Summer Vacation with Digressions into the Disney-Marvel Deal

We've been on vacation since Aug. 20 and are now in the middle of our time off. So far we've driven to Pittsfield, Mass. to see the Barrington Stage Company to see Freud's Last Session in the studio theatre, then A Streetcar Named Desire on the main stage with Tony nominee Marin Mazzie, visited friends near Quakertown, PA, then drove to Doylestown--a cute little town with some cute little shops, went to Cooperstown and saw La Traviata at Glimmerglass. The next few days were spent hanging around the house. At one point I drove one hour to Millerton because they have a nice antiques place which sometimes has valuable Silver Age comics. I had not bought any in a while and my habit was getting to me. I needed one badly. So I bought two reprints of Avengers from the late 60s in a series called Marvel Triple Action. The art was by Don Heck whose work I have never been crazy about but the covers were great.

BTW, I heard today that Disney is buying Marvel for several million dollars. Does that mean that the Marvel superheroes will be removed from Universal Islands of Escape and transferred to Disney World and will Disney pour money into the Spider-Man musical and thereby save it? (I have not been keeping up with that situation while I've been away, so I don't know if it's on or off or what?) Jerry and I really loved Universal, but found Disney too family-and-kiddie-oriented. How will the angst-filled heroes of Marvel fit into that Mickey-Mouse framework? We'll be going to Orlando a week after we get back so I'm looking forward to it.

Today we drove up through the Adironacks and stopped in Lake Saranac, Lake Placid, and are now in Plattsburgh. Tomorrow, we'll take the ferry across to Vermont. Pretty scenery. Nice dinner at a place called Iris' Wine Bar and Restaurant.

Project Runway Episode 2: Pregnant with Possibilities; with Diversions to Top Chef and Rachel Zoe

Mitchell has GOT to go. For the second week in a row, he had an interesting idea but executed it sloppily--is that a word? It's a good concept to do a fun maternity look, but he made the model look like a trailer-trash housewife on her way to the Walmart to pick up some beer and pretzels for the weekend tailgate party. And those shorts were ridiculously unflattering. He's very cute and that may be why he's still hanging around. Which leads us to Fatma's reaction on Models of the Runway when Mitchell picked her. It's was very funny and my favorite line of either the main show or the model show so far this season is when Mitchell did not get eliminated and one of the girls watching said "Oh no--he's a model-jumper!" A new phrase is invited. Model-jumper: a person who is not loyal to his or her model but will pick another one at the first opportunity. Mitchell was right to pick Fatma since he had the chance and she is the most striking looking of the models. But he's got to pick up his game. My bet is he'll be gone within two episodes. I think they keep some pretty bad designers just for the drama. I also think Heidi's stern warning to him was added for even more drama. Too bad she couldn't use that catchphrase from the Fashion Show--"You're hanging by a thread." But there was some agreement in the lawsuit with Bravo that they couldn't steal each other's catchphrases. It's in paragraph 27, clause 32.

Malvin did deserve to be eliminated, that chicken-egg thing just didn't work and that was more of a bowling-ball look than Ra'mon's. Shirin's winning design was elegance incarnate and it didn't accentuate the pregnancy, but artfully concealed it, especially with the jacket which was lined with a lovely print.

There are still too many designers to get them all differentiated in my mind and they don't have particularly strong personalities. I am eagerly awaiting Tim Gunn's apearance in the Models Inc. comic book--If I haven't missed it already. I bought the new Archie comic with the proposal to Veronica for my friend Lydia.

Meanwhile, I'm still on vacation till Labor Day so I have been able to watch Top Chef and The Rachel Zoe Project, the remaining interesting shows on Bravo. On Rachel Zoe--I am sick of Taylor. OK, I get it. You're not happy basically being a clerk to Rachel and so you bagged the Golden Globes viewing party. Rachel is not a good communicator and her problem is treating her staff like friends. She needs to be the boss and tell Taylor to shape up and drop the attitude. And also discuss why she needs them to be upstairs. My favorite line of the episode: Brad: "We have to be strategic in our planning, but we're not strategic people." It was fascinating to see how much work goes into putting together a red-carpet look and how the award shows are all about glamour and fashion rather than honoring excellent acting--at least for the whole industry that grown up around it and which Rachel exemplifies. Anne Hathway is an interesting example of an actress who straddles fashion and acting. She in all into the red carpet, but when it's appropriate, she can be a regular person. I saw her at the Obie Awards presenting an award for lifetime achievement to Earle Hyman and she was dresses very casually, sedately, yet tastefully. She was about to appear in Twelfth Night in Central Park and you could tell she was honored to be included in this non-glamour event celebrating a great actor. It wasn't on TV and there was no red carpet.

