Category Archives: To Be Filed

It's fun and often educational to revisit something you liked as a kid and haven't seen for a few decades. Sometimes, the visit — andit can be to a favorite toy, food, TV show, movie or any number of things — causes me to wonder what was on my even-less-developed-than-now mind.It's not just that I don't like it now. I can't even fathom how I was able to stand it back then. Not long ago, I tried to watch some of the Superman cartoons produced by Filmation in 1966 and they joined a list of shows that I'd swear have been completely remade in order to lower their quality since I first saw them.

On the other mitt, I just watched a few installments of Supercar and enjoyed it…up to a point. Supercar was the first of the Gerry Anderson "Supermarionation" shows from Great Britain to make it to Los Angeles television…and, as I was later to learn, it was the show that put him and his company on the map. Later, they produced Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds and other shows in which marionettes had exciting adventures, usually piloting incredible machinery throughout the universe. It was about the time Stingray came on that I realized that the creation of every Gerry Anderson show probably began with someone asking the question, "Okay, we need another premise where our characters won't have to walk too much." Anderson's puppetry wizards had invented ways to make their players' mouths move enough that I could pretend the heroes were speaking, and the strings were visible but not so much that you couldn't ignore them. What they never quite mastered was how to make their cast members walk more than a step or two. Even when hidden from the waist down behind something, that's when they really reminded you they were puppets. (I also noticed early-on that they never walked through doors. They'd "walk" to the open door and stop and then the camera would cut away.)

This limitation led to the early Anderson shows all revolving around vehicles…like Supercar, in which the heroic Mike Mercury flew about for much of each adventure. Mr. Mercury was the test pilot of this incredible contraption that could fly and go underwater and once in a boring while, even zoom across dry land. He and his crew lived and worked out in the Nevada test flats…and just who they worked for was never made clear. Still, they kept testing their invention and the evil Masterspy kept trying to steal it, and though you'd see the same puppets and the same stock footage over and over, it was a lot of fun if taken in small-enough doses. Even when I was ten and they were on five nights a week on Channel Nine, I found it too repetitive to watch every day…but once or twice a week was fine. The other days, I'd watch a competing show, though often I'd catch the wonderful Supercar theme song and then flip over to the Popeye cartoons on Channel Five.

Before a friend sent me the new DVD set, I'm guessing it had been a good 41 years since I'd seen an episode of Supercar. I watched one and liked it a lot. Then I watched the second and it was okay, I guess, but too similar to the first to really enjoy. This is one of the hazards of these collections where you get complete seasons or the complete run of a show all at once. The programs weren't made to be viewed back-to-back and seeing them that way is like seeing the magician vanish the rabbit again. The second time, you see where it goes and you'd almost rather not. So I think I'll wait a few weeks before I watch a third Supercar from this set, and I'll probably limit my future viewings to one a month. There were 39 episodes and they're all in this 5-DVDpackage so it'll hold me for a couple years and then I can start on The Complete Fireball XL5. It might be even better if I could put 41 years between viewings but I don't think that's practical.

One of my favorite records when I was a kid — and I still have that well-played copy — was a Golden Record called Bugs Bunny Songfest. Or at least, it was half a favorite record. It said on the front, "Original Cartoon Voices," which at age eleven or so, I took to mean it featured Mel Blanc…and, sure enough, around half of it did. On one side, you got twelve tracks, each with a Warner Brothers character singing a bouncy birthday song to all children born in one month. The January song was by Sylvester, the February song was from Tweety, Daffy Duck got my birth month of March, etc., and they were all — or almost all — performed by Mel Blanc, himself.

The one exception may have been April, which was assigned to Ollie Owl, an obscure WB character seen mostly in the Looney Tunescomic book. I didn't care about Ollie Owl, so I rarely played that cut…but I seem to recall it was not Mel. The rest though, were. If you'd like to hear an example, over at the Classic Cartoon Records website, they've posted a Real Audio file of Mr. Blanc as Foghorn Leghorn, singing his birthday wishes to all the kiddos born in November.

