Mark Evanier's Blog, page 226

Today's Trump Post

The presence of Chris Christie in the presidential race has made it all-but-impossible for me to pay as little attention to it as I'd hoped I could. Once upon a time in a land far, far away, one-time governor Christie was on my short list of "Republicans I could imagine myself voting for." He was not on that list for long. Once I saw a little more of him, I realized I liked him for his entertainment value and because, like too many in both parties, he saw the wisdom in occasionally confessing to a mistake or admitting a weakness in his party. Unfortunately, when you brushed all that aside, he was still Chris Christie.

It was interesting to see him getting booed at the Faith and Freedom Conference the other day for criticizing Trump. I got the feeling that the booers didn't disagree with what he said. I got the feeling what they were saying was, "We know all that! But what you don't understand, you moron, is that we want to win!"

That's why they'll ignore the many lies and misdeeds of their guy: Because of all the candidates for the Republican nomination, he's the one who even if he winds up campaigning wearing an ankle bracelet, stands a better chance than Pence, Haley, Ramaswamy, Hutchinson, Scott, DeSantis, Durgum, Suarez, Hurd and especially Mr. Christie. All of them can pledge to ban abortion, cut taxes, police our borders, Make America Great Again, etc. Only one of them looks like he could win.

You can't beat something with nothing. I put that in boldface because I think we too often forget that. Most folks who support Trump are not going to abandon him until they have a viable alternative…and none of the others in the current bag o' candidates fills that need. Eventually, a few indictments from now, someone might if only by default. In the meantime, Christie's Trump-bashing is awfully entertaining and pretty accurate. It's just that a lot of people don't want to hear it because they have no one else to rally behind and, y'know, they want to win.

"An Existential Threat?"

A number of big studios (including Marvel) will either have a minimal official presence at Comic-Con next month or none at all. I feel sorry for the folks who love that aspect of the event but it's not all or even most of what Comic-Con is about. It's just the part that gets the most attention from some corners of the media and generates the most headlines.

This article in Variety says there's an "existential threat" happening here and that's, well, kind of ridiculous.  The con will still be the con.  It will still have as many attendees…and if for some reason, some now decide not to attend and others don't rush in to claim that opportunity, that wouldn't hurt the con financially.  The tickets were all bought and paid for months ago and if they put tickets for 2024 on sale now, they'd also sell out in under an hour.  The only difference you'd notice if fewer folks showed up this year would be that the ones who were there would be happier about the shorter lines and less-mobbed aisles.

And the only downside I see is that Variety might not be able to write so much about one of the only two aspects of the convention that ever interests them. The rest of us will have a dandy time.

A few years ago, a friend of mine was involved with a movie that was showing previews at Comic-Con and he said to me, "This is going to be the event that everyone at the con will be talking about." Their preview/panel was in Hall H which holds 6,000 people and I told him that fact, reminded him that the con attracts 130,000 people (give or take a couple of guys in Harley Quinn suits) and asked, "How are you going to get the other 124,000 to talk about you?"

He didn't have much of an answer. I'm also reminded of those years when Conan O'Brien was recording his show at a theater in San Diego during Comic-Con. A exec for his network told Variety and other trade papers that Conan had become "the face of Comic-Con." One of their publicists called me to ask that I promote Conan on my panels because he'd become "the signature celebrity of Comic-Con."

Yeah, sure. Fine. Need I point out that since Conan stopped with the tie-ins, which was before he stopped with his show, not one person has noticed his absence? But, hey, that's what publicists try to do: Make everything all about their clients. Even back when Comic-Con had 300 attendees, it was never about one thing. It still isn't just about Hollywood using it, as a wise man named Jack Kirby once predicted, "…to sell the movies they made last year and to find out what they're going to make next year."

Comic-Con might have some sort of "existential threat" if all the studios were pulling out forever because they decided it was no longer a place worthy of a spot in their promotional budgets. I don't think even that would doom the con. There would be plenty of other businesses that thought it would be of value to them to participate. "Existential threats" are about the entire future existence of something. This year is just a one-time outlier because of one or more strikes.

And even this year, there will probably still be enough movie/TV promotions and celebs to interest Variety or anyone. There will definitely be enough cosplayers on the premises for Variety to make this year's version of the following video they released last year. This is the other thing besides the TV/movie stars they're there to cover…

About half the time when I meet people who've never attended Comic-Con but find out I have, I need to disabuse them of the idea that every attendee or almost every attendee comes dressed up as some super-hero or videogame character or Klingon. I say, "No, no…those are just the people who the reporters point their cameras at." Understandably. I mean, with those cosplayers around, I sure wouldn't point my camera at me. (It's another reason I like having the cosplayers around. I'm not thrilled about cameras pointed at me.)

It's never been just about the cosplayers just as it's never been only about the celebrities. They're just the elements of the con that mainstream media loves to focus upon.

The cosplayers will be out in full force this year. Some celebrities will be there. Some movies and TV shows will not miss the chance to promote their product. So Variety will be there. There's no "existential threat" to the convention. For one year, there just might not be as much there for Variety to write about. And Variety, if you want to write about "existential threats" to the existence of something, how about writing about industry trade papers that can no longer turn a profit printing every day or every week on paper?

