Here’s a fun stunt: Neil LaBute and Theresa Rebeck will write plays next week in a webcast event, based on prompts provided by the LA Times. Vote here for your pick of prompts. For the record, I’m drumming up support for this one: “Kristin enrolls in a figure studies class, then realizes that she knows the nude model, Ron, from church.” I’m eager to see what former Mormon LaBute and feminist Rebeck come up with on that one.
Almost 25 years ago, I saw The Cure in concert at the Philadelphia Spectrum and a friend and I remarked upon the enormity of leader singer Robert Smith’s sneakers. They were impressive indeed. I don’t know that these are as big or as impressive, but I do know that I want them.
San Diego is the home of the famed Comic-Con International. That comics and cartoons influence is evidently far-reaching, because last night someone dressed up as Gumby attempted to rob a 7-Eleven (as this video shows). No, he doesn’t appear to have had a gun (but I couldn’t resist the pun), but the costume wasn’t the only thing comic about it: Reports are that he made off with only 27¢, which he dropped. I guess in the attempted getaway, he was afraid of being too pokey. San Diego Crime Stoppers is offering a $1000 award for any information, and I am now formulating in my head what the APB sounded like: “Suspect is a green halfwit, wide-eyed with a vacant smile. Do not approach with caution — caution is unnecessary.”
Who is it? It may be Barack Obama. (It’s certainly seeming that way….) This brings to mind the quote from Harry Truman:
“If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don’t want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.” Address at the National Convention Banquet of the Americans for Democratic Action, 17 May 1952
On Facebook, I just saw an ad that read: “Free Barack Obama Sticker!” And I honest-to-God thought it should be read like “Free Nelson Mandela” from back in the day (as opposed to “free sticker”). The former meaning — “set him free” — I would have ordered.
(To the tune of “Gotta Share!”)
A friend sent this to me.
Said this is for you, Lee.
I told him it was fun
Not a home run
But worth seeing up here.
It means a lot that he shared
Shows that he cared
That he dared
To break out of the mold…
Of the old…
Happy birthday to one of my favorite comics artists, Robert Crumb, who is 68 today. The New York Times has a great feature that will essentially build you an online newspaper devoted to a particular topic, so if you’d like to learn a whole lot more about R. Crumb all at once, click here. The latest news about Crumb is his recent withdrawal from an art festival in Australia, for fear that he was going to be attacked by crazed feminists.
Re the birthday boy, and specifically a topic addressed in the biography “Crumb,” my good friend Joe Stafford sent this note:
The thing I always think about are those hilarious entry blanks Crumb (or was it his brother?) used to send to Art Instruction Schools. [Note from Lee: It was both Robert and brother Charles who did this.] Mind you, I’m not making fun of the School, but the entry blanks they sent were dirty, funny; filled in exactly the way anyone with a sense of humor and real artistic talent would [do].
Joe adds, in a PS:
They used to have you draw Tippy….
[And here’s Tippy:]
…but now all you have to draw is this guy:
Well, as they say, everyone has a doppelganger. I think we’ve found Tippy’s. It’s Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Yes, I live in Los Angeles County, and my street in Burbank is a micron from North Hollywood, which is part of the actual City of Los Angeles. So that makes the area somewhat urban.
At the same time, Burbank is girded by a mountain range. My neighborhood houses opossums and tree rats, but it’s the mountains that give us owls, the occasional vulture, rattlesnakes, coyotes — and mountain lions. Which we’ve been seeing a lot more of recently, as noted in this news story. Where is Kenneth Road, site of a recent mountain lion incident? It’s the road I lived on from 1988 to 1991. Where is Country Club Drive? Not too far from the next placed I lived, from 1991 to 1996. Many times I came home at 2 or 3 in the morning and found a coyote running down the street or even on my front lawn.
Maybe the next time my family and I go hiking up in those mountains we’ll take a… what? What does one carry along in case of a mountain lion attack? What was Snagglepuss afraid of? (Other than Bert Lahr suing him?)
An inspired idea: Peter Dinklage as Modok.
It’s now 109 degrees in Burbank.
I’m betting my wife doesn’t think it’s so nice now.
And I’m betting that dry cleaners will be, ahem, cleaning up. (I know mine is.)