Kathleen wrote:
> 
> Alan Zabaro wrote:
[...]
> > Your sister, OTOH - at least based on what you've told us - reminds me more
> of
> 
> > Tom Waits's "What's He Building?" :
> > http://kagato.com:8080/public/y2002/m01/d26/tom_waits_whats_he_building.mp3
[...]
> OH MY! What a creepy and cool song! I have never heard it. It has her 
paranoid
 
> fantasy down pat, for sure. I wanted to find out what he WAS building in 
there,
 
> though! Very, very cool beatnik spoken word stuff, and the last line "We 
have a
 
> right to know...." was perfect. I'm glad that Cheryl wasn't here when I heard
> it, I would have had to play it for her. I have a feeling she wouldn't have
> found it as amusing. Thanks Alan, that was cool.

Not all Tom Waits pieces are that weird, but I love the few that are. A friend
played me some of his stuff a few years ago, when we were in college...his
best tracks sounded like the voice of insanity, spoken or sung.

> >
> > The Ninja Hedge shirt...I think my brother managed to get one of those near
> > the end of the run.
> 
> I'll buy it from him! LOL!

I don't think it's much more than a rag, now; he went through a time where
he wore nothing but Tick shirts (of course, that wasn't hard...he had
about two weeks worth...). This led to some interesting encounters...at our
first AX, we were in the elevator headed down for the first day of the con;
the doors open a few floors above the lobby, and a group of people start
to get on the elevator when one of them, a purple-haired giant, stops,
points at Mark, and screams

"AAAAAAA! I LOVE the Tick!!"

[...]
> > OT for a second...did anybody else catch the live-action Tick? I know that
> > Fox kept moving it around the schedule, and seems to have succeeded in
> > killing it; from what I've heard, last Thursday's episode will be the last
> > to air...just after I saw the action figures show up at Suncoast.
> 
> OH NO!!!!!! I had to double check to be sure you were right, sorry to not
> believe you. But I don't believe it! How could they have done this show
> so wrong? First they delay it forever, then it is tossed around so that
> nobody could keep track of it. I flat out, don't understand. How can
> anyone, even Fox, spend the kind of money that it takes to develop a
> show, make 13 episodes or so, and then just not bother to wait to see if
> it gets a following? Or in this case, pretty much makes sure that 
> it couldn't...

I knew it was going to be cancelled by the time I heard the news; it had
been rescheduled and preempted too often to have any supporters with real
power at Fox, and the constant shifting had basically destroyed the show's
ability to pick up fans and build ratings. By the third time it had been
moved around, I was sure that we only had this first run to get every
episode we could.

> Yes, thanks to Tivo, I saw all but one episode. I loved it. My whole family
> loved it. It's The Tick for goodness sake, and he had it down perfectly,
> like I knew he would. It was funny, super subtle, and smart. Too smart and
> too subtle, I guess. It took several watchings to catch everything.
> 
> I loved all the characters (Lady Liberty and BatManuel were great, and Arthur
> was perfect), I heard only positive reviews, and yet I KNEW it would be
> cancelled! We taped three episodes, in expectation that it would probably
> never be shown again.

I think my brother and I got 8 of the 9 episodes, and IIRC Mark said
he found a low-quality video file of the one we missed, so we just need
to capture them all as MPEGs and burn them to CDs. We've already done
that with the first five episodes...we might as well do it with the rest,
since I don't imagine the show will be released for purchase any time
soon.

[...]
> We are all depressed over this news, even though it isn't a surprise. What is
> Fox's deal? They let some shows go on forever, trying to get an audience, and
> some just don't get any chance at all.

Probably something to do with internal politics; in the Tick's case, I don't
think anybody particularly hated the show, just that nobody with enough
political muscle cared about it, so when something had to take a fall for
special events...It also meant that the show got basically no advertising
that I saw (kind of strange, when you consider Barry Sonnenfeld was working
on it; you'd think that the involvement of the director of "Men in Black"
would be an easy advertising point). I doubt there was malice involved,
however, as one of the Tick episodes that was preempted got shown the next
night to make up for it, like somebody cared enough about the Tick to try
to keep it running (as opposed to Fox purchases like Escaflowne and
Slayers, which seem more like the attempts of a Rupert Murdoch company to
get in some easy shots at a Ted Turner company).
 
Alan Zabaro