Mark Evanier's Blog, page 17

Today's Video Link

Here's another great juggler — Kaito Tanioka…

A Comic-Con Tale from 2003 – Part 3

To read the previous chapter of this tale, click here.  To go back and start at the beginning, click here.

In order to explain how the Ackerman/Schwartz/Bradbury panel came about in 2003, I need to explain how the Schwartz/Bradbury panel of 2002 came about.  The following is an excerpt from an article I posted here in 2012.  If you've read it and remember it, you can skip this excerpt.  If you never read it, you can read it here.  Hey, you might enjoy it.  Either way, here's the excerpt…

[Schwartz's] retirement came shortly after Jean, his wife of 34 years, passed away. He filled both voids in his life to some extent with fandom — going to conventions, working on his memoirs, getting himself interviewed, etc. Mostly though, it was the conventions. It was oddly appropriate that Julie "lived" for the conventions as he was one of the founders of science-fiction fandom. S-F fandom later branched off into comic book fandom so he could claim some parentage of that whole institution, as well. He went to every con that would have him and even a few that wouldn't. Attending the annual monster in San Diego was, of course, the high point of his year.

For a time, he came out on the DC Comics dime, all expenses paid by his longtime employer. In the nineties though, they could no longer find it in the budget to fly him out and put him up. The con made him a Guest of Honor and paid his way out once or twice and I think Julie paid his own way once or twice…but it was an expense he could not justify on an annual basis. If he'd been a veteran artist instead of an editor, he could probably have made money there selling artwork. But he just wanted to be there to be there and he couldn't really afford it. So what did he do? He called folks he thought might have some clout to persuade the convention to bring him out…and he called us a lot. I'm pretty sure I got the highest number of these calls. One year, Harlan Ellison phoned me and we compared Schwartz Calls as of late. I was the clear victor, having received ten in the last two weeks whereas Harlan had only received seven.

"Make a deal with you," he said. "We'll split the cost of flying him out and the cost of the hotel…anything to stop these pain-in-the-ass calls." I agreed but it never came to that. I and maybe some others beseeched by Julie nudged the convention into covering the cost of Schwartz that year. I believe this was 2001.

The following year, Julie didn't need us. He had an idea…and an ingenious one it was. Instead of placing umpteen calls to folks like Harlan and me, he put in but one…to his friend and one-time client, Ray Bradbury. As I mentioned here before, Ray was one of the first Guests of Honor at the Comic-Con International, dating back to well before it was called the Comic-Con International. He would come down for one day — usually Saturday — and give a talk and work the dealers' room. The convention and its attendees were of course very glad to have him there. In 2002 to help Julie, Ray decreed that his appearance in San Diego would be a joint speech/panel with Julius "Can you get the con to fly me out?" Schwartz. Informed this was what Ray wanted, the con had little choice but to fork up the bucks to bring Julie out. It was not a huge burden.

Score one for Schwartz: A clever notion on his part. I liked it because it would create an interesting program event, quite different from Ray's usual presentations, not that there was anything wrong with them. But I really liked it because it meant I didn't get all those calls from Julie nagging me to talk to the con about bringing him out, nor did I get all those calls from Harlan telling me Julie was nagging him to talk to the con about bringing him out.

A win for all, even the convention. Julie did phone me about the con but it was to ask me to be the moderator of this panel. I, of course, declined. I said, "You and Bradbury on stage? You don't need me up there. Every second I speak will be a second neither of you is talking. Save me a seat in the front row."

So after that, I no longer got calls from Julie nagging me to get the convention to make him a special guest. I instead got calls nagging me to agree to be the panel moderator. I dealt with these calls by employing the only possible strategy that would make them stop: I agreed to be the moderator. The resulting program item at the 2002 Comic-Con was wonderful and people loved it and there was then very little resistance the following year when Julie tried a similar tack to get his way paid to the convention…

He contacted whoever he contacted at the con and said something like, "Hey, how about if this year's Ray Bradbury Spotlight is him, me and Forrest Ackerman? It would be magical the way last year's panel was magical!" Whoever he contacted saw the wisdom in that and it was arranged, complete with the same moderator. Julie had again engineered a way to get the convention to pay his way out to San Diego.

A week or two before the con though, he called and said — and I could tell it killed him to utter these words — "I won't be coming out."

I asked him why and he told me how his legs had been failing him. There was just too much walking involved in attending Comic-Con, he explained. I replied, "We shouldn't let that stop you from being here. The convention has a very dedicated team of people who love to push wheelchairs and –"

He cut me off. "I will not be there in a wheelchair!" I asked him why not and he said, "Because old men are in wheelchairs." I told him, "Julie, you're 88 years old. You are an old man." He still balked so I said, "Tell you what. Come out, sit in the wheelchair and I'll arrange for a woman with large breasts to push you around in it." He pondered it for a second then said, "That might work."

