Mark Evanier's Blog, page 250

Friday Morning

What needs to be finished still needs to be finished but less of it needs to be finished than needed to be finished at this time yesterday. Rather than leave this blog looking sad and neglected, I'm posting another of my favorite episodes of my favorite TV program. It's The Dick Van Dyke Show for October 31, 1962. I remember laughing my fool head off at this when it was first broadcast and it startles me to realize I was about ten-and-a-half years old at the time.

It's a reminder of the awesome physical (along with verbal) comedy skills of the star of that series. I'm hard-pressed to think of anyone who has since starred in a situation comedy who could have pulled this off…maybe John Ritter? Watch it and see if you can come up with a name. I'll be back after the video embed to tell you an interesting (to me) thing about this episode…

The actor who played the hypnotist is Charles Aidman, who also played Rob Petrie's insurance man a year later in another episode. Mr. Aidman was one of those actors — as you may know, I love performers in this category — who worked constantly without ever becoming easily identifiable from one role on one series. Jamie Farr had that anonymous status before he became Max Klinger on M*A*S*H. If he hadn't landed that part, he probably would still have worked all the time but there'd be no way I could describe him in one sentence so most of you would know who I was talking about.

Aidman's career ran from about 1952 until his death in 1993 and is very, very long and — I'm sure — very, very incomplete.

It presently lists his last job as a 1992 episode of Garfield and Friends but I know that's not right because when I booked him for it, we had to work around the shooting schedule of some movie he was working on. But I wanted him to be my narrator because he would give it a kind of Twilight Zone ambience. Aidman was so good at that kind of thing that he'd served as the narrator of the 1985 Twilight Zone revival on CBS. Pro that he was, he arrived at our studio right on time but with an attitude of "Are you sure it's me you wanted?" He did a lot of voiceover work but almost never for cartoons and certainly not for allegedly-funny ones.

I get asked, "How do you direct cartoon voices?" Here's a perfect example: You hire the right actor, show them which microphone to use and then get the hell out of their way. I don't think I gave him any more direction at the top than "Just forget it's a cartoon. Read the copy like it's a serious suspense film." And then the next bit of direction I gave him was, "That was great, Charles. Come out of the booth and sign some paperwork so we can pay you."

And yes, we did talk a little bit about some of the other things he'd done, including The Dick Van Dyke Show. Very nice man. Very good at what he did. If you'd like to see a little of the cartoon he narrated, it's online here. The other voices are by Lorenzo Music (of course), Gregg Berger, Thom Huge and June Foray. That's right: June Foray. Directing her or any of those folks was no more labor-intensive than directing Charles Aidman. All you need to do is hire the right people.

Mushroom Soup Thursday

Apologies for the light posting of late. I'm trying to finish something that refuses to be finished. When it is, I'll be back in full force.

I haven't seen anything online about it but I'm told the nominations are out for this year's inductions into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, which is kind of like the Baseball Hall of Fame except it's for people who do comics instead of pitching and throwing and running and spiking the catcher. Shockingly, my name is on this list.

This is just me but I have a lot of problems with awards of any sort. I love when they go to people who I think are deserving and who are made happy — and perhaps even given long-overdue attention — by them. I am uncomfy when I am a possible recipient which is why I didn't show for the ceremony two of the three times I was nominated for an Emmy or more than half the times I've been up for a Harvey or Eisner. I think the first award I ever got as a professional whatever-I-am was when the early Comic-Con decided to give me one of its Inkpot Awards. This would have been 1975.

I found out in advance and immediately altered my plans to attend the ceremony. Shel Dorf, who was then very visible at the San Diego cons mostly as a figurehead, spent the whole next day traipsing around the con with the trophy trying to present it to me and I treated him like a process server. He wanted to do it in a setting with an audience and applause and an acceptance speech and photos. I finally accepted it in private, took it home and didn't display it anywhere until years later when I bought my house and had walls to fill.

At the time, I told myself I was taking some sort of stand for a principle but as so often happens, I later couldn't really explain that principle. And because I couldn't, I realized I was just being a jerk about something that in my head, I'd blown all out of proportion.

