Mark Evanier's Blog, page 212

Today's Video Links

One time when I was in Las Vegas, something happened in the space between Harrah's (the hotel where I was staying) and the Imperial Palace, which was next door but is no longer. A "flash mob" suddenly happened and I have no idea who they were or who sent them there to do it…but suddenly about twenty-five dancers — some clearly amateurs, a few clearly not — were there in everyday tourist clothes performing to the ABBA song, "Mamma Mia."

The record was playing out of a huge Boom Box and there was no carefully-constructed choreography but that was part of the charm of it. The core twenty-five were more or less performing the same steps by watching each other and soon, strangers were joining in, eyeing what others were doing and doing their best to replicate it. I don't quite know how to describe the mood but it was like someone had dropped a large Happiness Bomb on the area. Everyone — spectators and dancers alike — was grinning and moving in time to the music.

Just before it erupted, I was in the midst of some darker, sadder thought but eight bars into "Mamma Mia," they were gone and most of them did not come back until hours later…and then, in a much less intense form. You may think ABBA produced disposable and childish music but right then, it did the best thing music can do. It made people happy. The scene in Vegas felt very much like what you'll see in this video shot in an Ikea in Madrid a few years ago…

Given all the cameras that were present and positioned to capture the action, one suspects it was all arranged for some TV show. But not everyone was in on it and it looks like a lot of surprised people had a very good time.

Some flash mobs come armed with digital music. Some bring their own instruments. And like I said, I didn't know where that one in Vegas came from. Shortly after the mob and the good feelings had dissipated, I asked a vendor there if they did that every day at predetermined times. He said he'd never seen it before and for the rest of my trip and all the ones I've made since, I never saw anything like it again. The space between Harrah's and the Imperial Palace is now the space between Harrah's and a new hotel called The Linq and that space is occupied by a huge outdoor mall.

Since that day, I thought that if I ever ran a casino — or any business like a mall that had strangers milling about — I'd hire a group of performers to "flash mob" at unpredictable times in unpredictable places. They'd just show up when no one expected it and perform to some song that everyone knew and loved. It'll never happen but so will a lot of things I think should happen.

The closest I've seen to anything on a regular basis in Vegas is that the Rio Suites Hotel used to (note the past-tense) have shows at announced times in a wing of the casino called the Masquerade Tower. The show consisted of two parts. There was a stage on which a dozen-or-so young dancers would perform to an energetic medley of popular tunes. At the same time, there was a parade of floats suspended from the ceiling on which others would dance and throw Mardi Gras-style necklaces of beads to the spectators. For a fee, you could also arrange to ride on those floats that moved around the ceiling on tracks. Here's the best video I could find of what this all looked like…

One year, I spent a couple of three-day stints in Vegas and I stayed in a suite in the Masquerade Tower. Most of my time was spent in the room writing a script but I'd take breaks for meals, to go visit a friend or two…or to go downstairs at the appointed times to watch The Parade in the Sky and the performers. It was really a great cheering and fun thing to experience and I was sad when the Rio got rid of it.

In fact, through a series of changes in management, the Rio got rid of almost every reason you could have to go to the Rio. The one-time best buffet in the city is gone, the periodic parades are gone and there are reports that the place has gotten very shabby. If it weren't still the home of Penn & Teller's show, no one might go near the place and there were rumors for a while that it was all going to be torn down to build a stadium for the Oakland A's to play in if/when they relocate to Las Vegas.

All that, however, may be changing. New York real estate investor Dreamscape Companies, which owns the Rio this week, has announced an investment of $350 million bucks to remodel and revamp the resort back into its former glory. One of its execs has reportedly said he wants to bring back the parade in the sky. Apparently, the floats are still up there in some sort of ceiling warehouse and with a few coats of paint and some WD-40, could begin parading around the Masquerade Tower again. I hope so. But if they can't afford to bring that back, maybe they could afford about a dozen dancers, a Boom Box and a "Best of ABBA" CD.

Peeking at the News

During my recent hiatus, I didn't look at the news much…especially the political news. But when I did catch a glimpse, just about every Trump-related item seemed to be headlined, "Trump Loses in Court Again" or "Trump motion denied." I thought it was winning his supporters were supposed to get sick of.

I suppose we'll have to wait until all this is over and everyone involved writes a book about how it wasn't their fault but I am curious about this: Trump's lawyers are filing a lot of frivolous, can't-possibly-succeed motions. Are they filing these because they really believe they have a chance of succeeding? Or is it because Trump, who seems to be treating this more as a political matter than a legal one, is ordering them to do as he says?

