Brian Jay Jones's Blog, page 21

Be Right Back . . .

I’m back from BIO 2012 and will have a full report for you just as soon as I can. In the meantime, I’m working hard to wrap up things on Jim Henson — which, trust me, is what you want me doing, instead of blogging.

Until then, head for the lobby!

Avengers Assemble! Sort of.

If you're a biographer or aspiring biographer, a reader of biographies, or even just someone who loves the Biography Channel . . . well, have I got an offer for you. It's not quite Avengers Assemble! but it's close.



Biographers International Organization — the world's premiere group of biographers and lovers of biography — is holding its third annual conference this May, at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. There'll be panels of research and writing, interviewing and negotiating, and even a bit of sex and violence. Yeah, really.  And all brought to you by a crack team of biographers, including Charles J. Shields, Richard Schickel, Will Swift, Jonathan Eig, Kate Buford, and Pulitzer Prize winner . 



There'll also be two all-day sessions on Friday to choose from — one where you can tour the Academy of Motion Picture Arts library, the other where you'll get a peek into the archives of the Los Angeles Public Library, where they keep their old photos and maps and directions to  finding the Ark of the Covenant. 



Oh, and did I mention the lunchtime keynote address by Arnold Rampersad? Now I have. And now you know you need to be there, right?



For more information, go here.  And I'll see you in Los Angeles.

Five Months and Counting

Hello there, and Happy 2012! Sorry to be away so long — I hate when this thing sits idle, but it's been a busy couple of weeks.

I'm still due to deliver the first draft manuscript of Jim Henson to my editor in May (which I choose to define as "by close of business on May 31″) — and looking at my outline, that means five chapters in five months. Even I can do the math on that one.  At the moment, I'm deep into Mystics, Muppet water ballet sequences, and Fraggles — so if you're a Muppet fan, you can guess how far along that makes me.

I spent the first week in January, in fact, back at the Henson Archives in New York, where archivist Karen Falk once again took extraordinarily good care of me, patiently helping me locate and carry one box after another to the office they'd set aside for my use.  (If you're interested, here's an interview with Karen Falk, where she talks about the the actual layout and look of the Henson Archives—which does not resemble the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.)

We also had the opportunity to oooh and ahhh over her advance copy of the new Jim Henson's Tale of Sand graphic novel, which is every bit as terrific as it sounds (and I just received an e-mail earlier this week informing me that the copy I had ordered from amazon back in June(!) should be arriving this week).  Jim and his long-time writing partner Jerry Juhl began writing Tale of Sand in the mid-1960s, during an incredibly experimental time in Jim's career. They continued to tinker with the script on into the early 1970s before finally setting it aside in the midst of Sesame Street fever and the countless other balls Jim was juggling at once. It's very different from most of the Jim Henson projects you're familiar with — and yet, it's also "very Jim," especially the Jim at that time. Be sure to check it out—it's not only an intriguing story, but the book itself is also a really nice piece of work.

Let's see, what else? Over the next few weeks, I'll be up and down the Eastern Seaboard to take care of some more interviews, each of which should be a lot of fun. I also get to work my way through films like The Great Muppet Caper and call it work.

Finally, I can't resist passing onto you some New Year's Words of Wisdom from the Always Remarkable Neil Gaiman — who really hopes you will make mistakes this year.  Click here and read on.

Happy New Year. Make mistakes.

Complete and Otter Hilarity

What's that? You'd like to see outtakes from Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas? Here you go:

Losses: They Come In Threes (and Sometimes Fours)

A tough week of losses in the literary/pop culture world, though there's some solace in knowing that, with one exception, all of them lived to ripe old ages. Let's start with the most recent one first:

I heard this morning that Christopher Hitchens, longtime contributor to The New Yorker, and the author of countless books and articles, died of complications from lung cancer at age 62.  Hitchens was explosive and ranting, conflicted and controversial — and whether you agreed with him or not (and it was probably impossible to agree with him  on EVERYTHING; he was all over the map), he was always passionate and always an entertaining read. Christopher Buckley wrote a nice piece in (where else?) The New Yorker, which you can read here.