What's interesting — which is not to say any of it is good — is what's on the other side of Bugs Bunny Songfest. There, you get a whole bunch of songs by Bugs Bunny and Daffy and Elmer Fudd and all the other WB superstars…but these were not "original cartoon voices."They were not by Mel Blanc, a fact that was painfully obvious to me when, as I small tot, I first played my purchase. In fact, it was very frustrating. I loved the side that was Mel, hated the side that wasn't, and thought it was darned unfair that you couldn't return half a record album for a partial refund.

The early records based on the Warner Brothers characters were produced by Capitol Records in Hollywood, and they not only hired Mel to play his characters (and Arthur Q. Bryan, the voice of Elmer Fudd, to play Elmer Fudd) but also engaged the studio's best writers to write the records, and studio artists to draw the album covers. In 1954, Capitol stopped producing new records and while they continued to repackage and reissue the old ones, the new ones were produced and released by Golden Records, a New York based partnership of Western Publishing Company and the Simon and Shuster publishing firm. Though they sometimes advertised "original cartoon voices" on their record jackets, the folks at Golden did not seem to think it worth the trouble or expense to engage the "real" voice of the WB characters. That may have been because Mel was 3,000 miles away but it was probably also because he charged a lot of money to do Bugs Bunny in any other venue than a Warner Brothers cartoon.

(Golden did at least two records where Bryan played Fudd and on one, Bugs was apparently played by Dave Barry, who was heard in a number of Warner Brothers cartoons doing supporting roles. I'm guessing these were recorded in New York. Bryan was bi-coastal, commuting often to Manhattan for TV and radio jobs, and Barry was a successful stand-up comedian, who often went East to play a night club or appear on Ed Sullivan's TV show. The one time I met Barry, he seemed quite certain that, after Bryan passed away, he played Elmer Fudd in at least one Bugs Bunny cartoon and one record. The Bugs cartoon appears to be Prehysterical Hare, which actually came out in 1958, a year before Bryan's death, but no one has ever identified the record…which, of course, may not have been released. You can read more about Mr. Barry in this obit I wrote for him in 2001.)

Over on the Classic Cartoon Records site, they note that the twelve birthday songs were the only things Blanc recorded for Golden, and they theorize they were done for a line called "Little Golden Record Chests," which were boxed sets of 78 or 45 RPM records, sometimes packaged in a decorative carrying case. The theory is that the folks at Golden hired Mel and recorded the tunes for a planned "chest," then changed their minds and stuck the material on the Bugs Bunny Songfest record. This may be so…but the birthday songs sound to me more like the kind of orchestrations and sound quality of the Capitol recordings. So I can't help but speculate that they were recorded for Capitol, Capitol decided not to release them…and somehow, Golden Records acquired the material.

In the meantime, others have been speculating on the identity of the luckless voice actor who had the impossible task of imitating Mel's characterizations for the Golden Records. On several animation message forums, the names of Daws Butler and Jerry Hausner have been suggested.  I'm 100% certain it wasn't Daws. Doesn't sound anything like him, plus Daws was in Los Angeles then…and just as busy and expensive as Mel Blanc. I'm 98% certain it wasn't Hausner, who did briefly fill in as Bugs for some commercials and spots for the Bugs Bunny TV show when Mel was recuperating from his 1961 auto accident…and I don't think it was Dave Barry, either. It may have been Gil Mack, who was the main guy hired by Golden Records to imitate Daws for their Hanna-Barbera records. Mack was heard on a number of puppet and cartoon shows produced in New York in the fifties and sixties, and a lot — like Astro Boy and Gigantor — that were dubbed into English there. Or maybe it was someone else, or several someone elses, who've never been identified. If anyone reading this has a clue, let us know.

If I've learned anything in this world — and I'm sure we all agree that's a pretty big "if" — it's not to waste a lot of time with service people who cannot help you. As I found with my recent dispute with a local supermarket, when you call Customer Service, you're dealing with people with very limited power. Often, they're transitory employees who have a little manual or a little training that covers most contingencies. They're told that if you say A, they're supposed to say B — and if your situation doesn't happen to be in that curriculum…well, too bad. They're not authorized to do much more than kick you over to a "supervisor" who, as often as not, can't go much farther than the same established Rules for Handling Jerks on the Phone.

