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If you're interested in the whole Reflecting Pool mess, here's a nice overview of where things stand at the moment.,,

Years ago, a great many short-lived TV shows and unsold pilots came from a simple thought: What if we combined the formats of a situation comedy and a variety show?  Someone said to someone, "It'll be an hour like most variety shows and there will be songs and dancing every six or eight minutes like on a variety show…but instead of comedy sketches in-between, we'll have short stories or chapters of stories like on a sitcom with a little coterie of regular characters!"

I guess in the meetings, it sounded like a great idea but I can't think of an attempt that resulted in a successful, ongoing TV series.  I can, however, think of a lot of times when it was tried and it failed.  Here are just a few examples…

In the early seventies, there was a series called The Funny Side created by Bill Persky and Sam Denoff, two of the main writers on successful sitcoms like The Dick Van Dyke Show and That Girl.  But The Funny Side — an hour-long sitcom with songs –didn't last long.  Neither did The Brady Bunch Variety Hour or a couple of other pilots my frequent employers Sid and Marty Krofft attempted.

Neither did That's Life! starring Robert Morse in an attempt to do an hour-long musical comedy each week.  Jackie Gleason briefly had some success trying to do weekly musicals with some Honeymooners episodes but they petered out.

When The Dean Martin Show was running out of gas, its producer — Greg Garrison — experimented with a format that had Dean running a swank nightclub with funny little mini-sitcom scenes between musical performances. Didn't work.  When Mary Tyler Moore tried to make a comeback in a variety show format, they tried weaving a storyline between song and dance numbers. Didn't work.

George Schlatter produced an hour of Li'l Abner with various actors portraying the characters from Al Capp's famous newspaper strip.  Sometimes, they'd be signing and dancing.  Sometimes, they'd be doing short sitcom-type segments.  The only good thing that came of that attempt was that my partner Sergio Aragonés was hired to design some of the cartoony sets and because of that, he met an actress-dancer named Charlene Ryan who was playing Stupefyin' Jones. The Li'l Abner sitcom/variety show disappeared quickly but Sergio and Charlene have now been happily married for several decades.

There were other attempts before the TV industry gave up on variety shows with or without sitcom elements. I was only involved — slightly — with one attempt. In 1976 when I was a story editor on Welcome Back, Kotter, its producer Jimmie Komack made two pilots that tried to build one of those sitcom/variety hybrids out of the Archie comic books. You know: Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Reggie, et al.  Those characters.

Komack had this odd notion of how to approach doing an adaptation of an existing property. His view was that it should be done by writers and producers who were completely unfamiliar with the source material. That way, their minds were uncluttered by what had been done before. While I was working for him, he also tried it with a spectacularly unsuccessful pure sitcom revival of Dobie Gillis that didn't much resemble the old Dobie Gillis.

The folks on the creative staff engaged for Archie were not totally unfamiliar with the property. How could they be?  Still, Komack insisted they not read the old comics and instead work from a rough outline someone had written about who the characters were.  His goal was not to replicate comic books.  He wanted to reinvent the franchise for television, the better to make it appeal to the zillions of viewers that didn't know and love the comics.  Somehow — I know not how — John Goldwater got worried about what "those TV people" were doing to the property on which his whole company rested.

John L. Goldwater — a distant relative of Barry, I've heard — was the founder of the Archie company and I'm not sure if he was the owner or co-owner then but he certainly was the man to please.  He also considered himself the creator of the Archie property.  Some historians will tell you otherwise but there would be a credit line of this show that said "Based on the comic strip characters created by John Goldwater."  He'd been quite happy with the various Archie cartoon shows that were coming out of the Filmation Studio.  He arranged a visit to Komack's office hoping to be assured he'd be happy with the live-action version.

The first I heard of this possible problem was when Jimmie summoned me — and only me, not me and my writing partner Dennis Palumbo — to his office.  He asked me, "You know all about comic books, don't you?" I said I did. He said, "Archie Comics?" I said I did.  "Good," he said.  "A man named John Goldwater is coming by later today and I'd like you to be in the meeting."