Today's Video Link

Last night, I finally got around to watching the Tony Awards only to discover that for once, my trusty TiVo had failed me. It recorded the first half but with lotsa breakups…and the second half, not at all. I'll find a good copy of it one of these days but I did watch a few of the segments online.

This is the "In Memoriam" segment which, if I were producing an awards show, would be retitled "In Celebration" and we'd have a peppier "up" tune that said, in some manner, "Isn't it great that we had these talented people in our world?" Folks always complain about these spots because (a) they leave someone or several someones out who should be in and (b) they keep taking the camera off the screen to show a singer…but the segment isn't about the singer. It's about the people on the screen.

I dunno who they might have overlooked but they managed to have a singer — a good singer — and still do justice to the people on the screen. In fact, what I was able to see of the show itself looked pretty good. Ariana Debose is an incredible talent. I was just hoping the show would stink so badly that some high-level executives would see it and say, "My God! Give the writers whatever they want…just get them back!"

Today's Trump Post

Fred Kaplan takes a real-world look at You-Know-Who's claim that he could settle the Ukraine War in one day. Well, so could I if I could persuade either side to surrender. Most likely, Trump doesn't even have a plan. He sure didn't make good on his long-ago pledge to design, in under a week as I recall, a new health plan that absolutely everyone would agree was better than Obamacare. I doubt he even spent ten seconds on that one.

I'll try to hold the Trump posts down on this site but if they bother you, do us both a favor and stop reading this blog, at least until he's gone.

And if you want more of that kind of thing than I'll be supplying…oh, have I got a YouTube channel for you. The Meidas Touch Network puts up video after video — several a day, many of them by experienced attorneys — explaining exactly what's going on in Trump's legal downfalls. The ones by Ben Meiselas (civil rights lawyer), Michael Popok (national trial lawyer strategist) and Karen Friedman Agnifilo (former Chief Assistant District Attorney of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office) are especially informative and refreshingly non-hysterical.

Today's Video Link

No, I have no idea when the Writers Guild strike will end and neither do you even if you think you do. And as it goes on, a lot of us are missing our favorite shows. Mine would probably be John Oliver's and his absence is a special shame because there's so much in the news that he and his staff could turn into wonderful, informative and funny programming.

But all they've produced lately is this "For Your Consideration" video because, you know, that show doesn't have nearly enough Emmy Awards yet. I think they're aiming to get every single one in every single category…

Border Crossings – Part 5

I am hereby resuming a series of posts that I stopped a month ago due to some major distractions, some of them involving the 45th President of the United States. So before you read what comes next, you might want to reacquaint yourself with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 or even Part 4. This fifth part will be waiting here for you when you return…

At the age of ten, I had been an avid lover of comic books for at least a third of my life…which may sound like a lot but today, it's more like 95%. In 1962, most of what I was reading was Dell Comics, especially those that featured characters seen in cartoons from the Disney Studios, Warner Brothers, MGM, Walter Lantz, Terrytoons, Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward. All of these comics said "Dell" on the covers…

…until one day, they didn't.

I'm going to get way too deep into trivia here. Forgive me but this was a traumatic, life-changing moment in my existence. It began at a Von's Market at which my family used to shop. Below is a photo taken years later at the corner of Pico Boulevard and Westwood Boulevard in West Los Angeles. Almost nothing in the photo is still there except that the buses which run on Pico are still blue and #7. If you click on the picture, you can see more of it.

So one day when I accompanied my mother there for groceries, I hit the comic book rack and found a lot of new comics, some of which startled me. Bugs Bunny comics had always come from Dell Comics but this new Bugs Bunny comic book came from a company I'd never seen before: Gold Key. I don't remember how many books I was able to purchase that day but I'm pretty sure of these two…

This was on or a few days after Thursday, June 28, 1962 because that's the day those comics went on sale. Also on sale that day were these comics bearing the Gold Key logo : Checkmate #1, King Leonardo and His Short Subjects #1, Little Lulu #165, Snagglepuss #1, Walter Lantz Woody Woodpecker #73 and Dr. Solar #1. I was ten years old and emotionally unable to process all this change.

Bugs, Rocky, His Highness King Leonardo, Lulu, Snagglepuss and Woody had always appeared in Dell Comics before this. In fact, I think there was a recent Dell issue of King Leonardo still on that rack. Checkmate was based on a prime-time detective series that I actually watched and knew had been canceled. Dr. Solar wasn't based on anything I'd ever seen before.

I instantly came to the obvious conclusion that Dell had just changed its name to Gold Key. And that was a sound bit of deduction until I noticed that the new issues of two Dell mainstays — Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and Donald Duck — still had Dell cover symbols.

So I didn't know what the hell was going on and it only got worse. Over the following weeks, there were more issues of comics that had previously said "Dell" on their covers that now said "Gold Key" but there were also comics that had previously said "Dell" on their covers that still said "Dell" on their covers. There were also an awful lot of brand new comics coming out, some with "Dell" on their covers (like Felix the Cat #1 and a new Disney book — Goofy #1) and brand new comics (like New Terrytoons #1 and Fractured Fairy Tales #1) that said "Gold Key" on their covers.

