Laborious Day

Just got my performance review this week, which went all right. I purloined a good portion of my self-evaluation from this blog. Seriously. It made it so much easier to write since I tend to dread it.

I saw this article 10 Things You Wish You Could Tell Your Boss, but are afraid to, lest you get fired. And in this economy, that’s a legitimate fear. At the end of the article, the author asked readers to throw in other pieces of advice.

For me, it is not to tell me I’m “empowered” to do something for which I have been given no resources whatsoever. Yes, there’s a particular job that I have in mind.

Also, to amplify one of the choices given, Don’t take credit for my work. You MAY say, “We designed this,” if I designed it, as we are part of a team. However, you may NOT say, “I designed this.” You will really tick me off if you do. This actually happened in my current job, with a previous boss. Her I did not like, but she’s long gone.

Song appropriate for the day by the Isley Brothers and the Average White Band.

Speaking of a piece of work, the late Vince Coletta was mentioned recently by two bloggers I know personally. First, Alan David Doane bemoans the fact that the very first book about an inker is someone who he (and many others) believe was one of the WORST working inkers in comicdom. Then Fred Hembeck is interviewed for TCJ, and he tells the story of DC Art Director Colletta dissing his work. Now, I’ve read this tale before; Fred might have even told me before. But there was one tasteless detail that I never knew before, or had long forgotten.

The late Rod Serling, of course, worked on the classic TV show the Twilight Zone. Gordon links to a lost Serling interview from 1970, the year I had the opportunity to (sort of) introduce him at an assembly at his high school alma mater. And Gordon even namechecks me in the intro! As I noted in the comments to the piece, it was painful to watch Serling fumble to light his cigarette then hear him say that those things were going to kill him; five years later, he proved to be right.

Finally, a mother is worried about her 16-year-old son’s infatuation with an older woman. Seems like a reasonable choice when it’s Betty White, who won Emmys in 1952 (as a co-producer, no less), in 2010, plus a few in between. If not the hardest working actress on TV, she’s certainly one of the longest working.

John C. Reilly Would Really Understand Me

The Muppet Rowlf was a regular on the Jimmy Dean Show, sometime during its 1963-1966 run on ABC-TV


I’m watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart recently, miraculously only a couple days after the show aired. John C. Reilly, who I know best from the movie Chicago, was on, ostensibly to plug his new movie, Cyrus. But it is what he said about music, at about 4:20 of this clip, that really struck me. Seems that when he was a kid, when his mom or dad would say a word or a phrase, he would come up with a song to go along with it. I did/do the same damn thing!

And while we both realized it could be really annoying, it was not done for that purpose. It happened because that’s the way we connect the dots in the world. I was reading a cereal box recently, FCOL, and the first sentence was “Life is complicated.” IMMEDIATELY, I thought, “Why is life SO COM-pli-cated?” That’s a line from which uses the Stevie Wonder-penned song, because I haven’t yet SEEN that yet.
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I wanted to write about the singer Jimmy Dean, but needed an angle, and didn’t find one until I read this article. Of COURSE! The Muppet Rowlf was a regular on the Jimmy Dean Show, sometime during its 1963-1966 run on ABC-TV, which I would occasionally watch. So Dean hired Jim Henson early on. Here’s a dated bit between country singer and dog, a Rowlf ad for the Dean show, and an ad for a Rowlf doll; note the early version of Kermit the Frog.

The other thing about Jimmy Dean is his big hit, Big Bad John, and how near the end, when the line reads, “At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man.” Yet I always hear something coarser, such as “a helluva man.”

If I ever had his sausage, I have no recollection.
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Crispian St. Peters died, best known for song called Pied Piper. But he also had a minor hit with Evanier gives details of the great artist’s life.

Ramblin' with Roger
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