Sunday, February 13, 2005

Lost and Found

There are now a number of different formats but years ago, most Sunday comic strips could be printed two ways — two-tier or full. Charles Schulz, for example, would draw Peanuts as a three-tier strip, meaning three rows of panels...but he'd write it so that the top row could be discarded, and the strip would still make sense. This gave a newspaper the flexibility to run it in a smaller space if that's all they had.

We are all buying the new Complete Peanuts series from Fantagraphics that reprints Mr. Schulz's magnum opus from Day One. They strive to print all the Sunday pages in complete form but as we all noted, one strip in Volume Two was incomplete. The editors could only locate a truncated, two-tier copy of it, which they ran with a promise to keep searching. If, they said, they managed to locate the complete strip — it's the one for 5/3/53 — they would print it in some future volume.

Well, a copy has been found...not a great one but a fuzzy image off microfilm is better than nothing. (Here's a link to a JPEG of the whole thing.) It will be cleaned up and included, probably not in the next release but in the one after.

• Posted at 10:11 AM · LINK

For the Defense

I agree with Tom Spurgeon's comments on the case of Gordon Lee, a comic book retailer who's in legal trouble over distributing a semi-naughty comic to a minor. Lee made a mistake, but these prosecutions always strike me as an example of our legal system going after people who cannot fight back. I'm glad to see the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund taking on the case.

• Posted at 9:38 AM · LINK

Hit Me

GSN is four weeks into its new, 13-episode World Series of Blackjack. Each episode, five notable players of the game compete to advance to the final rounds where there will be serious cash awards.

This is tournament play, which is somewhat different from playing the way you and I play in a casino. In tournament play, you're competing against the other players, so it's actually good when you lose a hand, providing the others at the table lose more. There are situations where it might make sense to split tens, double down on high hands...or even double down on a Blackjack. A player has the usual problems of deciding when to hit, stand, split, double or surrender ("surrender" is employed more often than in non-tournament play) but the real strategizing comes with figuring how much to wager. You could easily win every hand but lose the match to someone who lost most of the hands but bet more skillfully.

All thirteen rounds were taped some time ago, and a new one airs every Friday night at 10 PM Eastern time or 7 PM on my satellite dish. GSN has reruns throughout the week but I can't figure out how to tell which one they're airing when, so I just TiVo the Friday night installments. At some point, they'll probably have at least one marathon with all the episodes to date aired in sequence.

I used to play a lot of the common variety of Blackjack but gave it up more than ten years ago. It was fun at first, but it got to feel like work, and if I was going to work, I figured I should work at my writing, which paid a bit more predictably. Even when it was fun, I was less interested in the cash than in the puzzle. Counting cards and figuring progressive wagers tapped a part of my brain that enjoyed the workout, but when that lobe lost interest, I decided to quit while I was ahead. If you play any of those games long enough, you cannot help but lose everything.

Watching tournament play reignites some of that interest, though not to the point where I would ever enter a contest. I'm just having fun watching good players, and occasionally pausing the TiVo before they act to think, "Hmm...what would I do in that situation?" My answers rarely match the decisions of those who go on to win, which is a major reason you'll never catch me trying it. But I play along, armchair style, and then log into two Internet forums for the post-game chatter. Those who competed in the games are contractually barred from discussing an episode until after it airs, but then Anthony Curtis — one of the players and also the publisher of Las Vegas Advisor — does play-by-play on this page, and another player, Ken Smith, posts recaps and analysis on this other forum.

Watching other folks play Blackjack may not interest you. At times, depending on my mood, it doesn't interest me, either. But at times, it rekindles the fun I had for a time playing the basic, me-against-the-dealer version. In a way, it's better because there's no chance of losing money, no cigarette smoke, no idiot players to your right who can't add up a hand with an ace in it, and no pit boss staring at you every time you win a big bet, wondering if you're up to something. Then again, there's no chance of winning money, no cute cocktail waitress bringing me free Sprite, and no way to score a comp to a buffet.

• Posted at 9:21 AM · LINK

Benefiting Bill

After I posted a link to this article about his hardships, several of you wrote to ask what you could do to aid Bill Messner-Loebs. Well, one thing — and this might benefit you as much as it helps him — is to purchase a forthcoming book that he's working on. Aardwolf Publishing is issuing The Three Tenors: Off Key, which is a 100+ page illustrated collection of offbeat tales from Bill Messner-Loebs, Dave Cockrum and Clifford Meth. Go to their site and place an order. Sounds like a goodie.

• Posted at 1:17 AM · LINK

Other Places to Visit

Do you need to wear a jacket today? Find out here. [Link cribbed from Elayne Riggs, who got it from Lis Riba. Note that it defaults to Boston, where you always have to wear a jacket. But you can enter in the name of your city and find out if you should wear a jacket today when you go out.]

And I see that John Ostrander, who has written some excellent comic books in his day, is now writing an excellent weblog.

• Posted at 1:02 AM · LINK

Throat Talk

Yeah, I know I'm not doing a very good job of not posting here for a while, but I am getting a lot done on that script.

For those of you interested in the Ben-Stein-is-Deep-Throat theory, one reader of this site sent me this link to a long essay on the subject. It makes a better case than I thought possible, but I'm still not convinced. Stein has been pretty vociferous not only that he was not Deep Throat but that he's sure there never was such a person. I can understand why he might deny it was him but not why Deep Throat would say there was no Deep Throat.

One thing that occurs to me is that if it is Stein — and this might apply to a few of the other suspects, as well — there may be a very interesting manuscript locked in some lawyer's safe. Let's say you're Ben Stein and you're also Deep Throat. For your own reasons, you don't want anyone to know of the role you played in the fall of your former boss (and favorite president), Richard M. Nixon. Okay, fine. But you also know that once you die, it's going to come out that you were Deep Throat and I would think you'd want to explain yourself and put the best possible spin on it. A book on the topic would also make a lot of money for your estate. So I kinda hope it is Stein, because if it is, I'll bet he wrote a fascinating book to be published posthumously about why he did it. But I still think it isn't Stein.

The person who sent me this link also notes that Mr. Stein has been ill lately and has cancelled a number of speaking engagements (like this one). The assumption here is that perhaps this ties in with the rumor that Deep Throat is near death. I think I'd rather assume that Stein's illness, whatever it is, is not that severe.

• Posted at 12:56 AM · LINK

February 14, 2005 • Current • February 12, 2005