Have caught two Top Chefs episodes and it looks like Kevin is the force to be reckoned with. The two competing brothers are cute, but kinda lifeless.

Old Books, Deep Are the Roots, and the Passing of Ted Kennedy

While driving toward Pennsylvania on vacation, my partner Jerry and I stopped at Doylestown, after visiting friends near Quakertown. We had heard it was a lovely little place with cute shops. (It also has a place in my family's history since my father drove us there once instead of taking my sister and me to our swimming lesson. So we also joked about how much we hated Doylestown because it made us miss our swimming at the Norristown Y.) Anyway, Doylestown was indeed a cute burg with quaint shops. We found a used book store and I bought a play from 1945 called Deep Are the Roots (pictured at left, a scene from the show on the cover of Theatre World magazine). Today it is chiefly remembered because it was directed by Elia Kazan and starred a very young Barbara Bel Geddes before she did Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with him. The play by Arnaud D'Usseau and James Gow was a hit in its day and deals with an intelligent African-American veteran returning to his Deep South home after WWII. He has grown up in the home of a racist Southern senator where his mother was employed as a housekeeper. All kinds of trouble results when Brett, the vet, attempts to improve conditions for his people and--worse--he is attracted to the senator's youngest daughter.

The play is dated and obvious--there's a visiting Northern writer who is engaged to the senator's older daughter (played by Bel Geddes) to represent the liberal viewpoint. The senator melodramatically frames Brett with stealing a valuable family heirloom. Brett is arrested but escapes for a climactic confrontation with the white family. What's interesting is this kind of play used to be done on Broadway with a degree of regularity--controversial topics like race prejudice and interracial romance would never be touched by Hollywood and TV was still in the planning stages. Broadway had its share of silly comedies and escapist fare in those days, but you saw thoughtful work too. Also, the liberal views espoused were given full voice and the evil--yes evil, I said it--of the old racist Southern way of life was exposed for what it was. Significant sidenote: Gordon Heath, the actor who starred as Brett later left America and settled in Paris because as a handsome, intelligent African-American actor who wasn't a Stephin Fetchit type, he couldn't find work on stage or screen. He decided to stay in Europe after the play's run in London. He also was gay and had a white lover whom he had met in America so he was fleeing both homophobia and racism. Also Kazan later cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee, resulting in the blacklisting of several of his friends who had views like those put forth in the play. One character even accuses Brett of being a Communist because he wants to change the Jim Crow South.

Today a play like that would never make it to Broadway. Too political. Too "liberal." The passing of Ted Kennedy calls to mind another passing--that of the word liberal. It's still a tainted word thanks to Ronnie Reagan. You notice that politicians and commentators now say "progressive" instead. I am liberal and not ashamed to say it. I believe government can and should help people who are down on their luck. I believe everyone should be treated equally. I believe religion should be a private matter and have no place in the public sphere. I should be able to marry my partner in any state in the union. Affordable health care should be a right, not a priviledge. Kennedy was an advocate for all of those things. With more people identifying themselves as conservative than liberal, I worry about the future of these issues. To me conservative means "Leave things the way they are; never change. Our health care may not be the best in the world, but I'm scared to lose what I have. So don't bother fixing it, you might make it worse."

I think most people associate liberal with "tax and spend" when if they really thought about it, they'd agree with liberal principles. President Obama said Kennedy helped him to achieve his goals through his legislative efforts including repealing the poll tax which prevented African-Americans from voting. Ironically, that's one of the wrongs the Brett character tries to end in the play. One of the plot points of the Deep Are the Roots involves Brett entering the public library by the front door and asking for a book without a note from the white family his mother works for. This causes a minor scandal in the town. Now we have a black president, how far we've come. But the roots of prejudice are still there.