Later that day in the meeting, Jimmie introduced me as one of his best writers — the only time I ever heard him say anything like that — and said I was a world-class expert at Archie history.  Without saying it directly, he gave Mr. Goldwater the idea that I was one of the writers on the Archie pilot (I wasn't) and that I was making sure everything on it would be faithful to Mr. Goldwater's vision.  I wasn't doing that, either.  Then Jimmie asked me to demonstrate how much I knew about Archie.

I felt I had to play along with this role I had been cast in without my consent.  I explained to Mr. Goldwater that I'd written many comic books and that I'd apprenticed with Jack Kirby. Mr. Goldwater was impressed at the mention of Jack, who'd worked for his company a few times. We spoke for a few minutes and somehow, I managed to wedge in a nice nugget of trivia.

Kotter had just begun sharing its stage  with a new ABC sitcom called Fish, a spin-off of Barney Miller that I don;t believe was on the air yet.  It starred Abe Vigoda and I mentioned that Abe Vigoda's brother Bill Vigoda had been a top artist for Archie. "Is that true?" Jimmie asked, incredulously. Goldwater nodded it was true…and that seemed to convince him that I would make sure that Archie on TV was the Archie of the comic books and that Betty would be Betty and Veronica would be Veronica and so forth.

I don't recall that I actually said anything about the casting or the format or the script — none of which I'd seen — but Mr. Goldwater seemed somehow reassured.  And since he seemed to be that, Jimmie decided to quit while he was ahead and send me back to work on Kotter.  I never got to talk further with Mr. Goldwater. Later, Jimmie did consult with me on a number of points including some of the final casting — but I didn't write on the first pilot nor was I credited or compensated in any way.

At the time, I was annoyed that he'd tapped me for so much expertise without offering work or money or anything. Later on, I was happy not to have the failure on my résumé.  That left plenty of room on it for the failures on which I actually worked.

Komack's Archie pilots starred Audrey Landers as Betty, Hilary Thompson as Veronica, Mark Winkworth as Reggie, Derrel Maury as Jughead, Jane Lambert as Miss Grundy, Susan Blu as Midge, Jim Boelson as Moose, Whit Bissell as Mr. Lodge, Michelle Stacy as Little Jinx, Tifni Twitchell as Big Ethel and Amzie Strickland as Mrs. Lodge. Byron Webster played Mr. Weatherbee and Gordon Jump played Archie's father.

You may be familiar with Gordon Jump from his role later on WKRP in Cincinnati or his years as the Maytag washing machine repairman in commercials. He came in to audition for Mr. Weatherbee and got the part. Then, since the producers couldn't properly cast the role of Archie's father, they moved Jump to that slot and put their second-choice in as Mr. Weatherbee. No one thought to tell Mr. Jump when the final shooting scripts were delivered so on the first day of rehearsal, he showed up with the wrong role memorized.

Who played the title role of Archie Andrews? Well, that's an interesting story in itself. After extensive auditions and screen tests, they picked a young man with brilliant red hair but no real acting experience, at least on television. Somehow, things didn't work out in the contract phase. I never heard exactly what happened but suddenly, the morning of the day rehearsals commenced, the role of Archie was being played by the producers' second choice. It was an actor named Dennis Bowen who had appeared a few times on Kotter in the recurring role of Todd Ludlow, an honors student who clashed with the "teen" characters on the series.

Somehow, the ABC publicity department never got the word and all the p.r. they issued for the show contained the name of the first actor, the one who was replaced. Poor Dennis Bowen had to endure publicity photos that displayed his face but identified him as the first guy. Years later when the Archie comic book folks published a book on the character's history, they said the first guy had played the role. The first guy was David Caruso, later known for his roles as Detective John Kelly on NYPD Blue and Lieutenant Horatio Caine on CSI: Miami, among other credits.

He was fortunate to be out of it too. The show was a mess for many reasons. It was being targeted for the 7:00 Sunday evening slot and I recall a lot of argument over how many scenes there could be of Betty, Veronica and a number of good-looking female extras in swimwear and sleepwear. The writers had scripted several quick jokes at a swimming pool, and one of the short stories involved the boys crashing a slumber party that Veronica was throwing at the Lodge mansion. Both had been planned expressly to get the ladies into scanty outfits, which the ABC programming department encouraged.