On Tuesday, author Russell Hoban passed away at age 86. Hoban made his living as a writer of science fiction and fantasy novels (most notably Riddley Walker)  — but to me, he'll always be remembered as the author of Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, which Jim Henson later turned into one of the finest Christmas television specials of all time. An American expatriate, it's probably appropriate that the best obit is here in the Guardian.

Comic book legend Joe Simon passed away on Tuesday at the age of 98. Simon — and his partner Jack Kirby — seemed to have his hand in nearly every comic book genre, from superhero to western to romance to science fiction. In the 1940s, while working at Marvel, he and Kirby created Captain America, then jumped to DC to revamp Sandman (the Simon/Kirby version plays a small but crucial role in the Neil Gaiman revival) and created the mighty Boy Commandos (which was, at one point, the publisher's third highest selling title).  Simon didn't always have the Midas touch — he's got Brother Power, The Geek on his list of creator credits — but his work was always interesting, and Simon was a true gentleman.  His obit in the LA Times is here, but I'm waiting for the long piece being promised by Mark Evanier.

Finally, Batman fans (like me) are mourning the loss of Jerry Robinson, who passed away late last week at age 89. Robinson was one of the true unsung heroes of the Batman mythos—even moreso than writer Bill Finger, whose name still doesn't appear on Batman's title page—for it was Robinson, ghosting for Bob Kane, who drew most of the early installments of Batman and Detective Comics.  And when it came to creating characters, Robinson gave us two icons: Robin, who pretty much became the template for every teenage sidekick that followed, and a villain called the Joker who . . . well, is pretty much the coolest bad guy of all time.

While Robinson never saw his name or Bill Finger's formally attached to Batman, Robinson was one of the great advocates for creator rights. It was Robinson who helped push (and then basically shame) DC Comics into giving Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster not only a creative byline on all Superman comics, but also lifetime pensions and health benefits. Robinson also served as a teacher at the New York School of Visual Art — where he helped make comics into an art form — and co-wrote one of the finest books on the history of the comic strip, The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art, which went back into print earlier this year.

Losses, all — but thanks to each of them, what memories we have.

Shameless Self Promotion of the Month!

In the event you still want or need Washington Irving on your Kindle or Other Electronic Device, it's now on sale for the wondrously low price of $2.99 over on amazon.  TWO NINETY NINE.  C'mon, it makes a great virtual stocking stuffer. Or something.

 

What’s So Amazing That Keeps Us Stargazing?

In honor of the official opening of The Muppets — and I’m thrilled to see it’s already getting rave reviews — I thought it might be appropriate to put up a little something to help remember what got them (and us) here.

Here’s the opening three and a half minutes of 1979′s The Muppet Movie. And I gotta admit, it chokes me up every time.

What's So Amazing That Keeps Us Stargazing?

In honor of the official opening of The Muppets — and I'm thrilled to see it's already getting rave reviews — I thought it might be appropriate to put up a little something to help remember what got them (and us) here.

Here's the opening three and a half minutes of 1979′s The Muppet Movie. And I gotta admit, it chokes me up every time.

In Media Res (1991 Edition)

Speaking of workspaces . . .

I opened my e-mail this morning to find a photograph (seen below) from my pal Marron, with whom I shared an office in my first years on Capitol Hill in the early 1990s.  She and I (and usually two, sometimes three, others) worked in this office in the U.S. Senate Dirksen Building — a building that had all the charm of a 1960s-era high school — from 1990 until about 1995. It was here that we first learned that airplanes were on their way to the Middle East for the opening volleys of first Iraq war, where she and I answered phones over Columbus Day weekend during the infamous Clarence Thomas hearings, and where we generally worked long into the night when the Senate was in session. Marron and I could also get into quite a bit of trouble together; we took great delight in pranking our fellow staffers, and each other.  (Marron once crashed our office phone system by forwarding every phone in the office to my direct line.)

Anyway, if you think from watching television or movies that the life of a Hill staffer is glamorous, and that we all work at enormous oak desks in offices lined with gigantic bookshelves crammed with leather-bound books and framed prints of the Founding Fathers on the wall, well . . . not so much.  Here's me in my workspace in 1991 or so, as photographed by Marron from her desk across from me (you can see her own inbox in the foreground):

(Click on it if you want to embiggen it and enjoy me in all my twentysomething glory.)

