 'cause I'm a bone and I go
Oop-ip-ip oop-ip-ip, yeah!

If I don't start cryin' it's because that I have got no eyes
My father's in the fireplace and my dog lies hypnotized
Through a crack of light I was unable to find my way
Trapped inside a night but I'm a day and I go
Oop-ip-ip oop-ip-ip, yeah!

One... Two... Three... Four!


I listened to their Greatest Hits album this week and some of Love's music is still ahead of its time. I for one, will miss Arthur.

Con Job!

I just got back from the San Diego Comic Con International where I had an awesome time. This one had some of the best panels I've been to in a while, all thanks to Mark Evanier. Each year he does the Jack Kirby tribute panel and you know, pretty much you hear the same things said each year, but this year was different for two reasons. First, Mark had Jack's lawyer there and showed first the Johnny Carson Tonight Show clip where he called Jack the "King of the Con Men" and then the clip from a week later when Carson made his only known apology on the air. Great stuff all that.

The second reason was another seemingly odd panelist choice: Neal Adams. As some of you may know, I had a run in years ago with Neal where he screwed me over pretty good and forever tarnished how I feel about the guy as a person, so I was a little apprehensive when I saw he was going to be on the panel. Mark always asks the question, "What was your first impression of Jack Kirby's art." Neal gave what even Evanier said was most likely, "the best answer to that question I have ever heard." It was a 5-10 minute soliloquy on Jack Kirby's artwork that was amazing in how it encapsulated about 20 years of Jack's career and the impact of his art on comics and on other artists. It was well thought out and passionately delivered. Neal even dropped the F-bomb when discussing how DC had treated Jack. It was amazing.

The second extraordinary panel was the John Romita Sr. spotlight; just Mark and John talking. You go to enough cons and you hear enough artists speak and you rarely hear something new about the business, but Romita delivered information and insight into the comics of the 60s, 70s and 80s that I have never heard from anyone before. Yeah, I'd heard about his first Daredevil pages and how Stan Lee made him look at Kirby books and start over because he just didn't get how to do superhero comics.

But I hadn't heard about how he ended up loving Daredevil and wanted to stay on the book and make it one of the lines biggest and how upset he was when Stan pulled him off the book to draw Spider-man. I'd never heard how terrified of Spider-man he was and I'd never heard Mark's insight that in retrospect, given the artists at Marvel at the time and how few of them Stan Lee trusted, Romita was the only guy at Marvel who could have taken over Spider-man when Steve Ditko quit.

And I'd never heard anyone talk about the disappointment the people at Marvel felt when they discovered that the new batch of young artists they had been grooming for years to take over the company were really not interested. Romita was shocked when Barry Smith quit Conan; his generation would never have left steady income like that. And Romita was doubly shocked when they offered The Fantastic Four to Jim Starlin and he said, "No thanks." It was unheard of to turn down the best-selling book in a company if it was offered to you.

And I'd never heard anyone at Marvel admit that they were giving books out to artists that had no right doing books; artists that were years away from being ready and artists that would never be ready because they simply were not good enough.

There was even more from Romita, but I'll leave it at that. That was the two best comics panels I saw at SDCC.

I also sat in on the Veronica Mars panel and my god is Kristen Bell adorable. We learned that season three will have three mysteries, not one, and that they will run one after the other. Obviously they are doing this in case they get the ax mid-season. They will be following the Gilmore Girls and need to keep the GG audience.

I didn't spend much money and I didn't buy any art, though I was tempted. I did pre-order the new James Bama book that is coming out in October and will feature all of the Doc Savage covers and many of the reference photos for the Docs. It covers all of Bama's artwork, commercial and otherwise including the Aurora monster kits, movie posters and the like. The special edition also comes with an hour-long documentary on Bama that I saw about five minutes of during a panel and which looks amazing.

The only downside to the con was my wife once again looking at the prices on silver age books and asking me which ones are in my collection. She is seeing dollar signs everywhere. Bummer.

Is All Garbage Sacred?

Now that President Bush has legitimized through veto the sanctity of one type of garbage (embryos slated to be thrown in the trash), will he be protecting all forms of garbage? Certainly he is telling us all that our lives are worth less than garbage. And some people still support this nut job.

The Glory Days

These are the glory days of adult TV. Right now we have Rescue Me, Deadwood and Huff all with new episodes. It don't get much better than that.

Alex Toth

One of the greats of comics died over the weekend, supposedly while sitting at his drawing board. For an artist, that's a pretty awesome way to leave this world, but awesome is a word that always described Alexander Toth.

I think I first became aware of Toth in the 60s watching Saturday morning cartoons. I never really paid much attention to the artwork in cartoons until Johnny Quest came out and the artist who designed the series actually signed the show; his signature actually appeared at the end of each episode. No, it wasn't Alex Toth, it was the late, great Doug Wildey, but Wildey's signature in a box got me to start reading the credits of other shows and one name showed up over and over: Alex Toth.