At the same time, their Standards and Practices folks ran around demanding less-revealing bikinis and nighties. Some of the best jokes in the show wound up being cut because the ladies were showing a half-inch too much of their physiques.  This kind of thing mattered a lot on TV shows, B.C.  That means "Before Cable."

By the way: If you ever produce a TV show and want to have a mob of male crew members hanging around on the set, just have scenes where a lot of actresses are in sexy nightgowns.  The stage was packed with men those days, all standing around debating who was cuter — Betty or Veronica.

Like all these hybrid variety-sitcoms, there were blackouts and little, self-contained storylines of a few minutes each. Between these, the focus would shift to a rather generic rock band that played bubble-gum style music. But the sitcom-type scenes were too short to really get to know the characters and the generic rock band was not very good and utterly irrelevant to the Archie characters. The show was shot with no studio audience and the network execs particularly hated the overly-delighted laugh track. It was quickly declared DOA at ABC well before it aired on December 19. 1976.  I never heard what John Goldwater thought of it but I would guess he was undelighted.

That would have been the end of it but Komack's agents — he had great agents — had forced the deal to be for two pilots so Jimmie had another shot at it. I recall some bickering and delays as ABC decided they didn't want a second pilot and tried to buy or trade their way out of that commitment but Komack wasn't giving up. A month or two later, production started on that second pilot. The cast would be the same. The sitcom elements would be lengthened. The generic rock band would be replaced by the Archie characters themselves singing and dancing, even though those actors had not been chosen for any musical abilities. The laugh track would not get overly hysterical over every line of dialogue.

By this time, we'd finished the season on Welcome Back, Kotter and I had my agent tell the Komack people I did not want to return for another year. I was on to other things and was surprised when I was offered a job writing on that second pilot. Komack had decided to try the wild and crazy idea of having someone writing on this version who'd actually read an Archie comic book and I may have been the only person he knew who fit that qualification.

I guess I was kind of hired but we never closed a deal and I left after two days of meetings with Danny Simon, brother of Neil, who had been hired as Head Writer. Danny was a delightful, funny gent but he had a vast knowledge of old, tried-and-true comedy sketches from fifties television.  I just noticed and fixed a typo in the previous sentence where I'd typed "tired-and-true" but that also applied.  Anyway, Danny's idea of writing this second pilot was taking those old sketches and making one character in them be Archie and another character would be Veronica and so on.

It's all a little fuzzy today but I remember calling my agent, telling him I wanted out and he said something like, "I'll see what I can do but don't report to the studio until we get this settled." And then the show was never mentioned again and it went ahead without me…to the same fate as Pilot #1.

At some point during the above paragraphs, you probably got to wondering why I was telling you all this now. I have a reason — maybe not a good one but it is a reason.

Since those two pilots crashed and burned, I've been kinda looking for a recording of one or the other…and so have some of the people who were involved, in front of or behind the camera. I've run into many of them and no one had a copy of it. Well now, they can, sort of. Someone has uploaded an imperfect recording of Pilot #1 to this thing we call an Internet. There are a few bad edits in it but here it is. See if you think ABC made a bonehead mistake by not immediately giving it a full season pickup.  I am in no way responsible for any part of this.  I was just on the premises, especially when they were taping the scene with the girls in nightgowns.

In case you missed this week's episode…

I'm not seriously following the current state of things in The War With Iran. That's because I know the current state today will not be the current state on Wednesday, which will not be the current state on Friday…and so on. And you certainly couldn't figure it out listening to our Commander-in-Chief, who keeps saying we're winning and they're losing, then acting as if those roles are reversed. So I just wait for the latest Fred Kaplan article. The one from today starts with…

Iran's latest demands in the diplomatic quarrel over the Strait of Hormuz may seem excessive — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said they "could never be an acceptable condition of any deal" — but in fact they were part of the deal that President Donald Trump agreed to two months ago.

The proposal, issued Saturday by the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, stated that Iran would not open the strait — the waterway for a quarter of the world's seaborne oil traffic — until the United States ended its naval blockade, lifted sanctions on Iran's oil exports, released Iran's frozen assets, withdrew its military forces from the area around Iran, and paid reparations for the damage inflicted by its massive bombardment of the country since February.