Project Runway's New Season

Project Runway finally started its new season and it was weird to watch it on ultra-girly Lifetime after five seasons on gay-male-friendly Bravo. The commercials were so different. On Bravo we had ads for booze and male enchantment pills. On Lifetime, anti-depression pills, chick flicks and hairspray. Anyway, it was a relief to see see Tim and Heidi after that lame "Fashion Show" knock-off with Isaac Mizrahi and that woman whose name I never caught. Who was she anyway? The work on Fashion Show was pretty lame. The only thing I can remember was the pleating on one dress and that annoying nutcase Merlin.

Thoughts on the new season: The All-Star Challenge. They obviously chose people for their personalities but why include Jeffrey if the whole point was to get someone to win who was passed over before? Katho was right, she should have won. Daniel's red-carpet dress was indeed a great, edgy look for the Grammys or the VMAs, but the rest of his collection didn't send me. Kotho's work was more consistant, attractive, and wearable, especially the restaurant-challenge look which was really pretty. Chris's sportwear was interesting, but who would wear it? I think the judges go for out-there, avant garde stuff which looks great on the runway but no one is going to buy. Witness Christian winning for his outer-space whack job collection with all those weird ruffles and headpieces.

The first episode: Too early to pick favorites and too many to keep track of. I knew the first one to be eliminated would be either Ari or Mitchell since they gave them so much screen time. Seriously what was up with Ari's "What if you don't sketch?" She was in the running for resident weirdo, like the one from Season 4 (I think) who made the dress that was pooping fabric in the very first challenge. And even if Mitchell did have the wrong measurements for his model, he still should have made an undergarment. Ari's outfit was totally inappropriate for the challenge, but at least it was well made and had a point of view. Sidenote: Did Qrystal's mother spell her name that way on the birth certificate?

Models of the Runway: Trying to cash in on the America's Next Top Model trend. Kinda fun but they are making too much of a big deal out of the "Choosing your model" ceremony. But at least that means they won't take up time with it in the regular show so there will be more high drama with the designers.

Scenes from an Amatuer Comic Collector's Life (4)--Trading Up

Several months ago I bought 20 old Red Circle comics from ebay because one had art by Jack Kirby. It had a reprint of a series Kirby did called The Fighting American. The other 19 didn't interest me. Strictly second-rate heroes like THUNDER Agents and the Mighty Crusaders from the 1980s without the camp value of the Silver Age books of the same title. I had been meaning to trade the 19 for the longest time. Roger at Time Machine said I should hold onto them because you never knew, they might be worth something someday. But why not just trade them for something I really wanted?

Work has been stressful lately, so I figured I deserved some new comics. I lugged in the Red Circles to Time Machine at lunch. For 19, I netted five Silver Age ones I really wanted--three in lousy shape and two much better--and bought two extras. Roger dumped the Red Circles in his 99 cent bin. I also had a Jetsons which I didn't care about and that was worth $2. My new acquisitions are four Thors from the Silver Age with art work by Kirby and one Flash from the same period featuring the wedding of Barry Allen, Flash's secret identity to Iris West. On their wedding day, the evil Professor Zoom manages to switch places with Flash so that the latter is trapped in a prison cell in the future. The villain is about to marry the unwitting Iris--who doesn't even know her real fiance is a superhero--when Flash runs into the church and kidnaps what appears to be the bridegroom. It all works out in the end, but Barry Allen explains to Iris "It was all a mistake"--that's it, his whole rationale--and she buys it! And this woman is a reporter? Lois Lane would have put all over that story. Barry does tell Iris his big secret several issues later.

Thor is another series I am collecting since it is one of the few Kirby titles I haven't snapped up. Later I went to Midtown Comics. For some reason, they have only Bronze and Copper back issues in their display bins. They save the good stuff for online. But on this occassion I found six or seven Kirby Thors in reasonable condition for $5 each. I bought one. Then a few days later I went back and they were all gone. How frustrating.

Benton Quest and Race Bannon: TV's First Gay Family?