From Space Ghost to Space Angel, from Birdman to Hot Wheels, Toth was everywhere. The Hanna-Barbera non-funny animal style was Alex Toth's style. Clean distinctive characters created using the minimum number of lines required, that was Alex Toth.

Oddly I never noticed that the same guy was drawing comics for DC. His comic work at that time was much more mainstream, much more detailed than his cartoon work; until he did the comic book for Hot Wheels.

I remember really loving the Hot Wheels comic book and not knowing why. I eventually figured out that it was because of Toth. After that book died, Toth was doing all sorts of work for DC, from war stories to horror to super hero. His Black Canary was an amazing piece of minimalist work, as was his Black Hood work for Red Circle Comics. I never grew tired of Alex's work, but there never seemed to be enough of it. He worked so sporadically that each story became a mini-event all on its own.

Toth was one of the greats of comic art and the industry is diminished by his loss. Thank you Alex for all the wonderful years of amazing artwork; thank you for being such a large part of my childhood. We will miss you.

A Matter of Trust

I don't know how many people out there get the Candorville comic strip in their local newspaper (for that matter how many people out there even read a local newspaper?), but Candorville has quietly gotten more and more political over time. Today's strip is extremely timely and deals with a matter of trust and the outrageous serial lying of the Bush administration.

For those who don't care to follow the link:

First Panel:

Lamont Brown sitting watching his TV.

Caption: 2004

TV: We're not spying on anyone's phone calls without a warrant. Trust us.

Second Panel:

Lamont Brown sitting watching his TV.

Caption: 2005

TV: OK. We're spying on calls without getting a warrant, but it's only a few terrorist suspects. Trust us.

Third Panel:

Lamont Brown sitting watching his TV.

Caption: 2006

TV: OK. We're spying on every single phone call made by almost everyone in America, but we're not listening to the calls.

Fourth Panel:

Lamont Brown sitting watching his TV.

TV: Trust us.

Candorville creator Darrin Bell can be followed through his Candorville.com website. With Boondocks on hiatus, Candorville is doing a great job of picking up the slack.

Wall Blow Me Down!

Let me see if I have this straight: It was wrong for Israel to build a wall between their country and the Palestinian areas to keep suicide bombers out, but it is OK to build a wall between the United States and Mexico to keep gardeners and lettuce pickers out? My god the so called leadership of this country is surely messed up!

Do the Limbo!

How low can you go?

So, the latest polls put Bush's approval rating at 29%. Using our previous formula where we start with his approval rating of 90% (that was right after he swore he wouldn't politicize the thousands of Americans killed on 9/11 and then posed in front of the American flag at ground zero politicizing the death of thousands of Americans), and remembering that those of us in the 10% who saw the sham of Bush's 9/11 rhetoric and didn't approved of this jerk-off back then, have not changed our minds, we can once again do some math:

90% believed the bullshit
-29% still believe the bullshit
------
61% have seen the light

61% of Americans now know they were wrong, they were duped. That's an even sadder number than before, but I think this president has the ability to go even lower. Given that the 29% poll was taken before we learned that the NSA has amassed the world's largest database of every phone call made for the past five years by 200 million Americans, I'm sure we are going to soon be looking at Nixon-type approval ratings.

We may soon get to the "angry villagers carrying torches storm the castle (White House)" phase. God I'd love to watch that on TV. Of course, Fox News won't be covering it; there'll be a coed gone missing somewhere that will be a much more pressing story.

CSI Yie Yie Yie Yie!

How can one show be so bad? So bad that you, and everyone you know who watches it, only do so to make fun of it? No, I am not talking about Thursday night’s CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, the excellent William Peterson/Marg Helgenberger show that started the flood of forensics shows which now dominate the TV landscape. I am referring to its first sibling, CSI: Miami, the train wreck masquerading as a cop show; you know, the most watched show on Monday nights?

I'm not going to mince words or beat around the bush here, I'm going to be upfront and perfectly candid about by opinion of this show; in a nutshell, CSI: Miami is one of the worst shows on TV. That said, I never miss it.

From the absolutely cheesy unrealistic pastel-lit sets, to the golden-orange filter they shoot most of the exterior scenes with, to the wooden acting, the "my aren't we so hip you want to puke" bogus plot devices, David Caruso's refusal to look at anyone he is talking with and his OCD-like glasses on-glasses off routine and "chop it in half" reading of sentences ("And Frank, divorce...can be murder", "It's a drive-by...Miami style", etc.), to the horrid excuse for writing, this show is a disaster from beginning to end.