I understand that to a large extent, he's laying the foundation to claim that any court case he loses had to be rigged, just as he's long taken the stance that he couldn't possibly lose an election unless it was rigged. But is he already convinced that he's not going to win in court? Any of the cases?

ASK me: Binky the Clown

Someone who signs his name "Davy Jones" has been sending me this question over and over under a couple of different names.  It's about a character named Binky the Clown who turned up now and then on the Garfield and Friends show when I was working on it…

Why did Binky stop appearing after Season 3? I mean…he was a recurring character in Season 1 and in Season 2, he also had his own segments called "Screaming with Binky." But after the episode "Binky Gets Cancelled Again," and a few "Screaming with Binky" quickies, he had very few appearances, mostly cameo appearances, until his appearance in "The Feline Philosopher," even though he appeared for 11 seconds. He claimed that they let him back on the show, but after that episode, he never appeared again. Why did Binky have so few appearances, after season 3? I always wondered that. Were you running out of ideas for his episodes, and all you could do, was make him a cameo appearance? We could have an episode about his origin or his backstory…an episode that would explain why he became a clown. Missed opportunity. He's such an interesting character.

As I recall, we dropped the one-minute "Screaming with Binky" episodes because CBS added another minute of commercials per hour and I decided I'd rather lose that segment — which was basically the same joke over and over — than lose a minute from the episodes. And by then I think we'd all decided that Binky had worn out his welcome on the show.

I vaguely recall a conversation with Jim Davis where one of us said, "Are you getting a little tired of Binky?" and the other one of us said, "Yeah." And you have to figure if we felt that way, the viewers were probably real tired of him. So I decided to cut him back to the occasional cameo and to see if anyone would write to complain.

We made that decision 33 years ago. So far, you're the first.

Today's Video Link

Three minutes from the Mary Poppins stage musical — in Japanese…

Sunday Evening

I should be back to normal posting in a day or so.  Thank you for all the notes of concern but I just plain had a lot to do.  And thanks to those who urged me to take as much time as I needed.  There will be some video posts to tide you over.

Loved Love's

We all have favorite restaurants that closed long ago but you find yourself thinking, "Gee, it would be great to eat there tonight." One of mine was a chain called Love's Wood Pit Barbecue restaurants which dotted the California landscape and seeped into other states, as well.

Some folks believe it's impossible to get decent barbecue in a chain. You need a small, one-of-a-kind restaurant in a building that used to be a welding shop and was converted by some guy who's obsessive about good bbq and has been doing it all his life. I’ve been to some great places that fit that description and also some where the food was close to inedible.

Love's fell somewhere in-between but they were always conveniently located and there are times you need to eat and you can’t find one of the "other" kind of bbq joint, or maybe you’re just not in the mood to gamble. Love's had decent ribs, great chicken, terrific sandwiches and easily the best beans I've ever had in my life. I used to go to every Love's I ventured near but they closed the last one in 2017. You can still purchase their sauce (and I do) on this website.

In 1999 when the restaurants were starting to vanish, I wrote an article about them…and it was also about the San Diego Comic Convention back in 1973. I used to have it available here but when I decided to include it in a collection of my writings, I took it off this site. That book is now outta-print so I have reinstated the column and you can read it here. I apologize for the sexist joke at the end but it didn't get single complaint when the article was first printed in 1999 or when it was in a collection that came out in 2003 so I'm leaving it as is.

On the Wire

I'm on a lot of forums where folks discuss musical comedies and I hardly ever see anyone mention Barnum, which ran a not-unimpressive 854 performances on The Great White Way commencing in April of 1980. That's more than a lot of shows that people fondly remember. I didn't see it back there but I saw it at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood sometime between February 10, 1982 and April 4. Jim Dale — who played the title role in New York — came out here with a national touring company and he was replaced in N.Y. by Mike Burstyn.

During Mr. Dale's run on Broadway, he took one vacation and Tony Orlando filled in for a few weeks. That was not an easy thing to do because it's not a role into which just anyone could step. As the video below reveals, it took extensive physical training, along with things like acting and singing, to play Phineas Taylor Barnum.

Oh — and I should mention that the show had a book by Mark Bramble;, tunes by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Michael Stewart. Some of the lyrics were awfully clever.

I remember liking the show a lot — the songs especially but also the sheer radiant energy from the stage. Most of the performers also had to learn to do circus-style feats…or maybe some of them already knew how but had to learn to sing and dance. Whichever it was, they all deserved standing ovations just for being able to do the show at all, let alone eight shows a week. The basic story was slight but not uninteresting…and Dale's leading lady both in N.Y. and here was Glenn Close, who was sensational.