Boomerang is now showing reruns of Jonny Quest at midnight and I find myself watching Golden Girls reruns on Hallmark or the second airing of Rachel Maddow on MSNBC from 11 to about 11:45, so I can say to myself, “Oh, Jonny Quest is on in 15 minutes anyway, I may as well stay up and see it as long as I’m up.” I absolutely loved this show when it first aired back in the early 60s. I remember it used be on ABC just before The Addams Family—I think. I loathe the new version Cartoon Network had on a few years ago because it looked so cheap. The thing that excited me about Jonny Quest was that despite the fact that the title character was an 11-year-old boy like me (I had to be younger) this was a sophisticated adult show.

First of all, it was on at night! That meant it wasn’t intended for kids. Those cartoons were only on Saturday mornings, unlike the 24-7 accessibility of animation nowadays. And the animation was so realistic, Jonny and his all-male clan looked like real people, not fantasy coloring book figures like the Flintstones or the Jetsons, Hanna-Barbara’s other prime-time family units.

Jonny never had to go to school. There was the occasional admonishment from Race Bannon for him to do his homework or he wouldn’t get to hang glide with Hadji, but then there would be a call from some panicked police chief or fellow scientist for his dad, Dr. Benton Quest to drop everything to rush to India or Pago Pago. They’d all pile in their private jet and head for adventure. I wonder if they ever ran into Josie and the Pussycats. (But that was probably years later.)

There was also the gay subtext of the relationship between Dr. Benton Quest and Race Bannon. Did you notice the sideways glances they cast at each other in the opening credits as if to say “Wait till the kids are asleep then I can show you that new experiment, if you know what I mean”? They always shared a room, sometimes with the boys, too—as in that episode where a tarantula is dropped on Dr. Quest in the middle of the night and Jonny throws a pitcher of water at it. All four are in the same room, each in separate beds of course.

Race did have a brief flirtation with a female spy called Jade and they seemed to know each other from previous international capers. Jonny and Hadji both go “Ewww!” when the two daredevils kissed at the end of an episode. The ABC bigwigs may have dictated a little heterosexual smooching to avoid any suspicion of hanky-panky on the part of the two male leads. Otherwise, Benton and Race were constantly in each other’s company and Race was the “mother” to Jonny and Hadji. Mrs. Quest apparently died at a young age and her surviving husband never mentions female companionship. So this unit was an early example of a same-sex couple, complete with an adopted Third World child (Hadji). Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law, satirized the gay possibilities with Race suing Benton for custody of the boys.

I was watching an episode Thursday night and it was startling because an Asian police lieutenant who has been acting as a double agent against his government dies a horrible death in a car crash. You don’t see such on screen violence in cartoons today—or not in Saturday morning ones anyway. Here was real life and death with consequences. Not like the bullets which bounced off Superman or wounded Daffy Duck but he emerged unscathed. In one cartoon, after being shot by Elmer Fudd, Daffy joked “It’s a good thing I got Blue Cross.”

Trivia note: I discovered that the end-credit footage of angry African natives chasing a hovercraft as it flies into a waiting jet and then throwing spears at the jet as it takes off is not from any Jonny Quest episode. Those are scenes from an earlier version of the show which never aired. That always bothered me because all the other scenes in the credits were from recognized Quest adventures. Mystery solved.

My favorite line. In the episode "The House of the Seven Gargoyles" it's revealed that a gargoyle statue is actually a dwarf in disguise spying on Dr. Quest while he visits Norway. Someone says "It's Norway's greatest acrobatic dwarf!" As if there were hundreds of acrobatic dwarves in Norway.

This has been a Screen Gems presentation.

Late Night Ramblings: From Politics to Continuity on the Golden Girls

I despair of civil discourse in this country. Corporate lobbyists and radical right wingers are encouraging people to riot at town hall meetings--filling their heads with lies about health care reform. ("It will kill your grandpa, and your daughter will be forced to have an abortion.") They are employing the tactics they deplored 40 years ago when kids protested the Vietnam war. Limbaugh compares Obama to Hitler every chance he gets. Olbermann and O'Reilly have broken their truce and are ratcheting up their attacks.

For every piece of good news--Sotomayor is confirmed, the two journalists are released from North Korea thanks to Bill Clinton--there's more bad: health care reform is in danger, crazies are getting into the mainstream media.