Well, from shortly after beginning to end, 'cause the show does have one thing going for it, and that's a dynamite credits sequence complements of The Who. Every episode starts out with a crime being committed and David Caruso as Lieutenant Horatio Kane and one or more members of his posse (Emily Procter as Calleigh Duquesne, Adam Rodriguez as Eric Delko, Khandi Alexander as Dr. Alexx Woods,Jonathan Togo as Ryan Wolfe or Rex Linn as Detective Frank Tripp) showing up at the scene to supposedly investigate it. I say supposedly, because there is never much real investigation happening on this show. As the opening sequence comes to a close, Caruso will stare off into space as he talks to one of his people, then turn to the camera and either put his sunglasses on or take them off. This is usually done in the pause he inserts into his sentences. Like, "It's not an accident..." (puts on glasses), "...It's murder." And then Roger Daltry screams! It's his scream from near the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again" and it is the beginning of a killer montage sequence that contains the credits. It ends with Pete Townshend slamming out one of the most famous guitar riffs in rock history, the song's end.

Masterful credits on a masterless show.

I've already hit on most of Caruso's odd antics, but he also sports one of the creepiest smiles I've ever seen. Another Caruso quirk is he has this strange way of standing in profile so that it looks like he is falling over when he isn't, like in the bizarre picture to my left. He also likes to stand in a three-quarter view with his hands on his hips, pushing his coat back and then switch forward legs and do it again; it's hard to explain but even harder to watch with a straight face. Once every show he seems compelled to say to someone, "Here's what were going to do, were going to..." whatever. It is all so annoying.

Emily Procter's Calleigh is about as wooden as they come. Her emotions show only as quick snapping barbs. It's almost as if she has removed herself from the show emotionally and is only there for the paycheck. Given the quality of writing, that might be a smart move on her part. She plays a charmless southern belle with an alcoholic father and zero love life, who some seasons comes off as a gun nut and others as just a soulless, sexless automaton.

Adam Rodriquez used to not bother me so much. In the early seasons he was always paired with the excellent Rory Cochrane as Tim "Speed" Speedle and he worked well as the straight man for Cochrane's droll humor. Rodriquez is a strange one; it's hard to tell sometimes what emotion he is trying to project. This might be just bad acting, or it might be that he is as confused by what his character is asked to do as the rest of us are. His main function in the show seems to be getting laid by women who end up dead, getting busted for drugs, providing a sister for Horatio to sleep with, and getting pissed off at the other team members.

If any member of the Miami team is going to drive you up a wall it's Dr. Alexx Wood played by Khandi Alexander (who I remember liking in News Radio). Every CSI has to have someone chopping up the bodies and that's Khandi's role here. Actually her real purpose seems to be to add "heart" to the show. She calls nearly every body on her slab "baby girl" or "baby boy" and whines and moans over their loss of life. The first writer to add this to her personality must have thought they were adding some much needed compassion to the show, but now, like Caruso's OCD-antics, it seems like something tacked on to a one-dimensional character; it sounds phony and trite and it's just annoying as hell.

Jonathan Togo as Ryan Wolfe was added to the show when Rory Cochrane smartly begged to be cut loose (The departure of Rory, to my left, may have been when the series "jumped the shark," or it may have been that Rory saw the shark before any of the rest of us did). Wolfe was a patrolman who used CSI to get off the street, only, like most of the characters here, he still carries a gun and uses it. On the real CSI, the one in Las Vegas, there is always a clear distinction between police and CSI; CSI are not cops, they are scientific investigators. In Miami, with the exception of Dr. Wood, everyone carries a gun and acts exactly like a cop. I have a feeling the writers don't really know what CSI stands for.

Rex Linn plays Detective Frank Tripp and is not really a permanent member of the cast (he doesn't appear in the show's splashy intro), though his part is getting bigger each season. He at least is supposed to be a cop, so I don't mind seeing him with a gun. Tripp is one of those right-wing, law and order types, who live in a black and white world. The writers seem to be mellowing him this season, smoothing off some of his rougher edges and it's helped, but not much. I still wince at most of the lines he reads.

As annoying as the cast of characters is, the real problem with this show is the writing. It sucks. No, really!

On the real CSI people sometimes confess at the end of the show, or they don't. Sometimes after gathering evidence throughout the hour the suspect is told something to the effect of, "You don't have to tell us you did it, the evidence tells us you did." On Miami, they rarely have any real evidence.

I remember one episode where a woman was questioned about a dead body on a boat. She was connected through phone records and when confronted said something like, "Well sure we called the guy. We are looking to buy a boat and we answered his boat ad in the paper. He was asking too much so we dropped it." Calleigh then mentions that they found lipstick on a glass on the boat and the color looks the same as the lipstick the woman is wearing. This is pretty thin stuff folks, the color seems to be the same? Does the woman tell the CSI to stuff it? Does she ask for a lawyer? Does she say there are thousands of different colors of lipstick on the market? No, she says, "OK, we went to the boat and my boyfriend killed the guy." Say what????

