Cartoonists With Attitude

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Way back, I think in 1999, my buddy and fellow cartoonist Ted Rall got a gig as a radio talk show host for KFI, a huge Los Angeles AM radio station that has claimed to be the most listened to radio station in America (mostly on the basis of its hugely strong signal that spreads out across the western states).  He asked me to contribute in some way, and I came up with a satirical "character," Wade Hamilton, who would do ridiculous celebrity reports on his show.  I came up with a voice (imitating a specific informercial spokesperson who I thought was hilarious), and would spend an hour or so reading gossip websites and cobbling together each three minute bit.

I had occasion to recall these reports when I just did a vanity-google search and found a web-page listing suggestions LA-based guests for a radio show that said:  "The cartoonist Ruben Bolling ("Tom the Dancing Bug" in Salon.com), I think he lives in LA. [I don't.  -RB]  He used to do funny sketch characters on Ted Rall's LA talk radio show back when he had one."

"Funny sketch characters!"  Never has an anonymous message board posting filled me with such pride.  I had a blast doing the character, meeting Ted in a New York studio at midnight (it aired at 9pm in LA), and gearing up for my segment.  It actually taught me a lot about the nature of performing.

Anyway, I looked around the ol' hard drive to see if any scripts survived the various computer shifts, and sure enough, I found some.  Take yourself back to April 16, 2000, imagine the hilarious delivery that only a master of voice and humor could muster (yes, please imagine that, because I sure wasn't actually delivering that), and enjoy an installment of Wade Hamilton, Hobnobbing With Celebs.

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April 16, 2000
Wade Hamilton:  Hobnobbing With Celebs

Hello, fellow Star-Gazers!  I'm Wade Hamilton, and you're not going to BELIEVE the incredible celeb scoops I've got in store for you!  You’re going to listen in horror and amazement as I tell tales of titillating Tinseltown that will make you scream in gossip-fueled ecstacy.  If you’re driving, pull over, turn off your ignition, take your hands off the wheel and brace yourself because this report is guaranteed to make you lose all control of your higher and lower motor functions.  Here we go...

Now, what’s all this flak about Leonardo DiCaprio doing an interview with the President?  True, the 25-year-old doesn’t have the celeb credibility of say, a Paul Newman or Meryl Streep, but come on, he kicks Sam Donaldson and Barbra Walters in the butt!  These journalists should be happy they get the assignments they do get, boring interviews with secretaries of state, visiting ambassadors or six-year-old immigrants, but listen pals, once a REAL celeb wants a gig, step aside, juniors, and don’t whine about it.

Now, before I get off the soapbox, let me say I’m sick and tired of all this talk about Whitney Houston.  You’d think no one else had a bad month in their lives.  I myself recently went through ... an episode, that, yes included an on-air tirade that I’ve apologized to Ted, KFI and Hillary Swank for, but when a mega star like Whitney Houston forgets a few lyrics and loses her train of though a few times on stage, suddenly the nasty rumors fly.  Listen here, folks, when she rambles incoherently onstage, can’t everyone just pretend they understand and applaud enthusiastically?  When she fails to negotiate a couple of stairs in concert and stumbles clumsily, can’t the entire audience pretend to not see it by bending down to tie their shoes?  Come on, she’s given us so much -- show of hands, who hasn’t been alone in the car and belted out I Will Only Love You along with Whitney? -- She deserves our support.

Now, Cybill Sheperd’s new Kiss and Tell book failed to mention me, but if it did, I would simply say that Cybill is a wonderful woman who obviously needed to write this book in order to find herself and I wish her the best.  Am I a class act, or what?!

This week’s INSIDE CELEBRITY REPORT is on Edward Norton.  Some celeb reporters might try to get you inside information on this Oscar-Nominated mega-star,  but I dig the deepest -- getting you the scoop on his very structural biology.  My spies tell me that this bright young light of Hollywood not only produced, starred-in and directed the smash hit “Keeping the Faith,” but his Malic enzymes in a closed form reveal a divalent cation coordinated in an octahedral fashion by no less that six ligating oxygens -- two from the substrate inhibitor, three from the enzyme and one from a water molecule.  Are TYR 112 and LYS 183 possible catalytic residues of the malic enzymes of this chameleon-like actor, who recently purchased JFK Jr.s loft in lower Manhattan with his actress-girlfriend Heather Graham?  Edward “Don’t call me Ed” Norton refused to comment, but let’s just say that changes in the tetramer organization of the enzyme have been observed in Norton’s quaternary complexes.  Wink, wink.

I know money manager Dana Giachetto is in a lot of trouble for allegedly misappropriating or stealing funds from his celeb clients, but I can’t wait til he’s gets of out of jail so I can give him some money to invest!  I mean, did you see his client list?  Ben Affleck, Leo, Tobey McGuire... he must be GOOD!  Dana, think up some strategies for the small but aggressive investor while you’re in lock-up.  I’ve got five grand I’ll be proud to hand over to you when you’re out of the big house.