It's so much easier to watch Jonny Quest at midnight on Boomerang and the Golden Girls 24-7 on the Hallmark Channel or WE. Did you ever notice Blanche, Dorothy, Rose, and Sophia never mention their children, grandchildren, siblings, etc. except on the episodes where said relatives appeared. It's as if they vanished from mind when they weren't present. Let's see, Blanche had a sister (played by Barbara Babcock and Sheree North on separate episodes) and a gay brother (Monte Markham). But her father Big Daddy (David Wayne and some other guy in another episode) never mentioned his other children when he would visit Blanche. Meanwhile Dorothy also had a sister played by two different actresses (Doris Bielack and Dena Dietrich, Mother Nature on those margarine commercials) and a brother Phil who was into cross-dressing. Yet when Blanche had a tough time dealing with her brother's sexuality, Dorothy never mentioned her experiences with her sibling's transvestitism. Neither did Sophia. Strange.

Jonny Quest is a different story. Jonny's mother is dead before the series starts and she's only mentioned briefly in the first episode. She never comes up again. I guess Dr. Benton Quest is having too much fun with Race Bannon.

Riding the Subway with Mr. Sulu

Friday morning I was riding the subway to work and George Takei, Mr. Sulu from the original Star Trek series got on at 42nd Street. I wasn't sure if it was him since he was wearing dark glasses, but as soon as he started talking to the man with him--I assume it was his partner whom he married in California before the hateful Prop. 8 was passed--I recognized his voice.

"We need to get off at 8th Street--NYU," he said. That was my stop. I figured I would say something to him when we all left the train so he wouldn't have to deal with all the people in the car who would recognize him.

I had a perfect reason to say hello other than just "I'm a big dorky Trekkie fan." About 23 years ago I was a volunteer guest escort--no, not that kind--at a sci-fi convention where Takei was a guest speaker. At the time I was a member of UNYT—The New York-based Doctor Who fan club. Yes, I admit it, God help me. I forget what the initials stood for, but it was a variation on UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce that dealt with extraterrestrial stuff in the Doctor Who series. Anyway, the group was involved with organizing this event which took place at the Ethical Cultural Society on the Upper West Side. Also in attendance were the second Doctor Who (Patrick Troughton) and the fifth Doctor Who (Peter Davison) and some British horror movie queen named Caroline Munro.

I wound up serving as George’s guest escort when a friend of mine who was coordinating speaker relations grabbed me at the convention—it was called Infinicon—and told me Sulu’s original guest escort failed to pick him up at the hotel. It turned out the guy overslept. What would I have to do?, I asked. Here’s his schedule, she said, all you have to do is take him from event to event. First he gives his talk and question and answer session, then he signs autographs for an hour, then take him to lunch, there’s a talent show tonight, then tomorrow a special luncheon for people who have paid extra. So I said okay. He was a lot of fun and it was great to be with him as people on the street recognized him.

I haven’t been to one of these things in a long time. Comic Con and the other comic-book conventions I’ve been to aren’t really the same thing; they are too big or they don’t concentrate on intimate interaction between stars of old sci-fi shows and the fans. I used to go all the time. During the course of my convention-going, I met or saw most of the crew of the original Enterprise, most of the Doctor Whos, several of his companions, Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith from Lost in Space) and Judy from the same show, Joyce Randolph from the Honeymooners, Dawn Wells from Gilligan’s Island, some cast members from V and Blake’s Seven, Adam West (the original Batman from the 1960s series which was my favorite TV show), and Chewbacca from Star Wars.

It would be fun now to go to one, but these days the cons are either enormous media whore shows like Comic Con with little interaction or they are rinky-dink things with D-List people like wrestling stars or Mason Reese (the former commercial child star who looked like a tiny old man) or Larry Storch or Bill Daly from I Dream of Jeannie, The Bob Newhart Show, and Match Game sitting at tables and selling their autographs from $10.

When the train got to 8th Street, Takei and his partner were not making to get up. But I had to in order to make it to work. Should I tell him “I was listening in and heard you say you should get off at this stop”? Instead I just shook his hand and said “George, I just wanted to say hi. Twenty years ago, I was your guest escort at a convention.” He smiled and said “Is that right?” The doors were opening and I said “It’s nice to see you” and left. He was still on the train. There’s wasn’t time for me to say “I thought you wanted to get off here.” So I am guilty of making George Takei miss his stop, I guess he wasn’t a very good helmsman. Get it?