If this were an isolated incident I might, might I say, let it pass, but it isn't an isolated incident. Week after week the suspects confess at the drop of a hat. The writers have to have them do this because this group of CSIs is completely lacking in any skill at crime investigation and if people don't just admit they did it, no one is ever going to get caught.

All of this said, I never miss it because when the train begins to crash, I can't help but watch it!

The More Things Change...

Well, you know how the saying goes. A few items ago I shared some pictures from many, many years back of a costume party I held at the first house I ever lived at after moving out of my parents house. At the time I shared the picture above of my partner Baron Mrkva and his girlfriend (now wife) , Kelley. Well over the years Baron and I have kept in contact, but not in real close contact and we have let so many years pass since we last got together, that neither of us remember how many years ago that was. Pretty piss-poor for good friends and once business partners. Well, we got together this past weekend.

I have season tickets to the Los Angeles Avengers Arena Football League team and this weekend they played their next to last game of the season at the Staples Center. I had been wanting to get together with Baron for a long time and this seemed like a good enough excuse. We could drink expensive beer ($10 a glass), eat expensive hot dogs ($4.75 a pop) and watch the Avengers play that unique game of indoor football that the Arena League has been showcasing for 20 years.

Baron is a graphic artist and does advertise- ments, sales literature, direct mail, packaging, displays, videos, multi- media and websites, or so the brochure he left with me says. It's a really nice piece of work. In it, to make his different points about selling, Baron takes on a number of persona: himself, a mad scientists, the Godfather and finally, this guy a little above and to my left.

There may be some gray streaking the long hair and there may be more wrinkles than in the past, but ol' Baron still makes a pretty good raging barbarian.

I tell ya, some people never change!

A TiVo Twofer? Not Quite

I got email yesterday for the new TiVo Series 2 DT DVR.This is not to be confused with the announced TiVo Series 3 HD boxes that will be out, sometime in the future. No, this is a standard Series 2 TiVo with a second tuner (DT stands for "Duel Tuner"). It also has built in Ethernet support for networking into your home network.

I love TiVo, but I'm not gonna get one of these new boxes for a number of reasons. Why will I not get one, let me count the ways:

First and foremost is it is not at all cost-effective for me to purchase one. I have a standard TiVo Series 2 in my living room with lifetime service I paid $300 for two and a half years ago. I'm not going to jettison that box for one that is costing me, well, I don't know how much it is costing me, but 1 year of it is buried in the $254 price of the box. I have a TV in my bedroom, but it is an HD TV with a Moxi HD, Duel-Tuner DVR attached. I'm not going to lose HD recording capabilities just to get a TiVo in my bedroom.

Second, I have friends who have the DirectTV Duel-Tuner TiVos and they love them, but the TiVo is their DirectTV box. It really has two separate feeds into the recorder; the TiVO Series 2 DT is not my cable box (unlike the Moxi HD in my bedroom), so I have to provide the two video feeds. It's fairly simple to split a cable feed, but my cable box only had one input feed, so I can only pass one of the video feeds through my cable box. This means that although the TiVo has two tuners, only one of them is going to have the good stuff, the 60 or so movie channels my cable provides. This seems more than just a slight hassle.

Third, already mentioned above is the Moxi in my bedroom is HD. I hate the Moxi box and would trade it in in a second for an HD TiVo with duel tuners.

Fourth, right now you can only get it if you got a special email from TiVo (and I think most existing customers did). It has a direct link that puts one in your shopping cart. Only thing is, when they come out for everyone I think they might have a rebate or two, not that this will change my mind any.

I was really jazzed to see that TiVo is not sitting around waiting for the Series 3 to roll out and is creating new products. I just don't think this is the right product for me.

You Can Fool Too Many of the People Too Much of the Time

So, the latest CNN and Fox News (boy is that a misnomer), polls put Bush's approval rating at 32%. At one point his approval rating was 90% (that was right after he swore he wouldn't politicize the thousands of Americans killed on 9/11 and then posed in front of the American flag at ground zero politicizing the death of thousands of Americans). I think it is safe to assume that those of us in the 10% who saw the sham of Bush's 9/11 rhetoric and didn't approved of this jerk-off back then, have not changed our minds and believe that this man is a criminal who ought to be thrown behind bars (preferably in Guantanamo). So lets do some math:

90% believed the bullshit
-32% still believe the bullshit
------
58% have seen the light

58% of Americans now know they were wrong, they were duped. That's a pretty sad number, made even sadder by the facts. Thousands of Americans dead in Iraq for no purpose, thousands of Americans dead in Hurricane Katrina for no reason, an immense National fortune divvied out like party favors to his friends (the looting of a nation), the retreat from clean air, clean water in the name of corporate profits for his friends, the squandering of the goodwill built up over centuries by this country all in the name of greed, and perhaps worst of all, the death of the dream that was America. There is no longer much hope here, unless it is the hope that you were born into one of the top financial 1% of the country and are reaping the obscene profits.