That's it for this week, fans.  Until next time, With a nose for news and a face for radio, I'm Wade Hamilton saying, What good is the ground when you can reach for the stars?

Back to you, T-Bone Ted.

Yes, I'll be attending the famed Comic-Con in San Diego later in July.  Details to be worked out -- I don't even know where I'm staying (hey, if anyone has a lead, let me know), or where and when I'll be publicly appearing.  But for those of you planning to be there, know that I'll be there, and that I generally shower once a day.

First reaction to Scalia's decision striking down DC's ban on handguns:

It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.

I hadn't seen a movie in months, then saw two movies in the past two days; both with my kids.  I went to see  Get Smart with my 11 year old daughter and her friend, and then Iron Man (what a great movie!) with my 8 year old son.

SPOILER ALERT!
I'm about to reveal pivotal plot points to both movies.  If you haven't seen these movies and are sensitive to these things (I know I am), avert your eyes!

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There.  Did I do that right?  I'm new to blogging.  Maybe I should add some more stars.
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Okay.

In both cases the kids came out of the movie talking about the big surprise double agent -- the guy you thought was the friend of the hero, but turned out to be a villain who'd been double-crossing him.

They were shocked when I said that I knew he was a villain from the start of the movie.  (Yes, I can impress children with my keen intellect!)  But I thought it was funny that I knew about about the villain for the same reason in both movies.

In Get Smart, The Rock is too big a movie star to sign on to a movie where he's merely one of the protagonist's friends.  He has to have a juicier role, so he must be the  mole.  (The kids suspected The Chief.  Silly kids, don't you know that The Chief was a regular character in the 1965 TV series, and thus can't be a villain?!)

And in Iron Man, Jeff Bridges isn't going sign up just to be the C.O.O. for Robert Downey Jr.'s company.  You know he'll be chewing up some scenery in Act 3.

Ah, the burdens of being a big, sophisticated adult...

is of course Scaliariffic.

Via an alert reader:

SETON HALL LAW REPORT: DEPT. OF DEFENSE DATA REVEALS NO RELEASED GUANTÁNAMO DETAINEE EVER ATTACKED ANY AMERICANS
 Dept of Defense’s own data rebuts Justice Scalia’s claim that 30 former GTMO detainees ‘returned to the battlefield’

In his dissent to the majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush, in arguing that GTMO prisoners should not have the right to habeas corpus petitions to challenge their incarceration, Justice Scalia cited the fact that 30 detainees released by the military had returned to the "battlefield."   Amazingly, he used this as support for his contention that the military and Executive Branch would be much better at figuring out which prisoners are guilty, and which are innocent, than the federal courts.

Turns out the source of that Fun Fact, the Department of Defense, had retracted it, and has no idea what happened to the released detainees.  What a surprise.

Interesting, though, that by Scalia, J.'s logic, if the military releases a prisoner and it turns out he really was innocent, it shows that the military system works, so the federal courts should leave it alone.  And if the military releases a prisoner and it turns out he was guilty, returning to the "battlefield," it demonstrates that even the military can't get it right -- so how the hell could the federal courts?!

So each detainee released by the military, rightly or wrongly, is more evidence that the federal courts shouldn't get involved.   If President Bush really wants to prove that the federal courts have no business deciding the fate of the GTMO prisoners, he should release them all.  QED.

Tom Tomorrow has a post on his blog ridiculing the New York Times' Week In Review's recent printing of a Jay Leno joke in its "Laugh Lines":

Gay marriage now legal here in California. In fact, you hear who got married today in San Francisco? Rice and Roni. Yeah, finally got married.

It's true that the Week In Review at one time ran long-form political comics like This Modern World, Ted Rall and Tom the Dancing Bug with regularity.  In the last few years that space has been devoted solely to single-panel gag political cartoons, and Laugh Lines, which reprints jokes from late-night comedians' monologues.

The relative merits of alternative, long-form political comics vs. the traditional gag editorial cartoon can be debated.  But despite Tom Tomorrow's and my obvious biases, I think it's beyond doubt that this Laugh Lines thing is a total embarrassment to everyone involved.  And I'm a huge admirer of all these comedians.

These jokes are written for the voice of the comedian, and are meant to be casually spoken, laughed at as part of the general atmosphere of jocularity created by the host, and then quickly forgotten as he moves on to the next item.  To see them laying flat on the page is a disservice to the talented people who wrote them for a very specific purpose, and it's a disaster to the reader.

Believe me, if one of these late-night hosts had a spot where he read even the funniest political comics on the air, they would get as many laughs as these "laugh lines" get.

Yes, there are some monologue jokes that can survive the translation to print.  But it seems as though the editors at the Week In Review don't even try to cull these out.  Rather, it seems like they record the monologues and choose the throwaway jokes that would look just about worst in harsh black and white print.

When I look at the New York Times reprinting talk show jokes, I sort of cringe in embarrassment.  Yes, the media is slowly and inexorably moving from a world of printed matter to a world dominated by video.  But to so inartfully glom onto another form's material in order to find "hip" humor just reeks of desperation.