Looks like Trump's plan is to surrender, then make a full court press to convince as much of America as possible that he won the war and that any suggestion otherwise is treasonous fake news. We'll see how well that works.

Ken Williams wants to know…

Why are the producers of Boop! The Musical doing the national tour as Non-Equity? If they're paying the actors less, it stands to reason that they won't be getting the best possible actors which would probably result in the show not doing as well as it might. What am I missing here?

I may have told this story before but many years ago, I worked on a TV show that involved a whole bunch of wrestlers who were in what was then called the World Wide Wrestling Federation. The absolute monarch of the W.W.W.F. was Vince McMahon and he was also involved. At the time, Mr. T (the guy from whichever Rocky sequel he was in and The A-Team) was turning up, usually as a surprise combatant, in W.W.W.F. wrestling matches. Just to make conversation, I asked McMahon how he got Mr. T to do that.

Slowly — like he was talking to a very dumb small child — Mr. McMahon said to me, "In the history of professional wrestling, no one has ever done anything for any reason except for money." That is a verbatim quote. It was the moment I suddenly understood everything I ever needed to know about professional wrestling and probably a lot of other endeavors as well.

It's a little too cynical even for me and I have learned there are exceptions — but not many.

There's a hard reality in the entertainment field that everything is, at some point on some level, about the money. And looking it from the POV of those behind Boop!, you have to remember that the Broadway show was capitalized at a reported $26 million bucks and lost all of it. If that number isn't right, the real number is in the same expensive neighborhood. The show had investors who would like its producers to do what they can to recoup some of that.  That would include merchandise , the cast album, perhaps a movie or cable deal and other productions, both foreign and domestic.

I don't know — and you probably don't know, either — enough about the math on a national tour to assess the risks. Maybe going Non-Equity will yield less income but someone who's supposed to know about these things thought otherwise. I would imagine they took into consideration that the show, having not been successful in New York, does not have the rep of a show that ran for years in New York, won Tonys, had people paying huge amounts for seats, etc.

You'll note on the tour schedule they're in many cities for just five days.  Someone, probably looking at what similar shows have done in those theaters, think that's sufficient to sell all the tix they're likely to sell in those cities.  I'm not excusing non-union shows…just trying to explain them.

I would disagree with you if you're saying that paying less for actors will necessarily mean inferior actors.  Maybe…but I remember seeing a Non-Equity tour of Catch Me If You Can and the guy playing the Aaron Tveit role was terrific — too good to be working Non-Equity but I guess that's what he could get.  I did see both the Equity and Non-Equity tours of Something Rotten and the Equity tour starring Rob McClure was sensational.  The Non-Equity version was nowhere near as good but there were still some folks in there who were of Broadway quality.

Acting is a rough business.  Very few performers ever get most of the jobs they deserve.  I'm very pro-union, having been on the warfront of efforts to unionize Animation Writers.  I wish every theater and every production in every theater was Equity but I can't find it in me to fault those who have to settle for what they can get.  And I still don't know if I'm going to see Boop! when it gets to Los Angeles.

Here's a segment from Pawn Stars. A lady brings a copy of MAD #1 into the shop and –well, watch this and then we'll discuss it…

Okay. There's a lot wrong here. It makes it sound like the Comics Code was some sort of government-decreed censorship board.  It wasn't. It was something most of the major comic book publishers at the time assembled to try and ward off government action against comic books. It also makes it sound like Dr. Fredric Wertham was the driving force. Wertham was very vocal and visible but he had no actual power and, in fact, never endorsed or even approved of the Comics Code.

But here's what's really wrong: MAD did not convert from a 10-cent comic book to a 25-cent magazine to avoid the Comics Code. It's an easy mistake to make if you look at the timing.  Its publisher, William M. Gaines, tried to get around submitting his comic book line — E.C. Comics — to the Code for approval.  He replaced comics like Crime SuspenStories with more pro-social titles like Valor but his distributor insisted: No code, no distribution.

