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December 31, 2000

HAPPY YEAR-TO-COME and let's all hope that none of the predictions of dire economy and Dubya incompetence come to pass.

HERE'S A PLUG for a new CD by one of my favorite musical groups.  Big Daddy is presently and sadly inactive, but a division of their former label, Rhino, has brought out The Best of Big Daddy.  Ignore the inappropriate cover seen at left.  These guys are funny and talented, and what they do is to take contemporary rock hits and perform them as if they'd been recorded in the fifties.  Often, the new (or, rather, the "old") versions are distinct improvements.  You can read more about the group by visiting two websites devoted to them.  One can be reached by clicking here and the other can be reached by clicking over here.

And, if I've configured things correctly, you should be able to hear 30-second samples of their work by clicking on the links below.  You'll need to have Real Player installed on your computer and if you don't, you can get it by clicking here.  Ignore where they try to sell you the $29.99 version and look for the free Basic edition.  Meanwhile, the whole Big Daddy CD is available in all the usual places (mymusic.com has it for $12.90 plus shipping) and even some unusual ones.

December 30, 2000

THE FOLKS AT Dark Horse Comics have just released the first of two volumes reprinting Little Annie Fanny, as created by Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder and friends, and published in Playboy Magazine.  Perhaps needless to say, what once seemed risqué and adult is now about as naughty as the fart jokes on Bevis and Butthead.  Still, the comic is brilliantly written, stunningly illustrated and — most notably — a great record of sixties' issues and sensibilities.  Wisely, compiler Denis Kitchen has supplied annotations that decode most of the topical references for those born too late to know that the Bay of Pigs isn't a bad waterfront bar.  Anyway, this new collection is a must-have, though I do wish it had the page size and reproduction of the first Annie Fanny collection, issued back in '66.

Since I know none of you ever venture near the Playboy website — which, rumor has it, has pictures somewhere on it of nude women — I'll alert you that there's an article on the book and Mr. Kurtzman there, along with a lame attempt at Flash animation of an Annie Fanny page.  Here's a direct link in order to spare you the danger of browsing through the site and possibly glimpsing some centerfold.  (Don't stand in awe of my bravery; my computer has a chip that filters them out.  Needless to say, it is silicone.)

December 29, 2000

BILLY BARTY'S last TV appearance was on the E! True Hollywood Story profile on Sid and Marty Krofft that debuted on Christmas Eve.  Billy died the day before, and Marty spent quite some time on the phone, trying and failing to locate someone at the E! Channel to ask that they insert some sort of dedication/tribute to the long-time Krofft player.  Billy had been in poor health for some time and the E! folks only deemed airable, about eight seconds of a very long interview they taped with him.  (Wish they'd used as little of me.  I'm thinking of making that my last TV appearance, as well.)

I wrote a long article about Billy which will be in next week's Comic Buyers Guide and which will turn up on this site, eventually.  Basically, it talks about how funny he was...and how his long, amazing career was built on a lot more than dwarfism.  Hervé Villechaize (with whom I also worked) was a fluke, hired only for the accident of his height.  But Billy Barty was, first and foremost, an actor.  That's why he worked constantly for something like seventy (!) years.

December 26, 2000

JUST ADDED columns on Gwen Verdon, Red Skelton, Pat Boyette, Barry Manilow and the one I wrote about Peter Pan and Superman.  My plan is to add five-or-so more every week.  If you have any specific requests, send me an e-mail...although I've decided not to post current columns for the time being.  For those of you scoring at home: We've been logging around a hundred "hits" a day here.  In case anyone's interested, the three most "accessed" articles have been, in order, the one on June Foray, the two-parter on Laurel & Hardy, and the three-parter on The Fox and the Crow.  This last is probably due to a lovely cross-plug on Jerry Beck's splendid website, Cartoon Research.

THE INTERESTING THING thing about maintaining a website (I'm finding) is that it's not like any kind of writing or publishing with which I've previously been involved.  I'm used to sending it off to the printers and then, at some point, you don't see it again until it's too late to change anything.  Not so with web publishing.  A website is a continual work-in-progress, and I've been tweaking the HTML code and fixing punctuation marks since the moment it went up.

HAVE YOU SEEN those clever parody commercials the Eveready battery people have running on TV?  The ones that are interrupted by the rabbit with the drum?  Well, several of them give addresses for websites for the fictitious products.  Like, there's the one for "Growzan," a new hair-grow medicine.  The commercials, if you listen carefully, are pretty funny...and the websites, like www.growzan.com, are even funnier.  Take a peek if you run out of stuff to read here.  Not that you will, of course...

December 18, 2000

OKAY, I KNOW, I know!  For years now it seems, I've been answering the eternal question of when I was going to do this with, "I stand on my Constitutional right not to have a website."  But since our Constitution doesn't seem to mean a lot lately, I figured it was about time I got this thing up and running.  (And say, why don't we save the country the cost of a robe by sending Clarence Thomas home and just giving Scalia two votes?)  For a year or three, I even put off registering www.evanier.com.  I mean, who else would want it?

There are only about a dozen Evaniers on the planet, most of whom don't understand the scientific principle behind the hammer, let alone the Internet.  Finally, one day, Josh Jones — who operates www.groo.com with our blessing — offered to help me sign up so I figured I might as well.  The next day, a cousin I'd never met tried to register the name.  Can you imagine the fights that must have ensued over www.jones.com and www.smith.com?  Yeesh.

Anyway, after a year or three of leaving this site "under construction," I've finally decided to stick a mess of my old columns and a few other goodies here for your perusal.  If you have any special requests not involving nude photos, let me know.  I'll try to add something new every week or two...but you know how that goes...