This is infectious. Plus it lends further insight into why 1967 indeed must have been the summer of love.

Earlier this week, my friend-since-college Paul alerted me that he’d shipped a gift from the wilds of New Jersey I once haunted. All week long, via emails and text messages, we’ve played a guessing game that went just like this:

Me: “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

Him: “No hints. You’ll have to wait until Friday.”

Me (not known for my patience, and channeling Peggy Cass): “Is it bigger than a bread box?”

Him: “Yes, it is bigger than a bread box.” (So much for “No hints.”)

Me: “Is it heavier than a chicken?”

Him: “No more hints, it will ruin the surprise. You’ll just have to curb your curiosity for a few days. (If that’s possible.)”

Me: “Is it perishable?”

Him (unable again to keep to his pledge of “no hints”): “It could last several years.”

Me: “Is it cremains of Joe’s old clients?” (We have a mutual friend who went out of the funeral business. We sometimes speculate about, um, lasting obligations.)

Him (still, you’ll note, giving hints): “No. You might be able to guess one item in the box but not the other. I’m going to sleep now, so more info tonight.”  (I think he meant no more info tonight, but that didn’t daunt me.)

Me (emailing back immediately): “Is it something one might use in the home?”

Him:  “It could be used in or outside the house.”

Me: “Is it a chainsaw, or a pound of twenty dollar bills?” (Both of which I could use inside or outside the house, the latter to bribe small children. The former, according to many low-budget films produced since the 1970’s, to dispense with small children.)

I received no reply to that one.  I started to think:  Maybe I guessed right. Maybe it is a pound of twenties. Which would be useful. (I already have a chainsaw.)

Then, on Friday, I got this email:  “So did the package I sent arrive?”

And here was my reply:  “Dunno. I’m out of town on biz ’til Monday.”

The smoke I smelled while driving down to Palm Springs was coming out of Paul’s ears.

The new “Bad Lieutenant” movie by Werner Herzog — starring Nicolas Cage (of all people). I was already eager to see it, but this piece in the LA Times further tantalizes me. Some choice excerpts:

• “…Roger Ebert  [observed]: ‘Cage is as good as anyone since Klaus Kinski at portraying a man whose head is exploding.’ “
• “Almost impossible to classify, the film is a glorious mess: part ‘CSI’-style police procedural, part over-the-top B-movie and part surrealist character study in flamboyant dissolution.”
•  “Still, for all its sleazy, loony brilliance, doubts about the film’s ability to connect with a mainstream audience linger.”

Let’s see… Herzog, Kinski, messy, surreal, sleazy, loony, brilliant, and possibly uncommercial. I can’t imagine missing this.

Thursday night I was in Burbank.

Friday night I was in Palm Springs.

Tonight I’m in San Diego.

Here’s what I haven’t seen in any of those cities:  signs of a recession, at least with restaurants. In fact, the restaurants are packed. In Palm Springs I dined at a Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and stayed at a Waldorf Astoria. Both were busy. Tonight I met friends for drinks at the Gossip Grill in Hillcrest, then two of us ate at The Fish Market on Harbor Drive. Both of them buzzing. (The Fish Market must have been busy, because my waiter forgot first the extra horse radish I wanted for my oysters, and then the second drink I wanted. My dinner companion nicknamed him “Goober.”) Then we went to a dessert place and it was so mobbed we couldn’t get in. Instead, we went to a gelato shop; they just opened a second cafe and are looking to launch a third.

So I do think the economy is improving. Unfortunately, it’s a jobless recovery. We need more people employed. But in the meantime, I’m glad to see so many restaurants thriving.

Reed Richards is on Facebook.

Yes, it’s Pere Ubu again — but it’s my blog, and I’m trying to evangelize. Or, at least, be understood.

So why do I so love this video of “Folly of Youth”?

It reminds me how sexy Michele Temple is. I took a friend with me to see the band on the tour that accompanied this album release in 1995 (hard to believe now that it was that long ago). He was a novice, and he was smitten too. Her bass line fills my dreams.

I love the way Jim Jones warps the guitar tones with feedback.

I think the song, and David Thomas’ singing, are hypnotic. To me anyway.

And I could watch Robert Wheeler play that homemade theremin all day. Very much calls to mind this.

In honor of Veteran’s Day, we should all take a minute or two to watch videos of dogs welcoming soldiers home. My dog is so glad to see me every day, I can only imagine her reaction if I were off in some godforsaken desert for a year or two.

I owe an enormous debt to Stan Lee, and I know it. The Marvel comics line was hugely important to me growing up and is perhaps only slightly less important now because I’ve got things like dependents and employees. Even with that, there are moments that I get completely caught up in Reed Richards’ quest to solve everything. But Stan’s latest profile, in Inc. magazine, is puzzling to me.