To get anywhere, you often have to bypass these people. Here's our latest object lesson which came about because the drinking water in my area is undrinkable. I don't know why, in a time when we can all remember drinkable water emanating from our taps, there is not more outrage about this. Amazingly, there are still people in this world who, over a glass of store-bought Dasini, will complain about bleeding-heart environmentalists…but that is not the immediate concern here. The immediate concern is me getting water to drink into my home.

For a few years there, I did it via Sparklett's. A man would come every two weeks and leave me two five-gallon bottles of water for the cooler which his company was renting me. Sometimes, often because I'd been away, I'd find myself with four or five bottles taking up space so I'd call up and use the little service via which you tell them to "skip a delivery." When I did this, they often did not skip a delivery. Most of the time, I'd come home and find two more bottles on my step. I called up. I left notes. It rarely mattered what I did. My delivery guys (they kept changing) seemed programmed to replace X empty bottles with X full ones, as long as they were leaving a minimum of two. When I complained, I got a lot of apologies but they told me that they weren't allowed to take back water after it had already been delivered. So, too bad, but you're stuck with the bottles, Mark…and by the way, here's the bill for all that water you won't get around to using for months.

Finally one day, I put out my empties with a big note taped to them on which I'd lettered big, angry letters that spelled out, "DO NOT LEAVE ANY WATER THIS TIME!" I heard the delivery man stop by and pick up those bottles. A little later when I went outside, I found he'd left two full ones…and the note was lying on the ground under one of them. I went in, called Sparklett's and told them to get the guy back to pick up his water and the overpriced cooler and to cancel service. A lady said, "We can't get the delivery man back there today, but we'll cancel your service and have him pick up the cooler on his next run through your area in two weeks."

I informed her that I was putting the cooler out on the curb. Within ten minutes, the delivery guy was at my door to apologize and pickup the cooler…and he also took back all my unopened water, which I'd been told they weren't allowed to do.

That was a few years ago. Since then, I've bought these crummy plastic gallon jugs of water at the market. They're a pain to carry and they often leak. Often, since they're bottled in high-density polyethylene, the water picks up a stale plastic taste. The smaller bottles are usually made of polyethylene terephthalate (a term I just cut-and-pasted from the Consumer Reports website) and they keep the water fresher but they're more expensive and harder to handle. I also tried Brita pitchers with the built-in filters but the H2O here is so bad, even Brita pitchers don't make it palatable. I finally decided to buy my own cooler (from Costco, the coffin merchants) and give home delivery another try.

I found out that my choices were limited. There are dozens of different water companies listed in the Yellow Pages but they all turnout to be Sparklett's hiding under various names and offering the same Sparklett's product from the same Sparklett's truck. The few that aren't Sparklett's are Arrowhead, and I've never liked the taste of Arrowhead as much as Sparklett's. So I decided to see if I could just order a few bottles of Sparklett's water on a pay-as-you-go basis. If I liked it and the service, then I could sign up for regular delivery.

Or so I thought.

The person I spoke to on the phone tried to sign me up for regular service. When I refused and asked if I could just order some water (and their website sure makes it look like you can), he acted like he'd never heard of such a thing…then said yes, sure, absolutely — they could do that. I placed a "one-time order" for two 5-gallon bottles plus a case of half-liter bottles. Total price, charged to my credit card: $24.97. The water was delivered the next day.

That was on October 6. Yesterday, I received a bill from Sparklett's for $2.71. This covers a "Basic Service Charge" of $1.75 and a Redemption Value of 96 cents for the two bottles. I immediately phoned Sparklett's and after being on hold for an indecent period of time, asked why wasn't I advised of these charges at the time I placed my order. In fact, I asked this of a couple different folks who routed my call around until a lady (allegedly a "supervisor") informed me they were standard charges and that the Redemption Value charge (which is a deposit) is a state law. I said, "Fine. Now, why wasn't I advised of these charges at the time I placed my order?" She apologized but had no answer other than to explain that's the way things work at Sparklett's. Apparently, it's my fault for not understanding how they do business. I suggested to her that if they'd told me then, I would have had the option to not place the order. (Kind of hard to cancel it now that I've started drinking that water.) And if I agreed to the order, we could have charged the $2.71 to my credit card along with the rest of the cost, thereby saving them the time and trouble of sending me a bill and saving me the time and trouble of writing out a check, putting a stamp on it, etc. She said she'd look into that, which of course means that she won't look into that and is just trying to pacify an irate customer.