If you are, I hope you enjoy your blood money. How many pieces of silver is that?

A One of a Kind Guy

So I'm still looking in my office for a rock concert poster when I come across the illustration to my left: Duck Dogers. It's by Mahlon L. Fawcett. Lonnie to his friends and it's one of the many illustrations that Lonnie gifted me over the years.

Lonnie first came into my circle of friends during the Mayhem days (No, I wasn't ripping bodies apart, Mayhem was a comic book I was co-producing at the time). My partner, Baron Mrkva, and I sent some artwork and ad copy to a local shop for Mayhem #1 and this huge, hairy, wild-eyed maniac comes running out of the back room, going, "You guys got a book? You really got a book?" Lonnie and Baron and I became instant friends.

Lonnie even bumped another of our friends off the back cover of Mayhem #2 with a great cloud-city, spaceship kinda thing which you can see to my left. This is a good example of the kind of energy and guts Lonnie had with his art. Baron and I noticed some heavy black lines in the yellow trail coming out of the ship on Lonnie's piece and we took it to him and asked if he would take out the black. Instead Lonnie grabs this heavy red marker and began making the swirling red pattern on the trails you see today. Both Baron and I had eyes bulging out of our sockets when he did that, cause at first it looked like he was going to ruin the piece. But Lonnie had amazing confidence in his own work and the result, as you can see, was great. Lonnie is creative as hell, and undisciplined as the day is long, but when he does settle down and draw, he is a wonder.

Lonnie was also one hell of a model maker. Lonnie bought models but didn't build what is in the kit. Instead he used the parts in the kit along with index cards, paper, bottle caps, and anything else he could find to build something truly unique. His apartment always smelled of burning plastic since one of his joys was melting model parts with a cigarette lighter to create something new and unusual.

Lonnie also did some work on another comic book that I had a small part in, Wild Think. My Mayhem partner Baron Mrkva and a good friend, Burt Griswold ran Wild Think. I was there, but I put up no money, so had little say in the final book. I think we were all over at Lonnie's small apartment one day when he pulled this piece out of a pile sitting on the floor by the chair he always worked in. It was so striking that Burt wrote the scene into the first issue of Wild Think because we had to use this cover.

The last time I saw Lonnie was a few years ago at the San Diego Comic-Con. He was working in the Jim van Hise booth. Lonnie did some work over the years for Jim, but other than that never really made much of his art. It is truly a shame as the guy can draw like a bat out of hell!

On Ode to Black and White

You could hardly see for all the snow
So you'd spread the rabbit ears as far as they'd go
Pull up a chair to the TV set
"Good night, David; Good night, Chet."

Depending on the the channel you tuned
You got Rob and Laura - or Ward and June
It was oh so good and felt so right
Life looked better in black and white.

Cable was something you used on your car
When the battery was dead, or you didn't get far
Nobody'd heard of remote control
To change the channel you went for a stroll.

Not many channels but always something to see
Until midnight came and no more TV
Just a test pattern that shrunk to a dot
Until 7 am that's all that you got.

I Love Lucy, The Real McCoys
Dennis the Menace, the Cleaver boys
Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train
Superman, Jimmy and Lois Lane

Patty Duke, Father Knows Best
Our Miss Brooks and all the rest
Donna Reed on Thursday night
Not a dysfunctional family in sight.

I want to go back to black and white
Everything always turned out right
Good guys always won the fight

In God they trusted, in bed they slept
A promise made was a promise kept
They never cussed or broke their vows
They'd never make the networks now.

But if I could, I'd rather be
In a TV town in '53
Like Mayfair, Pixley or Mayberry

I'd trade all the channels on the satellite
If I could just turn back the clock tonight
To when everybody knew wrong from right
Life was better in black and white.

Getting Ready for the Con!

I have been going to the San Diego Comic-Con since 1976. I haven't made it every year, but I've made it most years. Every year I see the Souvenir Program Guide and I go, "Dammit! I didn't do a piece of art for it again!" Many a year I have sketched ideas for the Program Guide and not gone any farther. This year I said, "To hell with that! I'm doing it!"

And this year I actually did.

The above illustration is my entry for the Guide. This is the 50th anniversary of The Flash and of Gumby and of me, so we are all together arm-in-arm. Yeah, I could have put a background on it, and I could have improved all of the figures, and yeah, this picture proves once again that I can't ink worth a damn, but I had fun doing it anyway. And I feel good about completing something for once.

I wonder what the picture I do for next year's Comic-Con will look like?

She Don't Lie... She Don't Lie...

