Monthly Archives: September 2008

First things first: Yes, the seven thousand stray cats I feed at my back door are being fed while I'm away. Carolyn is there to feed them. (It's not really seven thousand. It's more like five with an occasional guest star. But when I look at what I'm spending on Friskies, it seems like seven thousand.)

Sergio Aragonés picked me up this morning, we motored to the airport and now we (and our collaborators on Groo, Stan Sakai and Tom Luth) are in Kansas City, MO. Tomorrow and Sunday, we will be doing the Guest of Honor bit at the Mo-Kan Comics Conspiracy, a convention of some import. If you're around, we'll be around.

So far, we're getting the Kansas City Royal Treatment. Our hosts took us on a tour of the Liberty Memorial, a place to remember World War I for those inclined to forget such things. Then it was over to Union Station, a building of impressive architecture and the scene of a famous crimeland massacre. A few years ago, writer Ande Parks (a local) penned an acclaimed graphic novel about the crime and tonight, Ande was nice enough to give us a personally guided tour of where it all happened. Then a whole group of us steaked it up at the Hereford House, a popular venue in which to devour dead cow. Tomorrow, we commence the much-awaited taste test of K.C. barbecue emporiums. It won't be much of a test since we'll only get to two BBQ places, three tops. But we'll call 'em as we eat 'em.

That's about it, diary-wise. Don't expect a lot of postings until I'm back in my own area code…but we'll try to keep you entertained enough to not un-bookmark this site.

A few minutes ago, I stopped in at a Long's Drug Store to pick up something. The store is undergoing major renovation and they have all the shelves moved out of their old locations but not yet into their new places. There did not seem to be the slightest logic to what was where.

I walked up to the cashier on duty and before I could say anything, he said, "Don't ask me where anything is. We have no idea."

Someone hacked into Sarah Palin's Yahoo mail account. It may not have been the smartest thing in the world for anyone to conduct state business on an outside, public mail service but it's still a reprehensible deed to rummage around in someone else's mailbox.

Apparently, the hacker got in because Governor Palin's account had "security questions" that were very easy for a stranger to guess with a little research. This does not surprise me.

Back in the days before we were all happily Internetting, some of us communicated via things called Computer Bulletin Boards, linked in via lethargic dial-up phone modem connections. At the time, it all seemed so futuristic and amazing that flying cars were the inevitable next step. Now, when I write about BBSystems, as we called them, it feels like I'm telling young whippersnappers about how I used to have to handcrank the family automobile machine to get it started.

I operated a couple of Computer Bulletin Boards and the software was very unsophisticated. Most of it made all private correspondence visible to the guy in my position, the System Operator. I had to actively try not to read everyone's mail and caution people that it was not impossible I'd get a glimpse of that which they wished no third party to see. When a new member signed up for the board, I had to approve his admission…and the computer screen on which I did this showed me the password he'd selected to use on my system. That might seem like no big deal but most people used the same password on every computer system. Some of them were even using their ATM Personal Identification Numbers or some other code to which I should not have had access.

As far as I know, this is no longer the case with the message boards and private groups we join on the Internet. But back then, the potential for mischief and larceny was immense.

It was also pretty simple to guess someone's password. We had a lot of comic book writers on my first BBS and about a third of them selected as their password, the name of a character with which they were associated. My pal Steve Gerber, creator of Howard the Duck, used HOWARD as his password until he learned better. Penn Gillette of Penn 'n' Teller fame (or at least, someone claiming to be Penn) signed in with a password that I could have guessed if given five tries.

But the big, easy one was DRAGON. Of the first hundred professional writers who signed onto my first BBS, around a dozen used DRAGON as their password. I don't know how you figure the odds on that or why that word came to so many minds. Only one of them was involved with the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series.

Once, a member phoned me up and said, "I've lost my password. Can you look it up and see what it is?" I asked, without looking anything up, "Might it have been DRAGON?" They said, "Yeah, that's it. Thanks." Later, on a Bulletin Board for folks who operated Bulletin Boards, someone compiled a list of obvious, overused passwords. DRAGON was number one, followed closely by SWORDFISH, DROWSSAP, the person's own name backwards and various cusswords. One person who operated a Muppet fan site announced that if he didn't stop them, 90% of his users would have KERMIT, FOZZIE, GONZO or some other popular Muppet name as their password.

When people hear today that an account or website has been "hacked," they imagine that some person with vast technical expertise has exploited a wormhole in the system and found some terribly complicated but effective method to get in. That does happen but an awful lot of "hacking" simply occurs because someone used an obvious password…or used it in too many places.