So everything he published except for MAD began sporting the "Approved by the Comics Code Authority" seal beginning with books that went on sale in March of 1955. The last comic book issue of MAD (#23) came out that month without the Code stamp. The first magazine issue of MAD (#24) hit newsstands in July.  So yes, it looks like he converted MAD to a magazine to dodge the Code. In truth, he converted it so he didn't lose its editor, Harvey Kurtzman.

The comic book MAD was almost pure Kurtzman. He edited it. He wrote it. He did some of the art. He did layouts for the artists who did the drawing he didn't do. When the publication caught on big, Gaines became convinced that MAD would be the salvation of his small publishing company.  Just about everything else he had was under fire.  But he was also convinced that if Kurtzman quit, as he was threatening to do now and then, MAD would not survive that loss. There was some evidence for that.

Because the MAD comic book did so well, other publishers were bringing out imitations of it and Gaines did likewise with a MAD imitation called Panic. It was not put together by Kurtzman. Harvey was just barely able to get MAD to press each month. Panic looked remarkably like MAD. It had the same artists and similar stories and it came from the same company…but it was written (mostly) by Jack Mendelsohn and assembled by Gaines' other editor, Al Feldstein. It sold decently but significantly less than MAD — and the only real difference between them was that MAD had Kurtzman and Panic didn't.

And here's why Kurtzman was making noises like he might quit: He was embarrassed to be in comics. He loved the form but hated the business.

He was embarrassed that all the fine work he and his artists were doing was printed on crummy paper — paper that severely limited what could be done on it.  He was embarrassed that his work sold for a dime and on the same racks as some pretty tacky (to him) and exploitive material. He'd been embarrassed to work for the same company that published The Vault of Horror and other horror/crime comics, though the Code had just put an end to those.

He also wanted to be part of a big company that might get bigger — one with larger budgets, greater possibilities and more stability. Gaines wanted to keep his business small enough that he could basically manage it himself. He hated the whole idea of expansion and, indeed, kept MAD as small a business as he could to his dying day.

In 1955, that was not what Kurtzman wanted. He looked at companies like the one that put out Pageant, then a top-selling slick magazine. Pageant had big offices and a big staff and good printing and a desire to grow. They did a story about Kurtzman and MAD, then offered Harvey a job as their cartoon editor. Kurtzman decided to take that job but when he told Gaines, Gaines decided he couldn't let that happen.  MAD was the only thing he had that wasn't collapsing on him.  He told Harvey, "Stay and we'll turn MAD into a slick magazine!"

Kurtzman stayed…but not for long. Gaines did turn MAD into a slick — and it happened just as MAD would have had to begin having Code approval but that wasn't the reason for the change.  The reason was to keep Kurtzman.

When I interviewed Harvey at a San Diego Con years ago, he said — and I'm not sure if this is true but it might have been — that the Comics Code meant nothing to him.  He didn't like the idea of having to submit his work for outside approval but if he'd been forced at gunpoint to continue doing MAD under the Code, that would not have been a problem.  He merely wanted out of the ghetto.

He also said that the problem he then had with MAD after it became a slick was that Gaines still acted like a comic book publisher — small staff, small budgets, the cheapest-possible printing, etc.  There was also the fact that MAD was taking off and the Gaines family owned 100% of it and still wanted to pay flat fees to its makers with no contractual profit participation.

The collapse of the rest of his line drained Gaines' cash reserves.  So did the fact that Kurtzman was a meticulous, slow worker who had trouble meeting deadlines.  MAD was officially a bi-monthly but four months elapsed between the release of MAD #26 and #27, and three between #27 and #28.  Years later, Wally Wood — who was one of Kurtzman's star artists — told me (approximately), "Harvey won't turn loose of a script until he's redone it seven or eight times.  And the seventh or eighth versions are always worse than the first or second."

Shortly after MAD became a magazine, Gaines told Kurtzman they might have to cut the budget and perhaps suspend publishing for a few months.  Kurtzman urged Gaines not to do that — which turned out to be pretty good advice — and Gaines and his sister tapped into their personal savings to keep MAD going.  That extra investment apparently became an issue when Kurtzman received an offer from Hugh Hefner, whose Playboy magazine was just taking off.

