“And This Is Where We Leave Our Annie: For Now”

After 86 years, several artists and a major makeover, "Little Orphan Annie" the comic strip has ended… in mid-story. Leaving a hole in the comics page of less than 20 newspapers, the ‘Princess of Pluck’ already has a sort of a comeback planned with a revival of the "Annie" Broadway musical. But nothing that could happen in that 1930s-based show will get her out of the clutches of ‘The Butcher of the Balkans’ in 2010, will it?

So, once more, let’s all sing that wonderful song… no, not THAT one… this one:
"Who’s that little chatterbox
With the pretty auburn locks…"

This week, the Sheldon comic devoted three days to the subject of Food Poisoning.



As with just about everything people write about digestive sickness, I consider it rather understated, so I posted something about it here.

quoted from the Cynopsis Kids newsletter:

ABC will premiere Lanny and Wayne the Christmas Elves in Prep & Landing, the network’s first special produced by Disney Animation Studio, on Tuesday, December 1 at 8:30p. Executive Produced by John Lasseter, the half-hour holiday special follows an elite high tech unit of elves, known as Prep & Landing, which makes sure that homes are ready for Santa’s arrival. A small group of these elves, Wayne an elf passed over for a promotion, an enthusiastic rookie named Lanny, and Magee, the North Pole Christmas Eve Command Center Coordinator, work together to guide Santa and his reindeer through a dangerous storm. The voiceover cast includes Dave Foley, Sarah Chalke, and Derek Richardson.

Is this a sign of the End Times? An ABC/Disney/Pixar Christmas special about Santa’s Logistics Elves?!? Is this supposed to give kids the Christmas message: “when you grow up, you’ll probably have a very boring job…” And Dave Foley is the guy who made watching people play poker more boring, IMO. Maybe, if CSI could make the nerds in the Crime Labs interesting, this might be entertaining, but NOT in a Christmas Special kind of way. Sigh. Now I understand why the elf in the Rankin/Bass Rudolph show wanted to be a dentist…

Mark Evanier is, and has been for eons in Internet Time, one of my favorite bloggers, partly by being a “Show-Biz Insider” who knows what he’s talking about (and the parts of Show-Biz he is the most Inside Of are Cartoons and Comic Books), and party by being a simply entertaining writer (he was singularly responsible for making the Garfield TV shows funnier than the comic strip… and honestly, it is).

Both qualities were on display recently with the following quotes:

upon recently visiting the Secret Lair of the Evil Garfield Empire…

Jim Davis is a gracious employer/host and we had a fine time, meeting and dining…and even hearing tales of Jim’s old college buddy at Ball State University, David Letterman. A lot of folks think Jim made his fortune by creating the world’s most successful newspaper strip but that was small change compared to what he’s made blackmailing Dave.

And on the subject of “What Hollywood Thinks”…

Hollywood doesn’t speak with a single voice. Heck, all the people who work on any one movie or TV show don’t speak with a single voice. I had the same agent for 27 years and we didn’t even speak with a single voice. The only people I ever met in this industry who ever spoke with a single voice were Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney.

That’s what I call “eminently quotable”. And you can quote me on that.