As I mentioned in Part 4 of this series, my family and I sometimes drove past a building on Santa Monica Boulevard for a company called Western Publishing and I knew that Dell Comics came from that building. For a few weeks in July of '62, I almost wanted my folks to drive me down there so I could pound on the door and scream, "WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING TO MY COMIC BOOKS???!!"

I resisted the impulse and soon, things settled down. The next issue of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories that came out came out with a Gold Key logo as did all the future Disney comics. I reconciled myself to the notion that Dell had split into two companies, one named Dell and one named Gold Key, and each had some of my favorite comics. As I would learn a decade later, this wasn't exactly true but it was close.

But that didn't end the trauma. There was something else odd about some (not all) of these new Gold Key comics — something on the insides. I'll do some show-'n'-tell about it in the next installment of this series, coming soon. Or at least sooner than this installment did.

Today's Video Link

It's a Double Rainbow Week…

I see all these folks on videos and TV wondering just why Trump held on so tenaciously to those Tippy-Top Secret documents…and it may just be, as the most common speculation says, that he thought there were ways he could swap or share them for power and/or bucks. That's a perfectly logical, in-character motive.

But you have to wonder — well, I have to wonder — if maybe Donald couldn't turn loose of the rush of being The Most Powerful Person on Earth, as most presidents think they are. And maybe he loved the feeling of sitting in the Oval Office, knowing he had all this secret information that could alter the world, including the power to bomb some other country out of existence. And maybe if he really and truly believed he'd beaten Joe Biden in a landslide, he couldn't bear to have all of that thrill wrenched away from him.

Maybe. But more likely, it was just the power and/or bucks.

Today's Video Link

Here from 2011 is a particularly funny Top Ten List on Dave Letterman's show — with special guest Josh Groban…



Thursday Morning

Friends keep asking me what I think is going to happen with the case against Mr. Trump over the wrongly-retained documents. My answer: I dunno although I'm fairly certain it will not end with him being acquitted, the documents being returned to him and the government apologizing for ever accusing him of anything. It's supposed to be a speedy trial but I think we can expect delay, delay, delay…and by the time it finally does get to court, who knows what other legal troubles he'll be in? It may not even be the biggest worry in that man's life.

Speaking of that man's life: Back when he was running against Ms. Clinton, he and his supporters had no reticence to spread the word that Hillary was in terrible health and could not possibly survive one year, let alone four of Presidenting. Obviously, that was not so and later they said that of Biden. I'm not saying that's the prognosis for Trump but given the way he's looked in recent interviews, it would not be difficult for his opponents to sell that notion to some voters.

The Comic-Con in San Diego is 27 days away. I'm looking forward to everything except the fact that, like last year, the main exhibit hall will not be carpeted. That nude concrete floor is rough on the feet. I am well aware that because of that Pandemic thing you may have heard about, the con has to cut some corners to recoup financial losses…and someone on the committee told me what it costs to rent, lay down and take up the carpeting that was there, pre-COVID. It's way more than you'd imagine and not having it is probably a wise way to save bucks…but I can say I'll miss it. Might I suggest getting your purchases done swiftly and then coming upstairs where there are wonderful panels and presentations to enjoy?

You may be following the news story about the wealthy folks who may have perished in that "submersible" that went down to snoop on The Titanic. It's a horrifying situation. I also see a lot of folks online trying to make jokes about it. I subscribe to the notion that you should be able to find humor in anything…but so far, those I've seen attempt it with this matter are batting zero.

Like anyone who loves old movies, I'm a little concerned by the recent shake-up and layoffs at Turner Classic Movies. That channel is one of the few class acts on cable and it would be very easy to ruin it by inserting more commercials — especially in the middle of films — or aping the programming strategies of some other channels. One hopes wiser heads will prevail at TCM. Matter of fact, it would be nice if wiser heads prevailed everywhere on everything.

If you're in or around Los Angeles on July 25th — the Tuesday after Comic-Con — you might enjoy a new performance of Celebrity Autobiography, an always-hilarious show in which funny folks read actual excerpts from actual autobiographies of famous show biz folks. It's at the Groundings Theater on Melrose, tickets can be purchased here and the readers for the evening will consist of Pamela Adlon, Kathy Griffin, Tony Hale, Laraine Newman, Eugene Pack, Dayle Reyfel, Steven Weber, George Wendt, Cedric Yarbrough and probably others. We recommend going. We also recommend The Black Version, a wonderful improv show that will be on that same stage on July 17. Always a delight.

George

Fifteen years ago today, the world lost the man many would call its all-time master of Stand-Up Comedy, George Carlin. I hope at some point you got to see this man perform in a hall in which you were sitting. The cable specials were great and I'm sure folks will be watching them for approximately forever. But there was an energy and excitement and a connection with the live audience you felt when you were a part of that live audience.

My good buddy Jeff Abraham was George's friend and publicist. He wrote this article about his friend and client. Go read what Jeff wrote.