RINGO STARR NEWS ROUNDUP

THE Liverpool homes of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and even Pete Best are preserved and protected landmarks. Ringo Starr's birthplace, No.9 Madryn Street, is set for demolition along with other homes in the neighborhood. The street was menitoned in Ringo's recent biographical song, "Liverpool 8", from the album of the same name.

RINGO recently lamented the poor sales of said alsum, which peaked at #94 on Billboard. What he should be saying is, 'Wow, my highest charting album in 10 years!' or 'Hey, of my 15 studio albums, only seven did better on the charts' or 'Well, at least it got me on Rachael Ray.'


SIR George Margin, producer for almost all of the Beatles' recordings, was honored by the Grammy Foundation at a benefit on July 12th. In attendance were Beatle widows Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison. Missing out were ingrates Starr and Beatles' bassist Paul McCartney. In performance were Jeff Beck, Tom Jones and Burt Bacharach (man, I wish those dudes would start a band).


RINGO also asked the world to celebrate his 68th birthday (July 7th) by embracing universal peace and love. Starr was criticized for trying to co-opt the legacy of bandmate John Lennon. Critics were further incensed when Ringo said he's "bigger than Jesus." Part of his birthday celebration was subjecting himself to the inanity of Larry King. A transcript of the interview can be found here.

While I've whetted your appetite for Ringo interviews, how about Starr and new wife Barbara Bach on "Donahue" from 1981!

KATIE REIDER, 1978-2008

Katie Reider was a talented singer/songwriter from Cincinnati. She just lost her battle with a cancer that in the past year took an eye, her voice and now her life. I first saw Reider when she was just starting out, playing bookstore venues like our local Borders or Joseph-Beth. I admit that part of my interest was that she’s the daughter of Rob Reider, who I remembered from the old Bob Braun Show. I dug her voice and the sound of her band and bought her debut album, ‘Wonder’. She quickly moved on to local venues like the York St. Café. When one of her songs appeared on “Dawson’s Creek”, we had a new local music hero with national recognition.

College took the young Reider to Columbus, and after college she moved on to New Jersey, but she and Cincinnati never parted. I saw her in 2007 at Taste of Cincinnati. She and the band sounded great and from what I read her career was going strong. Now it’s a little over a year later and she’s gone from us.

I recommend visiting 500kin365.org, a fundraising website started for Katie in hopes of raising $500,000 in a year to help pay medical expenses and support Katie, her partner and two sons. For $1 you can download ‘Katie’s Voice’, a collection of 9 original songs. To learn more about Katie’s personal fight with cancer, visit her blog.

CANIFF BIO NOMINATED FOR HARVEY AWARD

But gets caught in ballot snafu

Meanwhile…: A Biography of Milton Caniff by R.C. Harvey has been nominated for a Harvey Award (no relation). The awards will be presented at the Baltimore Comic-Con in September. ‘Meanwhile’ is nominated in the category of BEST BIOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL OR JOURNALISTIC PRESENTATION. It’s chances of winning have been hurt, though, by a balloting discrepancy. When the original nominations were announced, the Caniff bio was not listed, but rather a blog known as Meanwhile…Comics! was in its place. A blog being nominated wasn’t out of the question, as another nominee is Blah Blah Blog, the blog of Marvel Comics executive editor Tom Brevoort. The guys who run ‘Meanwhile…Comics’ were surprised and pleased by the recognition, so you can sympathize with them learning the honor amounted to a clerical error.


The original ballots were released on June 18th, but the correction was not announced until June 27th. Voting is open until August 15th, but those who voted early didn’t have the Caniff biography as an option. Paul McSpadden, the Harvey Awards administrator, says that voters who have already cast ballots may submit a revised ballot. But I doubt that any voter other than a rabid Caniffite will go to the trouble to revise their choice in one category out of 21. Even if you go to the Harvey Awards website, the ballot is fixed but the nominees list on the homepage is not.


The broad category also means an ‘apples and oranges’ range of competition. There’s one other biographical book The Naked Artist…and Other Comic Book Legends by Bryan Talbot, in which the author has compiled humorous anecdotes from various comic creators. The Comics Journal, a monthly magazine of comic news, reviews and criticism represents the ‘journalistic’ aspect of the category. I didn’t read the Journal much in 2007, but I always find plenty to read and enjoy when I do pick one up, and they do the most in-depth creator interviews around. The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide is another nominee. It’s an odd choice, I think, because the price guide section doesn’t fit in this category and it makes up 90% of the book. There is information about collecting and the history of comics, but this remains virtually unchanged from year to year. I haven’t seen this edition, so it may have some amazing new content that I don’t know about. The last nominee is Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean by Douglas Wolk. I don’t know much about it, though it seems to be a primer of some kind for the uninitiated. The hubris of the title scares me away, as comics work differently and mean different things to different readers. For those who want help with understanding the visual language of comics, I recommend Scott McCloud’s 1994 book, Understanding Comics.