So this week I'm searching through the closet in my office looking for a poster to a rock concert I attended a long, long time ago. I don't find it, but I do find pictures of a costume party I had almost as long ago. That's me as Robert E. Howard's Soloman Kane (hard to believe that back in those days I thought I was fat!). Anyway, the pictures got me thinking about costume parties I have attended. I know there have been a number of them, but I really only remember two.

The first one was the "First Annual Muscoy Comic-Con and Costumed Booze Party." All of the pictures in this item were taken there. It was held at the first place I moved into when I moved out of my parent's house for the first time (yeah, I went back a few times!).

My comic book publishing partner, Baron and his girl friend, Kelly, were in attendance as Conan and his wench (I'll let you figure out which one is which). We were a young, partying bunch, but I doubt if we did more than drink and smoke pot at the party. We were not normally the "hard drug" kind of people and we liked to stay way from anything that was too addictive.

Our good friend, Brian Grasser was in attendance as Tarzan. If ever a guy's name predisposed him to smoking a hell of a lot of pot, I think it was Brian's. Brian was a good guy and we used to spend whole weekends at the house he shared with his brothers, drinking beer, smoking pot, listening to music and playing cards. We played a lot of Black Jack in those days; all night sessions were not unusual, with people taking turns being the dealer/house. We played a lot of dealer's choice poker in those days too.

I don't even remember the names of the guys who came dressed as Thor and Green Arrow, it's been that long, but even parts of this party are a blank to me (though I do remember I got laid more than once that night!).

It's the other party I remember so vividly.

It was a good ten years later and I was living in a Los Angeles suburb and I used to party with a lot of the people I worked with. One woman and her husband in particular were always great fun to be with. They liked the same obscure music I did and when I would party with them we would drink and smoke all night long and never get too out of hand. That was because we would also do cocaine; their cocaine.

About a year later they invited my girl friend and I to a party at their house, a costumed party. We dressed up in rented costumes as jesters and expected to have a grand old time with some great people. It didn't happen. From the moment we got there the party had a strange vibe. People milled about the host couple in swarms, that would fill a room and then disappear. Whatever was going on we were not a part of it. I saw money changing hands on the sly and people disappearing and reappearing and after a while I got it. We were about the only people at the party not begging the hosts for some coke.

We sat there and watched the desperate looks on people's faces as they wheeled and dealed their way into the back bedrooms where the cocaine was plentiful. Everyone at the party was completely consumed by their need for the drug.

We left early and we never went back, nor did I ever do cocaine again. I never wanted to be one of those people who couldn't enjoy themselves because there needs were controlling them.

She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie. Cocaine.

The Specter of Spector

Every few months we are treated to the specter of Phil Spector, a guy so totally whacked, he thinks this is a good look for him. Now there are many things I could say about Phil and his long, and for the most part, illustrious career, but when I see this picture I don't think about that Phil. I think about the album National Lampoon's Radio Dinner, a compilation of the best of the once nationally syndicated National Lampoon Radio Hour.

The album has a lot of funny bits, all written by the late, great, Michael O'Donoghue and the still great Tony Hendra, but interspersed with them are bits of what is called Teenyrap. Teenyrap was written by the terrific Christopher Guest and it features the sounds of two teenagers in conversation at a party.

They speak to one another of the new era of peace coming to the planet and how the cosmic forces are being aligned for peace by George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh album. Their pretentiousness knows no bounds.

Fade in to the sounds of clinking glasses and bottles and background conversations...

Girl: Hey, you know, if we got this thing together, you know, everybody started buying the album, man, we could probably get rid of Nixon and his whole pig trip, man. We could get somebody in there man, like...

Man: Oh, that would be really far out, man. You know, like, incredible...

Girl: Oh, it'd be great. You know...

Man: We could get Robbie Robertson to be Secretary of War. You know, that would be so far out!

Girl: Yeah, he'd make everybody wear undershirts though, man...

Man: I know, but he could...

Girl: I know, man. People like Garcia. Like, Jerry Garcia, like, and have him in charge of giving out downs, man...

Man: Or, you know, Phil Spector. He could , you know... I don't know, he could lower the net.

Girl (not so sure): Lower the net? That sounds OK...

Man: Well, somebody has to do it. Not me.

Fade out.

Red Rock West

One of the films I have on auto-record on my TiVo is John Dahl's Red Rock West, which is a great introduction to the work of writer/director John Dahl and modern film noir. I can't think of another modern writer/director who better understands the technical, visual, and literal concepts of film noir, than John Dahl. He assembles a great cast of wonderful actors, places them in a unique small Texas town set, films mainly at night, and adds in just the right amount of murder, double-crossing, lust, mistaken identities, secret pasts, hidden agendas, sex, danger, violence, and humor. The result is a magic film about what happens when the honest meet the dishonest and what really matters most in life to some people.

