Year: 2002

I offer the two items without comment and allow you to draw your own conclusions.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (Oklahoma City)–June 12, 2002–Four in five Americans would give up some freedoms to gain security and four in 10 worry terrorists will harm them or their family, a new Gallup poll shows. About one-third of those polled favor making it easier for authorities to access private e-mail and telephone conversations. More than 70 percent are in favor of requiring US citizens to carry identification cards with fingerprints, and 77 percent believe all Americans should have smallpox vaccinations. “It was amazing the percentage of people who are willing to give up freedom to get back some sense of personal security,” said Elaine Christiansen, senior research director for The Gallup Organization. “These aren’t people who were necessarily near the Twin Towers, near the Pentagon, near the Murrah building. These are average people.”

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN–“Those who are willing to give up some essential liberties to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

PAD

Well if it’s not one thing, it’s another.

A website called “Filmjerk.com” is claiming (in a piece that openly admits it’s BS unless proven otherwise) that Akiva Goldsman is developing a “Supergirl” film treatment for Warners…a treatment which is a beat-for-beat description of the first fifty issues of my run on the book.

I personally tend to believe it’s utter nonsense. However, I have put my crackerjack West Coast Rep, Frank “Boom Boom” Balkin on it, and he’s checking it out. As soon as I hear back from him, I’ll relay the info to you folks. But I suspect that the entire thing is nonsense…which doesn’t stop the rumors from flying. I haven’t gotten quite as many questions about this as I have about the false “Shazam” story, but it’s starting to get up there.

PAD

Busy day Saturday. In the morning, rehearsed for the production of “CHECKING OUT” that opens in one week at the Broadhollow Centre Stage at Molloy College on Long Island. In the afternoon, Kathleen and I (with Ariel on board) fought Belmont-generated traffic to drive way the hëll over to the depths of North Jersey for a party held by Kathleen’s boss at Del Rey Paperbacks. Shelly (for such is her name, and I hope I spelled it correctly) and her husband have a lovely house right on the lake, and Ariel spent practically the entire day canoeing.

The only extended time spent indoors was gathering around the telly to watch the running of the big race at Belmont. Personally, I didn’t give a dámņ about the Triple Crown. Didn’t care whether War Emblem finished Win, Place, Show, or at all. No, once they announced the horses, I was immediately rooting for Artax Too. Why? Because I liked “The Neverending Story,” and that was the name of the young hero’s horse who sank into a quicksand pit in a heartwrenching sequence guaranteed to send any viewer under the age of nine into hysterics. But I was realistic. Artax Too was a 70-to-1 shot, and I figured, What’s the likelihood of a 70-to-1 shot winning?

My luck. I was rooting for the wrong 70-to-1 shot. I could have looked like some kind of genius if I’d been pulling for Sarava, who as near as I can tell was named for an obnoxiously marketed Broadway musical of some years back based upon the film “Donna Flor and Her Two Husbands.” Chances are that if I’d been at the track, sheer perversity would have prompted me to lay down money on Sarava along with the other long-shot, and I’d have made a bundle of money. As it was, all I got out of the deal was traffic jams.

Does anyone know if Artax Too has actually crossed the finish line yet?

PAD

Not being announced immediately.

When I hit upon the notion of having a reader write-in for a new YJ leader (a la the Legion of old), I realized my one window of opportunity to do it was issue #46. Why? Because #46 marked the return of Robin, and with some potential flux in both membership and leadership, that was the place to do it. Would that I had figured it out a year ago. So we put the reader-voting part of it into action as quickly as we humanly could, but deadlines caught up with us and there was simply no way we’d have a decision from the readership before the script for #46 was actually do.

So issue #46 of YJ ends in admittedly cruel fashion by leaving the question of leadership hanging. Still, we should have had it ready to announce with #47.

Well…no.

In a real life extravaganza evocative of Florida, several bags of mail–including a bag filled with ballots from readers–went astray from the DC mail room. By the time it was finally recovered (and it was), I had to have turned in the script for #47 and #48 as well. It’s not hanging chads, but it’s as close as you can get.

So readers ain’t finding out in #47 or 48 either. Yet the upcoming events required leadership decisions to be made. How to deal with it without knowing the identity of the leader? Easy. The leader speaks from off panel. It’s one of those moments when you’re really grateful for the silent medium of comics.

So issue #47 launches a four parter that has major impact on our cast and culminates in a double-sized guest-star packed extravaganza in #50…but the one thing it doesn’t have is the ID of the leader. That’s in #49.

PAD

So this is how I get a message passed on to me in my house:

“Oh, dad. Somebody from Universal called four or five days ago about ‘The Hulk.’ I’ll go get the message; I wrote it down on a piece of paper and stuck it to the fridge. (Two minutes later.) I guess it got thrown out. They’ll probably call back.”

Ten minutes of screaming ensued as I envisioned Ang Lee saying, “Fine, if David couldn’t be bothered to call back, we’ll go to our next person on the list of people we have to do rewrites on the screenplay.” Well, it wasn’t about doing rewrites on the movie. Steve Saffel at Del Rey managed to put me together with the nice lady who had called here, namely Cindy Chang at Universal, who it turns out was calling me about the prospect of writing the novelization of the HULK movie. Apparently between the generally positive reception of the Spidey novelization and the fact that I do have *some* passing familiarity with the character, it was felt that I was the guy to turn the screenplay into a book.

And I said “Sure.” Because, y’know, why not? Which means, since I’m signing a non-disclosure agreement, that over the next months I will be *extremely* silent in terms of comments about the contents of the film. Although I do feel confident in saying that the Hulk will have absolutely no biological webspinners.

PAD

It’s one of the best movie adaptations of comic book material that I’ve seen in years. And no, surprisingly enough, I’m not talking about “Spider-Man.”

No, I’m speaking of “Asterix and Obelix on a Mission for Cleopatra.” The second in a series of live action adaptations of the classic comic strip, I happened to see it–of all places–on the flight back from France. In French with American subtitles, the only actor in it whose name would mean anything to Americans is Gerard Depardieu, playing the massive Obelix.

It is laugh-out-loud hysterical. It not only contains the entirety of the particular adventure upon which it’s based, but also incorporates all manner of updates that miraculously work. Such touches as an entire dance number to “I Feel Good!” after a group of Egyptian slaves drink down the miraculous strength-inducing elixir of the Druid Getafix, to loopy new characters such as Cellularis (whose voice tends to break up for no reason) dovetail perfectly with the existing work. And certain in-jokes are inspired. At one point, for instance, Obelix knocks off the nose of the Sphinx while scaling its face and then exclaims, “A nose? Nay…’tis a rock! A cape! A peninsula!”, requiring that you both know “Cyrano De Bergerac” and also know that Depardieu played him in a memorable film version.

I’ve never seen the first film, but just picked up a DVD of it off ebay. Meantime if you have ANY opportunity to catch this film, I highly recommend it.

PAD

We’re dealing with a heavy badwidth choke as a neighboring web site has seen a major spike in traffic. Posting of comments is haphazard, and even PAD has been having trouble posting. Bear with us.