I talked about it once with my friend/employer Lee Mendelson, who had more Emmy Awards than toes, and who may have been the wisest man I've known in the television business. He said, "It's simple. If you're nominated, say 'It's an honor to be nominated'" If you win, say 'It's an honor to win.'" Then find a place for the trophy and don't make a big hazari about it." "Hazari" — pronounced as "rye" with a "haza" (rhyming with "Gaza") in front of it — is a Yiddish word that means (roughly) "junk food" but a lot of folks use it to mean something that is way less important than people make it out to be.

So: To whoever nominated me…thanks. It's an honor to be nominated. And now, I have to go try and finish that thing which doesn't want to be finished. I'll be back when it is or when someone I think deserves an obit dies. I sure hope it's the former.

Today's Video Link

Jon Stewart is absolutely right. And this is not about Trump…

Last Post on Trump for a While

This post by Ankush Khardori and one or two others I've read this morning confirm my feelings that the current case against Trump could go either way and that by the time it does go either way, we might be knees deep in the next case against Trump or the one after that or the one after that. The case New York D.A. Bragg has just brought against the Trump that Trump Lovers love to love may be real old, unimportant news by the time it does go either way.

If I were D.J.T., I'd be thrilled at the fund-raising and attention-getting opportunities it's giving me…and a lot more worried about the other stuff. He seems to love every opportunity to blast anyone who isn't blindly on his side as a Trump Hater and that's one of those lies that becomes all the more true every time you say it. Tomorrow, if one of his limos got a ticket for parking in the wrong place, he'd be railing against the Trump-hating, Soros-funded meter maid.

One of the many things I don't like about this guy is how much time I have to spend paying attention to him. He's like one of those televised police chases except that he's on close to 24/7. I shall now do my best to look away for as long as I can.

Today's Video Link

You can find plenty of articles online — some of them even from legal authorities! — telling you that the case against Donald Trump is very sound or very weak. Interesting to me is that I only seem to find the latter on right-wing sites but I find some of each on sites that are middle-of-the-road or even left-wing.

Me, I figure it doesn't matter what I think. The process will decide and I gather it might not decide for some time…maybe not even until he's gone through a few more arraignments. My guess is that being prosecuted will be good for Trump's fund-raising, bad for him winning over voters not already in his camp, and that whether or not he's the G.O.P. nominee will have more to do with who gets in the race and who doesn't.

And that's about as much as I want to write or think about him for a while.

Occasionally watching the news today, I saw George Santos wading through the crowds and I thought I saw Jordan Klepper asking him something about his volleyball career. It turned out I did…

Indictment Day

I'm watching some of the live news coverage from New York. It's great if you enjoy hearing the ten minutes of actual information paraphrased and repeated over and over for hours. Every now and then, someone gets around to noting that at this moment, none of the folks taking stands and commenting on Donald Trump's guilt or innocence actually know what's in the indictment. And every now and then, someone suggests that the actual charges might matter. I suspect they don't with some people.

I'm turning the TV off and trying to get some work done.

Around the Web

Andrew Farago wrote a real good article about the late Joe Giella. You will be impressed with how much Joe did in his long, glorious career.

A number of you have written to ask what I thought of this article on the CNN website by Roy Schwartz. It's about Jack Kirby and Captain America…and what I think of it is that it's pretty good. There are a few minor quibbles — like I don't think Stan Lee asked Jack to try super-heroes again in 1961. I think Jack convinced Stan it was a good idea. But my main problem is that I don't think the piece gives Joe Simon enough credit for his contributions to the classic first ten issues of Captain America.

Today's Video Link

Here's a sketch from At Last, the 1948 Show, a British comedy program that helped set the stage for Monty Python. This sketch features Marty Feldman, Graham Chapman and John Cleese. Some years later, Mr. Cleese did a slightly different version of the sketch with Rowan Atkinson which I posted here back in 2012…

Mushroom Soup Monday

Way too much to deal with today. Will post later if I can. In the meantime, there are plenty of other things to read on the web, most of which have the word "indictment" in them.

Today's Video Link

Randy Rainbow…