Michael (Nicolas Cage) is a truly nice guy, an honest man, who through a case of mistaken identity gets involved with a murder plot. He has a chance early on to get out of town with some money that is not his, but that there is no way he could give back. If he just takes the money and runs, he is fine, but he can't; he can't because he is a nice guy and he has to try and set at least some of this mess right before he blows town. In doing so, things get bad, then they get worse, and then they get even worse. As the plot propels you along, every time you think things could not possibly get worse, they do as Michael gets deeper and deeper involved in a web of murderers and thieves. All Cage really wants to do is get out of the town of Red Rock, but no matter how often he leaves, he keeps getting pulled back.

Cage is wonderful; you can see the weight of every pained decision on his face, his heavy-lidded eyes. Also fine is the late, great J.T. Walsh as Wayne, the bar owner who wants his wife killed. Wayne is open and honest about his shortcomings, a different type of bad guy than you are used to seeing. Laura Flynn Boyle plays wife Suzanne with great style. She runs from hot to cold with ease; one minute you think she needs protecting, the next you need protection from her. You don't know till the end what is really important to her.

Dennis Hopper plays hired hit man Lyle with his usual intensity and adds a stiff-necked, jerky movement physicality to the character that makes him creepier than your average Hopper lunatic.

Like most noir films, Red Rock West deals with the people who populate the ugly underside of society. This story of an innocent stumbling into the morass of lies, deceits, and double-crosses that these people inhabit will grab you, and keep you guessing until the very end. The film also speaks of the inevitability of some acts, of how once you start down a path, you can't get off of it until you reach the end. Sometimes doing the right thing, may not have been the right thing to do.

We'll Remember You Forever Eddie....

But not like this!

Wow, none of us are quite what we used to be physically, but when did Eddie Van Halen turn into a toothless old homeless man who has spent too many years in the sun? This is almost as shocking as the Nick Nolte mugshot from a few years back.

Is Valerie Bertinelli a succubus, 'cause it looks like she sucked the life force right out of Eddie before she left?

Seriously Eddie, you need to take better care of yourself, you look really stressed. I know David Lee Roth is going to be looking for a new job soon; is that what's bothering you bunkie?

(Special No Prize for those who can identify the source of this item's title without resorting to an Internet search!)

Help Save Air America Phoenix

On March 1, 2006, the Air America Phoenix station was taken off the air by a Christian broadcasting company. This was a “dark” day for progressive talk radio in America. I would not be the least surprised if this is the beginning of a overall strategy by the religious right to get progressive stations that they don't like off the air.

The former staff of Air America Phoenix has negotiated a deal to resurrect operations at a new home effective April 3, 2006 but they need your help! They must immediately raise money to cover their operating expenses out of the gate. Their goal of $500,000 will guarantee them a home for years to come.

You can donate to the “Save Air America Phoenix” fund online directly by going to their website and clicking on one of the donation buttons. Each person or business who donates can have their business logo or personal message permanently displayed on their new web site, www.gotStation.com, that will commemorate you, the true patriots who rallied to their cause. This is like “buying a brick” and having your name and message inscribed on it. Instead their “building” is the web page and the “bricks” are the pixels.

They are also accepting just straight donations.

This is just another attempt by the pro-Bush forces to silence opposing views. Don't let it happen. If you can afford it, donate today. If you can't afford it, we all understand what it is like trying to get by in Bush's decimated economy and you have our sympathy.

Oscar Blues

I've got the Oscar blues this year. Normally the night of the Academy Awards is a big one at the Keller house, but not this year. There are a couple of reasons for my melancholy feelings this year.

First, I always pride myself in going into the Awards show, not as a "guy in a diner" who has an opinion based on here say, but as a well informed member of the public. We see all the movies that are nominated in the major categories, so we know based on fact who we are rooting for, who we would have voted for. But this year, this year it just didn't happen. There are 19 films nominated in the major categories, 19! And the sorry truth is we have seen only five of them.

We saw Crash, Good Night, and Good Luck, Capote, War of the Worlds, and Syriana. Not a very impressive showing on our part. As for the others...

Well, we tried to see Brokeback Mountain, but twice it was sold out on us. Memoirs of a Geisha had some pretty impressive bad word-of-mouth and it is a film I had little interest in to begin with. Munich just sounded too depressing and I was never really that hot to see Walk the Line. I might try to catch The Constant Gardener on VOD before the show, so that one might be added to my list. King Kong got some really bad word-of-mouth in the crowd I run with (like I run with a crowd), and you couldn't pay me to sit through The Chronicles of Narnia. I had about as much interest in seeing Pride and Prejudice as I did in seeing Geisha. I would love to see A History of Violence, Mrs. Henderson Presents, North Country, and Transamerica, but all of them have been hard to near impossible to see, all being pretty small films in relatively small, short releases.

