Some articles on taxation to call to your attention. One is this page from FactCheck.org which shreds the myth that Estate Taxes (what some call "The Death Tax") can wipe out your inheritance and force your heirs to pay tax on wealth that has already been taxed. This is one of those Big Lies that […]
If you're a big fan of Spider-Man, you might want to bid on (or at least browse) this eBay auction. It bills itself as "The World's Largest Spider-Man Collection" and it sure gives you an idea of how many Spider-Man items there have been for which co-creator Steve Ditko never saw a nickel. Thanks to […]
Pat O'Neill writes to say there was a brief shot of Jerry Orbach in there as an intro to Jesse Martin's rendition of "Razzle Dazzle." Bet I wasn't the only one who missed it. My thought was that they were singing that song because Fred Ebb wrote the lyrics and only later did I connect […]
One more awkward moment at the Tonys was the segment devoted to the deceased. Pressed for time, they had to rush through a very incomplete list…which may be worse than doing nothing at all. Did they really leave out Jerry Orbach? That's a pretty big Broadway star to omit in favor of a couple of […]
The Supreme Court says that laws against medical marijuana can and should be enforced. I suppose this may be an example of non-activist judges at work. Those laws are idiotic and illogical but they are on the books, and perhaps it is not the job of any judicial authority to parse them in a manner […]
Several folks who didn't catch the Tonys wrote to ask me to quote Mike Nichols with his counsel to the losers. It was as follows: "Cheer up. Life isn't everything!" […]
Let the record show that in this post, I predicted the winners in 25 categories of Tony Awards, and that I only missed in five: Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play was Bill Irwin in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Best Revival of a Play was Glengarry Glen Ross, Best Performance by […]
There's something wrong with a Tony Awards broadcast where the high point is a surprise walk-on by Al Sharpton. I'm usually quick to defend these shows because folks don't appreciate how difficult they are to put on, how many things could go wrong and don't, and because a lot of the high and low points […]
For more than 35 years, the world of newspaper comic strips has been covered by Cartoonist PROfiles, a fine quarterly magazine produced by Jud Hurd, who is himself a practitioner of the art. (That's hm on the cover of the issue at right above.) Cartoonist PROfiles has delved into animation and comic books, but its […]
It's tempting to try and predict the outcome of the Michael Jackson trial. But then I remember that those jurors sat there for 14 weeks and heard something like 130 witnesses, whereas I've paid maybe an hour's worth of attention to the matter and only heard/read third-hand paraphrases of some teensy fraction of the testimony. […]
Here's another photo from the National Cartoonists Society gathering in Scottsdale last weekend. Sunday evening, they had a roast/tribute to Sergio Aragonés and almost everyone in the room was wearing false mustaches that looked much more realistic than the phony one he's been sporting all these years. Here, we see Mr. and Mrs. Mort Walker […]
Over at the Stars and Stripes website, they post old articles and photos from our nation's foremost military newspaper. Joel O'Brien calls my attention to this article and this photo from when animator Walter Lantz visited a school in Korea. […]
In case you're unaware, the Tony Awards tonight will be preceded by a one-hour special on the TV Guide Channel covering the arrivals. I just found this out so I figured I'd pass it on. […]
It's been many months since I formally solicited donations on this site…which may be why it's been many months since I've received many. In the last half-a-year, the number of visitors here has almost doubled while the "take" has dropped to a trickle. I'd like to see this site start paying for itself again, so […]
On Wednesday, I cautioned you all not to click on a link that would take you to an animation for a Crazy Frog. If you did, you might be interested in this article about the critter. Thanks to Alan Light for the links. […]