Year: 2002

Over on Comicon.com/Splash, CrossGen head Mark Alessi did a nice job of getting himself some ink and challenging the corporate thinking that’s dictated some of Marvel’s greatest faults as a publisher, which is a good thing. He talked about how the industry needs to be saved, which is also a good thing. I was with him all the way up to this:

“Alessi ended with hints of big announcements in the coming month.

Am I alone in disliking the whole notion of slabbing?

I feel as if owning comics should be a fully tactile sensation. That you take it out of the mylar snug and carefully open the pages and read the story, smell the must of the paper, feel it between your fingers. As opposed to being preserved in amber, untouchable unless you care to kill the value.

I find myself hoping that ten years from now slabbed books are looked upon as some sort of collecting oddity that people use as coasters.

PAD

It’s been fascinating watching the repeats of “Hill Street Blues” on Bravo. Not for the obvious reasons: The storytelling, the writing, the characters, etc. No, I’ve been struck by three things:

First, how little of the later years of the series I actually recalled. I did not remember, for instance, that Mick Belker got married and had a baby. I forgot characters who were in for entire seasons, such as Garibaldi and Mayo…perfectly good actors with zero characterization. I was amazed how little they gave Rene Enriquez as “Ray” to do, especially when one considers that the character of Norman Buntz essentially stepped in to fill his slot and practically took over the whole show (not to mention getting his own series and later showing up with another name on “NYPD Blues.”) It was as if, if the writers couldn’t come up with a storyline that focused on Ray being Hispanic, they didn’t know what to do with him.

Second, I can’t believe I didn’t realize Stan Jablonski, the sergeant who replaced the late, great Esterhaus, was gay. He had a thing for Belker. He was in denial of it, it was subtle, it was between the lines, but it was right there.

And third, geez, the guest actors on that series. Wandering through the hill in parts of varying sizes were Miguel Ferrer, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Armin Shimmerman, Lindsay Crouse (Maggie Walsh from “Buffy”), Tim Russ, Robert Pastorelli (“Eldin” from “Murphy Brown,” showing up in two different roles), Mykelti Williamson (back when he was Mykel T. Williamson), not to mention Peter Jurasik pre-Londo as Sid the Snitch.

The run is getting toward the end of the series. I’ve no idea if Bravo is going to start over at the beginning, but if they are and you’ve never seen it, catch it M-F at 7 PM (it’s repeated at 1 AM except for the Monday episode for some reason.) It’s worth seeing or re-experiencing.

PAD

There are people who detest Akiva Goldsman–writer of such film travesties as the latter Batman films and the “Lost in Space” movie–with a passion burning hotter than a thousand suns. Some hate him so much that they resent him winning the Oscar because they can’t forgive him the previous films. To those folks, here’s some interesting food for thought. I just picked up a copy of the “West Wing” script book, and in it creator Aaron Sorkin relates how his friend Goldsman was visiting one evening. And Goldsman, seeing a framed poster of “The American President,” said, “You know what? That would make a good TV series. You should do a TV series focusing on the administrative staff of the President of the United States.”

The next day, Sorkin found himself unexpectedly in a pitch session, and an exec said, “So what’s your idea for a series?” Sorkin had nothing. So he blurted out, “How about a series focusing on the administrative staff of the President of the United States?”

And thus was born “The West Wing.” Now, of course, if you happen to hate that series AND you hate Akiva Goldsman, here’s just another reason to hate him more. But if, like me, you love the series, you have to grudgingly admit that you owe Akiva Goldsman one.

PAD

My daughter, Shana, is signed on to a lease for an apartment in Boston that she’s now not going to be staying in, so she needs someone else to take over the apartment. Not a sublet; a replacement for her on the lease. It’s in a nice neighborhood, I’m told. Her e-mail, I think, is Shay418@hotmail.com. If you’re looking for a place in the Boston area, drop her a line.

PAD

We’re going to start posting the But I Digress… archives, in more or less chronological order, here in the weblog. (Why? So the search engine can find them– and let’s face it, the colum was a blog before anybody even thought of the phrase.) Shortly thereafter, we’ll have a link page for all of them as well and we’ll just keep adding to them.

If there’s no article, it means we don’t have it, so we ask the Intrepid But I Digress Staff (IBIDS, aka you folks) to send in copies so we can post them here.