So protect your passwords and don't use anything that's even remotely associated with you. (For that matter, don't use a real name or word. Make up something that isn't in the dictionary and insert a couple of numbers into it.) And if your password anywhere is DRAGON, for God's sake, change it. This means you, Sarah.

In a speech today, John McCain said he would fire Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Cox, he said, had kept in place a series of "trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino."

A more honest way of putting it would have been: "Cox kept in place all the idiot deregulation laws and policies recommended or written by my chief economic advisor, Phil Gramm."

From Dennis McKay…

I want to compliment you on your casting ability. I just spent some time Googling and Yahooing and trying to figure out where on the net the notion of Tina Fey as Sarah Palin originated. It seems to have been on your blog, real time watching her being introduced for the first time by John S. McCain.

Thanks but if I was first, that may just have been because I'm a pretty fast typist. It had to have occurred to everyone the first time they laid eyes on the Governor of Alaska. Too bad McLean Stevenson isn't around to play Joe Biden.

Do you remember the Nauga? You should remember the Nauga. Perhaps you even sat on him at one time or another. Here's a remembrance of the Nauga.

Here's another one of those "may be of interest to someone" items. As we all know, a moment of TV history was made on the 1976 Jerry Lewis Telethon when Dean Martin made a surprise appearance, courtesy of Frank Sinatra. You've all seen the video. It's pretty clear that Jerry was surprised…but who else (besides Frank and Dino) knew about this in advance?

On November 30, 2005, Jerry appeared on Larry King Live and said several times that everyone on his staff knew but him. Here's an excerpt from the conversation…

KING: You said everyone knew but you, right?

LEWIS: Everybody in my staff, the crew, the production people, everyone knew but me.

Pretty straightforward, right? But in October of 2000, Lewis was interviewed for the Archive of American Television. The interview is online (here's Part One) and they've posted portions of the transcript. Here's one thing Mr. Lewis had to say during the interrogation…

Frank worked it out. He worked it out so that everyone in that studio, every member of my staff — nobody knew Dean was coming on. The only one that knew it was Ed McMahon. So I could never have heard about it. It was such a total surprise.

Actually, I'm not all that interested in who knew. Years ago, I asked Artie Forrest, who usually produces and directs the telethon, about it. I can't recall if Artie directed that particular one or not but he said, approximately, "Everyone who had to know knew and probably a lot of other people." There had to be some planning because the telethon is on a tight schedule with cutaways and certain hours where it's only seen in portions of the country. Sinatra, assuming he was the main driving force in all of this, would have to make certain that Dean was properly smuggled into the building and that he came out at the moment of maximum tune-in and impact. Most likely, everyone on the staff heard well in advance that a surprise guest was coming out at the specified time and many knew who it was. Jerry may even have known Frank was planning something.

What intrigues me is why Jerry has two different versions. What difference would it make if the crew did or didn't know about it? It doesn't make Jerry look any better or worse either way. No one is saying, "Boy, Jerry, it was dumb of you not to know Dean would be walking out there. Even the stagehands knew." No one is saying that. I guess it makes Sinatra look a bit cleverer if he'd managed to even keep it from the crew but so what? This kind of thing is why it's so hard sometimes to nail down history. People change their stories even after they've told them in front of millions of people.

The blog is hiccupping lately. I post something once and it shows up multiple times. It occasionally takes a while for me to be able to delete the extras. Do not panic. No need to write me. We will all get through this.

All right…now she's gone too far. Sarah Palin has assassinated Bullwinkle.

Assuming no miracle occurs in the next few days, it looks like Washington Mutual's going to need one of those massive, expensive-to-us bailouts. Hey, but at least the fundamentals of our economy are strong.

This goes far beyond Democratic or Republican irresponsibility. The G.O.P. has been the aggressor in pushing this idea that we should let companies pursue every possible profit angle. If they succeed, great…they keep all the money. If they fail, even if the execs make out like bandits, we pick up the tab. That's not the Free Market enterprise some make it out to be, and most Democrats have been complicit at every opportunity. Airline deregulation, which has been a long-term disaster in every possible way, was a Jimmy Carter crusade.

I think we should be a lot madder about this than we'll probably be. When it comes right down to it, most people will probably care more about lipstick on pigs.

Oh, my goodness! I haven't checked lately to see if Abe Vigoda is still alive!