I can think of two reasons why the show is not revived more. One is that it takes a good-sized cast that can juggle, do balancing acts, turn cartwheels (etc.) and a leading man who can walk a tightrope and do other difficult stunts. Another is that circuses have fallen into some disfavor, especially due to their treatment of animals…and especially Barnum & Bailey Circuses.

Me, I always liked the idea and mystique of circuses but never cared for the few I actually attended. I remember them smelling bad and offering hideous, overpriced and over-iced refreshments. I remember that some of the acts were very short but had long, long introductions, trying to make you think you were about to see the most amazingly awesome thing you'd ever seen in your life. Then the actual performance would be brief and unremarkable, and it would be followed by the performers marching around and around, demanding five minutes of applause for the three-minute act.

And did I mention the smells? Yeah, I guess I did. They seemed impossible to get out of one's hair. I still apologize to people I'm near. I tell them, "That's not me. That's the elephants at the Ringling Brothers Circus when I was twelve."

But I did like Barnum…as a show but not as an infomercial for their brand of circuses.  Back in the nineties, I was briefly in discussions with a studio that wanted to make a feature film of it…an animated feature film which would add a parallel storyline featuring the animals in Mr. Barnum's circus.  It would basically have involved using most of the songs and some new ones telling a new story with some elements from the stage version.  It sounded like a good idea in several meetings but then…well, I'm not sure if they couldn't acquire the rights to do it or couldn't acquire the rights to change it.

All I know is that suddenly there were no more meetings.  That's how a lot of projects in Hollywood end without reaching the production phase.  Suddenly, there are no more meetings.

All of this is an intro to the video you may be about to view.  It's long but even a small segment of it will give you an idea of what the fine musical comedy performer Michael Crawford had to do to prepare to star in a London production of Barnum.  I'm not going to link to a video of the actual musical as it was recorded professionally at a performance but you shouldn't have to look hard online to locate one.  The show is very impressive and it's even more impressive what Mr. Crawford had to learn in order to play the title role and then what he had to do every night and twice on matinee days for audiences…

Today's Video Link

My buddy (and past collaborator) Will Meugniot came across this presentation of the theme song from the Batman TV show — the one with Adam West, the one with the theme it's hard to get out of your head. This rendition was done for a Japanese audience by "Johnny's with Jackey Yoshikawa & His Blue Comets" and it's perfect to do the Batusi to. You love it. You know you love it…

How to "Do" Comic-Con – Part 7

This is Part 7 and it follows Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6. There will be no Part 8, at least for now.

One of the most-asked questions of my life — in person and via e-mail — is why at Comic-Con each year, I host or appear on so many panels. This past con, the number was 14 and no, that's not my record. In 2008, I did 17. Some folks think that's nuts and, of course, they're right. It is absolutely nuts. But the way I see it is that if you can't be nuts at Comic-Con, where can you be nuts?

The thing is: I like being at Comic-Con and I don't know what else I'd do with myself there if I didn't have some double-digit number of panels. In the previous part of this series, I listed a number of things that I was doing at Comic-Con that I was slowly deciding I didn't really enjoy doing.

I sorta/kinda/more or less appeared on my first Comic-Con panel at the first Comic-Con in 1970. It was not on whatever schedule they had. There was a fellow named Mark Hanerfeld who sorta/kinda/more or less worked for DC Comics in New York. I'd met him in their offices a month earlier. He was sorta/kinda/more or less an intern there and was paid occasionally for writing a text page or letter column.

Mark loved comics, wanted to be a part of that world and had some income sources that made it possible for him to, in effect, work for free for DC. He later became a paid assistant editor there…and a comic book character. The host of the House of Secrets comic, a bearded gent named Abel.

Photo by me

That first Comic-Con in San Diego coincided with a trip Mark made to visit relatives in Los Angeles so he stopped in. Someone — I'm fairly sure it was Shel Dorf — quickly announced a panel in which Mark, as some sort of official representative of DC Comics, would talk about what the company had planned for the future. Mark had me join him on this impromptu panel before, as I recall, about twenty people.

In case I haven't made it clear, DC had not sent Mark to this con. He'd just decided to go and he paid his own way there. But when he got back to New York, he began telling everyone about the terrific convention he'd attended in San Diego. He had much to do with the fact that over the next few years, people in the New York industry began making the trek, often at their own expense, to what we now know as Comic-Con International.

I don't recall any panels at the second San Diego Con in 1971 but I have a fuzzy memory of another impromptu panel at the '72, which was the first of many held at the El Cortez Hotel in downtown San Diego. If I'm right, it wasn't even listed on the programming schedule but was thrown together at the last minute with a number of convention guests who didn't really have much in common with each other.