I think The Comics Journal has the best chance, as it’s the most widely read of all of the nominees. If ‘Meanwhile’ wins instead, it’s still good for R.C. Harvey, who writes a regular Journal column, and Fantagraphics, the publisher of both.

The Harvey Awards are named for Harvey Kurtzman, the legendary EC Comics artist/writer/editor and founder of Mad Magazine. Kurtzman is also well-known for his Playboy Magazine comic strip, ‘Little Annie Fanny’, a collaboration with the recently deceased Will Elder.

andrew

I wanted to pause between entries of esoteric nonsense to write about something personal. It was two years ago today that I lost the bravest person I’ve ever known, my son Andrew. Andrew was born on May 5th, 2006. He was 13 weeks premature and barely weighed 1 lb, 8 oz. Throughout his 65 days of life, I was always hopeful, even on the last day. It was two months of extreme highs and lows for my wife, Jill, and me, as he seemed to progress, then get worse, then improve, and so on.

I said ‘bravest’ because this little guy was stuck a cruel uncountable amount for blood. His arms, legs and even his head were fair game for drawing blood or trying to put a line in. His tiny feet were little pincushions, scabbed over from all the needle sticks. He sometimes wailed in pain, but he didn’t make sounds, so it was a silent cry…the worst kind. Sometimes he just took it, because he was used to it.

It’s impossible for me even two years out to put words to the emotions of watching him being disconnected from machines and then the all too short time he had free of tubes and electronic buzzers, with Jill holding him as he slipped away. We then took lots of pictures with him, at the nurses’ suggestion, which is apparently meant to have therapeutic benefit. I found it surreal, and I still have trouble looking at them.

I didn’t write this entry for sympathy for me and Jill. I wanted those who didn’t know to hear about my first son, a cute little guy named Andrew.

We kept an online journal about Andrew during his life. It can be found here.

GILLIGAN'S ISLAND ALERT!

If you get WGN America, you are in for a treat tomorrow night (7/7). They are running a two-hour block of "Alf", which is a show I never really liked or watched. But, one episode I've always wanted to see is on at 9:30PM EST. It reunites some of the cast of "Gilligan's Island", one of them for the last time. The original series ran from 1964-67. They were reunited for three TV movies from 1978-81, and even animated in 1982 ("Gilligan's Planet", which sadly is not on DVD...write your Congressman!). Gilligan fans know that Tina Louise, who played Ginger, was the buzz-kill for all this reunion stuff and she was replaced with other actresses.

By this 1987 "Alf" episode, the millionaire and his wife were in failing health (Jim Backus died in 1989, Natalie Schafer in '91). Gilligan, Skipper, the Professor and Marianne reunited once again as a bored Alf tried to recreate his favorite TV show in the backyard. This would be the last appearance of Alan Hale, Jr., as the Skipper. The remaining three - Bob Denver, Russell Johnson, and Dawn Wells - would reunite one more time for an episode of "Meego" in 1997. What's that? Huh? You don't remember "Meego", the post-"Perfect Strangers" sitcom of Bronson Pinchot? But, but, it had Ed Begley, Jr. and that kid from 'Jerry Maguire'...are you sure? 13 episodes were shot and they only aired six of them. Yes, it was that good. In fact, in a TV travesty, the 'Gilligan's Island' episode remains unaired! So, once everything ever watched and enjoyed is out on DVD, maybe someone at CBS will release "Meego" as a prank and we'll get to see it. [side note - another reason you can't trust Wikipedia? It lists the five hosts of "Family Feud" as the creators of "Meego"]

OK, back to "Alf" (or is it "ALF?). Just watch the episode and wonder...did this drive Marianne to marijuana or was she already high at the time?

WATTERSON POST CARTOON - 4 JUL 1980

HAPPY JULY 4TH WEEKEND

Ok, this is a day behind, but here's Bill Watterson's editorial cartoon from July 4th, 1980.


If any of you want to see an exciting account of the creation of the Declaration of Independence and the miracle at Philadelphia, watch the second episode of John Adams.

Blogging Buddies

While I'm still trying to put together a longer post on an actual topic, I thought I'd introduce you to two new blogs of a similar ilk that I found this week.

Marc Tyler Nobleman is a prolific author. Check out his site, Noblemania for titles (my local library has 16 of his books). He's written a book on Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the two Cleveland, Ohio teens who created Superman. He's got a great new post about his search for the home of Joe Shuster where the first Superman drawings were probably done. The search proved difficult because the building no longer exists. It's the kind of research that fascinates me but gives my wife shivers of apathy.


Another brand new blogger is Lucas Hardwick. Lucas lives in Evansville and we've met once through mutual friends. He started blogging last month and posts more in a week than I do in a month. And it's cool stuff, too, like this picture with Gene Hackman! I'm just confused about the name of his blog. On his blog, it's Smells Like Blog, but the web address is "younameitthen". I guess in the web address he's remarking to the people who don't like the name...or maybe there's a contest in the offing. We'll have to check back in and see.

But don't let these other blogs take you away from what's really important...which is my blog.