So, I like to have an opinion but tonight I'm gonna be that "guy in a diner" who can spout off all he wants but has no facts to back up what he says (sort of like Republicans when the bitch and whine about the latest Michael Moore movie they have never seen). I think that is why the ratings will be pretty bad for the show tonight; not enough people in the home audience will have seen enough of the nominated films to have an informed opinion. And who wants that?

The second reason for my Oscar blues is that for the first time in 21 years I will watch the show without my wife beside me to commiserate with. My wife took an interim job up north about 400 miles from here and though she has been down for the weekend, I have to put her on a plane at 5:30 for the trek back. Who am I going to complain to if Philip Seymour Hoffman does not win (as he should in my uninformed opinion)? It just takes all the fun out of it!

What we love about the Olympics!

Well, we know what we like!

Shall We Take the Douchebag at His Word?

Well, shall we?

Zeroing in on your Target Market

I was watching the Olympics this weekend with my wife on our Moxi DVR skipping through one commercial after another, when my wife asked that I back up so she could watch a Target ad. She wasn't really interested in buying anything at Target, she just wanted to watch the commercial since our son started working at Target a month ago. My wife started raving about how clever the Target marketing was, the great use of the logo, etc. Me, I'm just pointing to the TV and grinning.

"Listen to the music," I say.

"What about it," she replies.

"Don't you recognize it?" I ask. "It's The Shape of Things to Come!"

She stares at me blankly. "Wild in the Streets!" I exclaim. She still doesn't get it. "The song, It's Max Frost and the Troopers from Wild in the Streets. We saw it just last month?" In her eyes I see the slightest flicker of recognition; sometimes with my wife, that's the best I can hope for.

For the past few months I have been TiVoing 1960's biker movies. Most, but not all, are the work of the great Roger Corman. Wild in the Streets is an exception to that rule, being directed by Barry Shear, a little-known, mostly TV, director who died in 1979.

I started off with The Wild Angels from 1966, a Corman flick starring Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. It was during the filming of The Wild Angels that Laura Dern was conceived. The Wild Angels is not a great movie, but it is fun to watch and the theme song by Davie Allen and the Arrows is just amazing!

The next film I watched was not really a biker film, but it fits the mold. It was another Roger Corman movie, The Trip, written by Jack Nicholson and staring Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper. The movie revolves around the first LSD trip taken by Peter Fonda's character and his friend, played by Bruce Dern, who tries to guide him through it.

This brings me to the last film I saw from this genre, Wild in the Streets, which features the great song The Shape of Things to Come by Max Frost and the Troopers which is used in the current Target ad on TV. The first thing you need to know is that Max Frost is the main character in Wild in the Streets; he's a rock star who becomes President of the United States at 24.

So, there is no band called Max Frost and the Troopers; they are, in reality, Davie Allen and the Arrows. Yep, the same Davie Allen who did the theme to The Wild Angels. You can see the Target ad and listen to the song by going here and selecting the Shape of Things to Come ad.

Wild in the Streets is a fairly interesting film. It foresees the Kent State Massacre years before it happens, though the aftermath in the film is quite different from the effect of the real tragedy. With all the talk lately about the aging of the baby boomers and how this will affect society, Wild in the Streets dealt with the ramifications of the boomers when they were young, when 52% of the American population was under the age of 25 and what might have happened given the overly opportunistic nature of politicians.

Christopher Jones plays Max Frost a young pop star who uses his connections with a young Senator, played by Hal Holbrook, to lower the voting age to 15 and eventually the age requirements for those running for congress and the President. Frost then gets himself elected to President and begins his "final solution" to the problem of aging: anyone over the age of 35 is placed into concentrations camps and given LSD, so that they can spend the rest of their life happy and free.

It's not a really serious film, more of a dark satire, and Jones chews the scenery more than once during the proceedings, but it is an interesting piece of 1960's nostalgia. Besides Jone and Holbrook we get some great performances by the late Shelley Winters as Max's mother and the late Richard Pryor as part of Max's posse. The final scenes in the movie are classic; it's a lot of fun.

More fun than watching a Target commercial, though they both have great music!

My Favorite Cherry!

I remember it like it was yesterday, the day the October 1974 issue of The National Lampoon hit the newsstands. I was already a big fan of the magazine (which most people only remember as having something to do with Chevy Chase movies) by this time and bought every issue no matter what the topic. But I took one look at their Pubescence issue and grabbed it off the newsstand before anyone else could. Oh, was I in love with this camel-toed cutie showing us her cherry and begging for someone to take it.

I remember years later reading that this was the best-selling issue of the magazine ever. I don't doubt it. I have no idea who the model was or who the photographer was, but they captured a pose that many have lusted over ever since.

As I Said!

I am nothing if not consistant!