That was the problem with a lot of panels at the first comic conventions I attended — in San Diego or elsewhere. Someone thought that any random grouping of professionals could constitute an interesting panel. Well no, not if they worked in very different capacities and, as was occasionally the case, they'd never even heard of each other.

I am certain though that at the 1973 con, which was held at a Sheraton on Harbor Island, there was a Writers' Panel consisting of just my friend Mike Friedrich and me. For many years after, I was always on a Writers' Panel not just at San Diego conventions but at every con I attended. They were all pretty much the same panel in terms of what was said and I think Mike was on several of them with me.

For a long time, I was on two or three panels per year at what didn't become known as Comic-Con International until 1995. Sometimes, I was the moderator, sometimes not. Sometimes, they were fun, sometimes they were not. They were more fun later when I had more say in who was on those panels and what they'd be about. The number of panels with which I was involved slowly grew from year to year.

At one point, someone from the convention called and asked if I'd host the almost-annual spotlight panel on Ray Bradbury…and how could anyone turn that down? For several years, I got to ask questions of one of the greatest writers alive for 60 (once, I think, 90) minutes…and I also got to sit down. As I mentioned in the last part, I liked having a place to sit down at the con somewhere I didn't feel isolated from the rest of the convention or expected to sell things or sign books.

Al Williamson

At the 1997 Comic-Con, Al Williamson approached me. Al, as I suspect you know, was one of the best artists who ever worked in comics but you may not know what a terrific guy he was. We'd met before but that year as I recall, he had seen me interviewing another great artist and guy, George Tuska, on a panel. Mr. Tuska was quite hard of hearing but I sat as close as possible to him and talked slowly and managed to get some good answers out of him.

Al loved Tuska as both an artist and a human being and he thanked me for the effort. Then he said, "The convention has me doing one of those 'spotlight panels' in an hour. I don't think they get that I'm an artist, not a talker. I wouldn't even know how to start such a thing but I really liked the way you interviewed George. Would you interview me like that for my spotlight?"

Of course I would. I got to talk with Al Williamson for an hour or so and get him talking about the things that were of interest to me. Al told other professionals to ask for me and then when the convention invited some older comic book writer or artist and that person was uneasy about speaking in front of an audience, they'd tell him, "We've got a guy here who can make it real easy for you."

I mention Al because I think he was the one who made me realize that I was being useful at the con and could be more so…by doing something I enjoyed. I think it was because of him that I went to whoever was then doing the programming for the con — Gary Sassaman, most likely — and said, "Assign me to as many panels as you want."

Understand please that I'm not saying I started doing panels at Comic-Con in 1997 because Al Williamson suggested it. I was doing panels before that. He was just the one who made me realize how much I enjoyed it and how I'd found the best way for me to "do" Comic-Con. This will probably cause some of you to scratch your collective heads and say something like…

Let me get this straight, Evanier. You just took seven whole posts on your blog to tell us that to "do" Comic-Con, we should figure out what we enjoy doing there and do more of it and also figure out what we don't enjoy there and to the extent possible, do less of it? Is that really what it took you seven parts to tell us?

Yes. Yes, it is. And call me stupid if you like but it took me more than twenty-five Comic-Cons to figure that out.

Happy Sergio Day!

This is a photo of Sergio Aragonés and me, and since I don't have a mustache, he must be the guy on the right. Sergio is known the world over for his greatest accomplishment which is, of course, drawing the headers on this blog. Oh, once in a while his cartooning turns up elsewhere…like drawing for MAD magazine for sixty years or creating Groo the Wanderer and drawing it for forty years and I hear he's done other things and even won a number of the various awards for cartooning…that number being All of Them.

Today is his birthday and he is  AGE REDACTED .  I have redacted the number because I don't think anyone has told him how old he is.  He sure doesn't look it or act like it.  Because he's opted out of convention-going lately, a lot of folks keep asking me if he's okay.  He's okay.  In fact, he's probably in better health than anyone who's asked me if Sergio is okay.  He and I talk almost every day and every time we speak, he says, "I'm sitting here inking," which is like anyone else telling you they're breathing.

He's my Best Friend in the Male Division and you couldn't have a better Best Friend than Sergio.  We've never had an argument except that every time he tells people we've never had an argument, I raise my voice and yell, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE'VE NEVER HAD AN ARGUMENT!!!???" The fact that he always thinks that's funny is one of the reasons we've never had an argument. Another is that he never does anything to make me not love him…or at least, he hasn't since I met him in 1969. I sure hope he doesn't start being a bastard now because where would I ever find another Best Friend like that? Especially one who's  AGE REDACTED .