Hef wanted Kurtzman to helm a humor magazine with better printing, a higher budget, a big staff, etc.  Wood thought Kurtzman was also dazzled by Hef's charisma and the lush lifestyle he was carving out for himself.  So Kurtzman, emboldened by this better (he thought) offer, demanded 51% ownership of MAD.  He must have known the chances of Gaines agreeing to that were microscopic.  It was probably a ploy to get fired so as to lessen any guilt that Harvey might feel about abandoning Gaines so soon after getting him to sink more money into MAD.

So, to wrap this up: Kurtzman and most of his crew left and did Trump, the upscale humor magazine of his dreams, and it lasted two issues.  Gaines installed Al Feldstein as the new editor of MAD and soldiered on.  Feldstein didn't have Kurtzman's flair for humor but he knew how to hire funny people.  Perhaps more important was that he knew how to produce a bi-monthly magazine that would come out bi-monthly.  Its sales just went up and up and up.

Yeah, I got way off the topic here but it's a good story and I thought you'd enjoy it.  All I really set out to do was to say that MAD didn't become a magazine to avoid the Comics Code.  Don't get your comic book history from Pawn Stars.  I wouldn't even let them tell me what that old watch my uncle left me is worth.

The original incarnation of the game show What's My Line? was on TV from 1950 'til 1967. Many of those episodes are on YouTube and they get an awful lot of hits, especially (I suspect) from folks who just want to watch the Mystery Guest spots. A lot of the episodes are missing but every now and then, one turns up. The one for July 23, 1967 recently surfaced and I've decided to link you to it.

You have a choice: If you want to watch the entire half-hour, click here. If you just want to see the Mystery Guest spot — a particularly good one with Carl Reiner — then click below. I've set it to start at the point in that episode when he comes on…

It is unlikely I will ever see a show at the historic Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine. It is, after all, 3,057 miles from me — and yes, I figured that out with Google Maps. But I always hear great things about the productions they put on there. It's a respected venue and it is an Equity House, meaning that all the shows that grace its stage are done under the appropriate contract with Actors Equity.

(Let me explain why that matters at this moment: I'd really been looking forward to seeing the national touring company of Boop! The Musical, which will be in Los Angeles next July. If I'd given the matter any thought, which I didn't, I would have assumed it would be an Equity tour. That's how it's usually — but not always — done: The national tour of a Broadway tour is an Equity-contracted tour and then, if someone decides the market is there for a second national tour, that might be non-Equity, meaning non-union actors. Hearing that the Boop! tour is non-Equity makes me think I might pass on it. Obviously, I have a lot of time to decide.)

Meanwhile, back in Maine…The Ogunquit is currently mounting a production of one of my favorite musicals, City of Angels — Book by Larry Gelbart, lyrics by David Zippel, music by Cy Coleman. Here's a number from it.

I should explain for those unfamiliar with the show, it's kind of two stories in one. The stage is cut in half. On the left — in full-color — is the story of Stein, a mystery novelist who's in 1940's Hollywood adapting one of his novels into a movie. On the right — in black-and-white — is the story of that movie featuring his character, Stone. At various points, the characters from one story interact with players from the other as in this duet between Stein's wife and Stone's Girl Friday…

It has been my joy/privilege/honor (all of these) to know several people who were deserving of the oft-overapplied term of "genius." One of those was Stan Freberg, who was born one hundred years ago today and who left us in April of 2015 at the age of 88.

I first discovered his work via Soupy Sales' TV shows when Soupy would fill four minutes by having his puppet friends, Pookie and Hippie, mime to one of Freberg's brilliant comedy records. I was twelve or so…but Freberg had been a presence in my life for years, in one sense before I was born. At my sixtieth birthday party, he met my mother who told him that she used to watch Time for Beany when she was pregnant with me.

Stan was Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent, Dishonest John and several other characters on that legendary puppet show he did with his frequent partner, Daws Butler — another genius I was thrilled to know and work with. Before Time for Beany, Stan was a top cartoon voice actor. During Time for Beany, he became a writer-performer of top-selling novelty records. After Time for Beany, he did more records and became the auteur of some of the cleverest, funniest commercials ever made. For a time, every ad you could laugh at on radio or TV was either created by Freberg or by some ad agency trying to imitate Freberg.