Firstly, Inc. is a magazine aimed at entrepreneurs, i.e., people who start their own companies. That isn’t really Stan Lee. He was an employee at Marvel, and even at his own companies (Stan Lee Media and Pow!) I believe he was a  figurehead for other people. He’s a gifted storyteller of a certain sort, and God knows he’s a marketing genius, but an entrepreneur he isn’t.

Secondly,  I’m disturbed by this quote in the profile:

All of the characters at Marvel were my ideas, but the ideas meant nothing unless I had somebody who could illustrate it. For Spider-Man, I called Jack Kirby, and he did a few pages that weren’t right. Jack drew everything so heroically, and I wanted Peter Parker to look more like an average, schlumpy kid. So I got Steve Ditko to do it. Whenever I would discuss the strip, I would say that Steve Ditko and I created Spider-Man. I certainly don’t own the Marvel characters. I’ve never owned them. If I did, I’d be too wealthy to be talking to you.

“All of the characters at Marvel were my ideas”…? I guess it depends upon the definitions of the words “all” and “ideas.” The pre-eminent Marvel way of scripting was thus:  a plotting session between writer and artist; the penciller  would render the pages; the writer would then script in balloons and captions. The first time Stan Lee thought of the Silver Surfer, for example, was after seeing him drawn into a Fantastic Four storyline about Galactus. Stan asked Jack Kirby who that was, and Kirby said he figured that someone as important as Galactus would have a herald — and that was the herald. Stan has agreed in interviews that this was the origin of the character. Here’s the relevant snippet from Wikipedia:

The Silver Surfer debuted as an unplanned addition to the superhero-team comic Fantastic Four #48 (March 1966). The comic’s writer-editor, Stan Lee, and its penciller and co-plotter, Jack Kirby, had by the mid-1960s developed using a three-collaborative technique known as the “Marvel Method“: the two would discuss story ideas, Kirby would work from a brief synopsis to draw the individual scenes and plot details, and Lee would finally add the dialog and captions. When Kirby turned in his pencil art for the story, he included a new character he and Lee had not discussed.^[5] As Lee recalled in 1995, “There, in the middle of the story we had so carefully worked out, was a nut on some sort of flying surfboard”.^[6] He later expanded on this, recalling, “I thought, ‘Jack, this time you’ve gone too far'”.^[7] Kirby explained that the story’s agreed-upon antagonist, a god-like cosmic predator of planets named Galactus should have some sort of herald, and that he created the surfboard “because I’m tired of drawing spaceships!”^[8] Taken by the noble features of the new character, who turned on his master to help defend Earth, Lee overcame his initial skepticism and began adding characterization. The Silver Surfer soon became a key part of the unfolding story.^[5]

The Silver Surfer, therefore, was not solely the idea of Stan Lee. Taking Stan’s definition of “idea” as I believe he’s using it, the Surfer wasn’t his idea at all. So clearly, by this one example alone, “all” isn’t accurate.

I’m not an intellectual property attorney, but doesn’t the “idea” of Spider-Man expand to include the character as conceived? Stan Lee partially got the “idea” for Spider-Man by watching a spider crawl up the wall, but our understanding of Spider-Man redounds largely from the costume as well, which was designed and drawn by Steve Ditko. In Stan’s version, Ditko is an “illustrator” whom he also recognizes as a “creator.” Fair enough. But can you “create” if you’re not part of generating the “idea”? I do a lot of collaboration in all sorts of arenas, especially in the theatre, and part of that is the exchange of ideas. You want people to bring their ideas. (Unless you’re Bertolt Brecht. But that’s another story.)

Throughout the years, Stan Lee has been attacked for taking too much credit. I’m not interested in joining in on that and I’m not trying to. Reading this interview in Inc., though, I see again the sort of interview he gives that lends the impression that he’s edging others out of the spotlight, or minimizing their contribution.  I also like to think that since he’s 86 years old we should pray for his continued good health and look the other way when something he says comes out the wrong way.

And once again, all of this would feel better if Marvel and its various corporate entities over the years had done more to acknowledge the genius of Jack Kirby with tribute, and with money. He was co-creator of a multi-billion-dollar universe of characters and he couldn’t even get his art returned to him.

Sir Ian McKellen went on The View last week to promote the new and updated “Prisoner” series on AMC. What ensued was painful — for the audience, at times for Sir Ian, and hopefully for the not terribly bright women who host this show. Check out Geoff Boucher’s take on it, then watch the excruciating video below. Rule of thumb: It’s good when the interviewers prep, or have some basic notion what they’re talking about. But maybe I’m old fashioned.