He came out and we got him a wheelchair and an appropriate person to push it…but throughout the entire con, I never saw him in being pushed for any real distance in the wheelchair. I did however once see him pushing the wheelchair with the large-breasted lady seated in it.

Okay, next chapter we get to the panel itself…

Bum Wraps

If you were in San Diego this last weekend, you saw many a big building covered in a wrap that advertised something — usually a movie. And hey, do you want to know something interesting about those giant wraps? They're illegal!

Today's Video Link

Did you ever see Alexander Koblikov juggle? You should…

FACT CHECK: Playing Catch-Up

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claims that there was a "treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government" to make it seem like Russian forces interfered in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump. And of course, Trump constantly insists that the "Russia, Russia, Russian Hoax" has been thoroughly disproven. As Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post notes, it ain't been disproven…quite the opposite.

It now seems that one of the major distractions Trump is counting on to shift attention away from his own scandals is some sort of trial of Obama, Biden and others for treason in this matter. And given his recent remarks about Beyoncé, Oprah and Kamala Harris, he seems to think that campaigning against Donald Trump is an act of treason.

FactCheck.org and the Assocated Press say much the same thing as Glenn Kessler.

And Factcheck.org has yet another story about how Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn't understand his own job.

Meanwhile, the folks at Snopes do a deep dive into Trump's brags about walking into the dressing rooms at beauty pageants when the contestants were undressed. Some of what he said has been misrepresented but there's enough there to cause the kind of Conservative we used to have in this country to declare the confessor unfit for any public office and to demand jail time.

Daniel Dale over at CNN notes that Trump continues with the outright lies about what inflation in this country was and what it is now. And Politifact notes that Trump is still claiming that during the last presidential election, Democrats paid Beyoncé eleven million dollars — which, of course, is chump change to Beyoncé — to endorse Kamala Harris. There is, of course, no proof of this whatsoever.

Sorry this is so long but I've been away. And Trump lies a lot.

Jiggity-Jig

I'm home. I'll be spending the next few years sleeping and unpacking, sleeping and unpacking, sleeping and unpacking, etc. Eventually, things will return to normal on this blog and I'll finish the story I started. In the meantime, you might want to download your very own PDF copy of the convention souvenir book — or at least, read it online. You can do both those things at this link.

Today's Bonus Video Link

I posted this here many years ago. It's a concert that Tom Lehrer gave in Copenhagen, of all places. A lot of you wrote to say it should be up here again and a lot of you are right. It runs 51 minutes and is quite wonderful…

Today's Video Link

Here's a little less than nine minutes of one of my favorite comedians, George Carl. No, not George Carlin. George Carl. George Carlin was also one of my favorite comedians but he had to say funny things to get laughs. George Carl, who performed all around the world for decades, didn't have to utter a word to be funny. He just was funny. I saw Mr. Carl do about twenty minutes in Las Vegas many years ago at the now-extinct Stardust Hotel and I don't recall laughing harder in my life. I also Mr. Carlin in Vegas at what was then called Bally's and he was pretty great too but he had to talk. Here's George Carl. Ignore the silly short cartoons that bracket his performance…

Message From San Diego…

…and in the middle of the night, no less. I enjoyed every nanosecond of this year's Comic-Con International and those of you who thought it was knuckleheaded beyond belief to agree to moderate or be on nineteen panels…well, next year I may go for twenty. I enjoyed every one of 'em and over the next few days, I'll tell you the what and why of the experience. It had a lot to do with liking how much the audiences liked what we did, especially a the Quick Draw! game and the two Cartoon Voices panels. More on this to follow…

We Will All Go Together…

I'm not going to wait until I get home. Like many of my friends, I can quote or sing many of the weird and wonderful songs of Tom Lehrer, who died just the other day at the not-unimpressive age of 97. And like a lot of us, I wish he'd spent less of his life teaching math and more of it writing and recording joyous and subversive songs like "The Masochism Tango" and "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park."

I won't pretend to understand his career choices, nor is it any of my business why this gifted man didn't write more. A friend of mine who attended U.C. Santa Cruz (I think it was) took one of Professor Lehrer's math classes, at least in part because he was a fan of the man's records and was disappointed when almost the first thing Lehrer said on the first day was that at no point during the term would he be performing or even discussing his music.

That music will, of course, outlive its composer. In a sense, it almost did while he was still alive. But it will be especially available because a few years ago, Mr. Lehrer released it all into the public domain. If you want to do anything with it, go to this website and help yourself. You can even just listen to it for pure enjoyment…which it always delivered.