He proved comedy could be smart and that satire was not just something, like the great George S. Kaufman once remarked, that closed on Saturday night. The man may have died eleven years ago but his work and influence are still with us. Here's but a tiny sample of what he could do…

Here's another installment — a pretty long one — of Everything You Need to Know About Saturday Night Live. This one covers Season 28, a season when I don't think I watched the show once. I guess I was waiting for someone to say, "Hey, you oughta watch the show" — or even "watch this sketch" — and nobody did.

Maybe that was a failing of my circle of friends but as I watch the excerpts in this recap, I think maybe not. One person in that circle who did watch described these years as a lot of talented people trying real hard to launch a character who could spin off into a movie. If you want to watch the earlier episodes of Everything You Need to Know About Saturday Night Live, click here.

Every so often, I come across a gizmo that improves my life a smidgen…but enough that I'm glad I spent the money on it. So let me tell you about the Dorobeen Rechargeable Battery Powered Fan, 20000 mAh Personal Desk Fan, Portable USB Table Fan, Quiet Desk Fan, Long Working Time, Desktop Fan for Study, Bedroom, Office, Camping. That's what they call it on Amazon.

In simpler terms, it's a rechargeable battery-powered fan that you can put anywhere you like to blow an adjustable volume of air anywhere you'd like it to blow. Right in your face might be a pleasant use. In times of great heat, as much of the U.S. is experiencing now, that can be an extremely pleasant use. This is either the same fan or one similar to the one Alton Brown uses when he wants to blow a constant stream of air on something he's cooking or something in his refrigerator. You charge it with a USB cable — either one you have lying around or the one they include in the box.

Amazon has them in two models. The blue one, which looks a little different than it does in the above photo, is smaller and it does not have a light on it. The green one, in addition to blowing air, also has a light under the top handle. For some reason, they are currently the same price.

The same price at this very moment on Amazon is $35.99 but there's a coupon thing you can click to bring the price down to $28.79. I have bought about seven of these because friends who visit me see mine, want one and then, being the generous guy I am, I give them mine and order another. I have reached the limit of my generosity so you can't have mine but you can order one at this link that pays me a teensy commission.

It's Amazon so you can return it if you don't like it but I think you'll like it.

Our pal Gary Sassaman has posted a new installment of his popular "Tales From My Spinner Rack" series, all about the comic books he loved when he — and I, to be frank — were younger. This one's a distillation of a panel Gary hosted at the recent Comic-Con International. It's all about Jack Kirby's return to Marvel Comics in 1975 — not the happiest time in his life…

There's this web channel called Secret Galaxy that's so secret I didn't know about it. How I found out is that a whole bunch o' people wrote to tell me they'd just done an episode on the history of Garfield and Friends, the series I worked on for a long time. I just watched it, bracing myself for a video that got lots of things wrong, as this kind of thing tends to do…but I was delightfully surprised. They got almost everything right! Here — see for yourself…

I'm busy today so I'll make this as short as I can…

A lot of folks write me with their complaints about Comic-Con International.  Contrary to what some think, I am not and have never been an employee or official of Comic-Con.  I'm just a Special Guest who does a lot of panels there.  (I am also, in no conceivable sense, a "founder" of the convention.  I know people who were or are, whichever way you want to put it, and they deserve all the credit.)

Most of the complaints that come my way flow from the fact that for some inexplicable reason, the San Diego Convention Center cannot accommodate an infinite number of attendees and have an infinite number of panels and program items and that everyone who wants a seat can get one.  The convention is also doing a particularly poor job of making certain that you can find every item you seek at a highly affordable price and also book a nearby, inexpensive hotel room.

Why oh why can't it be like Disneyland where it's never crowded, you never have to wait in line and all the food and souvenirs are real cheap?

Lately, people are bitching to me about Hall H — you know, that big room that I've never set foot in nor had anything to do with.  The complaints to me all sound like "They have to do something to ensure that all the stars I want to see there are on that stage and I can always get a good seat without a long wait!"

I absolutely understand the frustrations.  What I don't understand are the denials of reality as to what's possible or fixable.  And I really don't understand thinking that writing to me is going to do anything about those realities.  Anything at all.