Yeah, that's me with a head full of hair.  Shut up. Given the way I'm dressed, the Senate was likely in an extended recess, when we didn't have to wear our usual suits and could come in a bit more casually dressed.

Sitting on the desk in front of me is one of those gigantic old IBM desktop computers.  Back in the early 1990s, the only people in our office who had desktops were the low folks on the totem pole — and that's because we were using them to draft responses to constituent mail, which we could then save onto an inner-office network, where anyone with a desktop could pull them up. And let me tell you, we worked those things hard, responding to about 10,000 pieces of mail each month.  (And as Marron reminded me in her e-mail  accompanying this photo, it wasn't too long after this picture was taken that my computer monitor actually caught fire.)

All other office business — including a rudimentary e-mail system — was carried out on computers we called The DeeGees — old green-screened Data General computers, hooked into a central system that made it possible to share files and send messages. Mine was on the desk's return,  just behind the clunky IBM.  (If you think your computer currently takes up too much space on your desk, try having two.)

The bookshelf to the left in the photo was my filing system — and you can see that, even then, I was still a black binder kinda guy. There was an old dot-matrix printer in the space just behind the bookshelf, where our assistant press secretary would print out wire stories once each day, making a loud zzzt zzzt zzt! for about 30 minutes.

The television you see — which we used to monitor the Senate floor — wasn't mine or Marron's;  it belonged to another staffer we all called Joe T, who had one of the two desks next to the window. And on the wall?  Not Founding Fathers, but Georgia O'Keeffe prints (the one behind my desk was a painting of the Taos Pueblo)  and framed photos of New Mexico scenery.  And it looks like I also had a small promo poster for Alan Moore's V for Vendetta taped to the wall just above my DeeGee.

Finally, it appears there's a pile of papers on the desk in front of me.  Some things never change. Apart from the hair, of course.

In Media Res

It's probably due to the upcoming premiere of the brand spanking new movie The Muppets (coming to a theater near you on November 23), but over the past few days I've been asked more and more, "How's  the book coming?"

The short answer: really well.  I recently finished writing extensively about The Muppet Show, which puts me about two-thirds of the way through.  But there's still a lot more to go — that Jim Henson was a busy and productive guy — and as I make the turn into the final third of the book, my desk is officially a mess. And to respond to some of the other questions I've received, here's what my workspace  presently looks like:

Whatta mess.

It's a bit blurry — I took it with my phone — so let me guide you around.  On the wall behind my chair is the gigantic white board I use to draw up the timeline for the chapter I'm working on, along with any random notes (at the moment, there's a scribbled address for the long-gone Muppet Stuff store in New York City).

On top of the desk (which is actually just two old tables pushed together, with a filing cabinet shoved into the open corner) is an assortment of black binders (filled with transcripts of interviews, notes, and newspaper articles) along with several journals and scattered Post-It notes. You might also see the corner of a copy of Christopher Finch's fantastic Jim Henson: The Works peeking out, as well as Caroll Spinney's The Wisdom of Big Bird. And that piece of red striped paper is actually part of my Bible for this project: a well-thumbed and marked-up photocopy of Jim's Red Book, generously provided by the Henson family.

What else? On top of the filing cabinet in the lower left hand corner are all four volumes of an 1862 edition of The Life and Letters of Washington Irving—still a fellow close to my heart—and because I believe you should always have your subject looking over your shoulder as you write, the mantlepiece behind me (yeah, it's a real working fireplace) sports a framed photo of Jim Henson lounging across a set of theater seats with his arm draped around Kermit.*

What's next? During the last week of November, I'll be interviewing not one, not two, not even four, but five more Really Neat People, and I'm producing chapters regularly, which keeps my editor happy.  And while I try to spend most of my days sitting right there in that leather chair you see above, I have to admit I'll be spending several hours out of it next Wednesday.  I'll be at The Muppets, you know.

Thanks, everyone, for their questions and enthusiasm!

* Just for fun, see if you can also spot a 1960s-era Batmobile and the Mach 5 among the mess, as well as a Jim Henson action figure, strumming a banjo.