I also found out that I was scheduled to receive two more bottles on 10/20/04 and two more on 11/03/04 and so on. I explained to her that I'd placed a one-time order and she said, "Oh, no. We don't do one-time orders. You signed up for regular delivery." Again, it's my fault for not understanding how their company works.

By now, I've learned to move up the chain of command. This morning, I called the Sparklett's executive offices…and it took a lot less time to get a senior exec on the phone than it had to call their 800 number and talk to the other end of the pecking order. A very nice man took at least twenty minutes to explain, apologize…and explain about their business to me. (He spent about five of those minutes explaining to me why they switched from glass bottles to ones made of polycarbonate.) He put the blame on the sales rep who led me to believe they deliver water on anything but an ongoing basis, he made sure my next delivery was cancelled, and he even told me something that made me think it might be possible for me to resume regular Sparklett's service. The last time I subscribed, they had a minimum order of two bottles per every-other-week delivery, and I sometimes couldn't use it all up before the next delivery date, so I had to deal with bottles piling up. Now, I've learned, the minimum is one bottle per drop-off. I can easily handle that, and it would be much easier to order additional water when I need it than to ward off routine deliveries when I have too much. No one on the Customer Service line even thought to suggest I sign up on that basis. So the exec may have snagged a customer, whereas the underling gave me no reason to buy their product.

It also matters to me that I spoke to someone who could perhaps change the way they do business. The folks on the Customer Service phone really only care about pacifying irate callers — that's all they're assigned to do — not about effecting structural improvements to the company. As with my supermarket problem, I felt I'd reached someone who genuinely cared, not just about keeping my business, but about figuring out why their system had alienated a customer. No, I don't think anything will change just as a result of my call…but my complaint was treated with respect and there's at least the chance that an accumulation of such calls will matter.

So that's pretty much the story. I wish more companies would learn that Customer Service is not something that can always be done by the book…or outsourced, which is another problem I've encountered. Since they do it the way we do it, we have to all learn to go…well, not necessarily to the top. But to at least a few levels above the bottom. Everyone I spoke to was very nice but in order to get something done, you have to go to someone who's empowered to get something done.

[P.S., added years later: Eventually, Sparklett's just started bringing me as many bottles of water as they felt like leaving on my porch.  I cancelled them out forever, bought a crockpot and now I fill it with gallon bottles of Crystal Geyser spring water I buy at Ralphs or Smart & Final.  Much simpler…and better water.]

As you may recall, I had an unhappy experience the other day getting a home delivery from Albertsons' Market via their website. The shipment was incomplete, no one told me it was incomplete, and calls to the company's customer service line involved spending intolerable hunks of my life on hold. I am pleased to say the situation has gotten better…but before it got better, it got a lot worse.

Last night, I discovered that several of the items I had received were spoiled. So after going out to the market (not, for obvious reasons, an Albertsons') to buy the rest of my order, I later had to go out again to the market to replace the items that seemed dangerous to eat. This, of course, defeats the whole point of getting a home delivery. Calling their toll-free number to complain something was absent or rotten only caused me to wait a long time to speak to a low-level employee with no power to do anything more than say, "I'm sorry…we'll credit you back for those items."

Often in such incidents, I opt to cut my losses. Why spend hours on the phone just to get a lot more apologies from strangers and a few bucks refunded? This time, for reasons I cannot quite explain, this matter seemed to demand a follow-up. Last night, I called the local Albertsons' store (from which my order had been dispatched) and spoke to the Night Manager, and I also spent some time chatting with folks on the 24-hour customer service line. This morning, I called the company's corporate headquarters in Boise, Idaho.

Almost everyone I spoke to was very nice, very apologetic and eager to do everything within their power. Unfortunately, it took me along time to reach anyone with any power. It also took me a long time to reach the people with or without any power. My first call to Boise, I was on hold for five minutes before I got to talk to an actual human being.

That call finally resulted in me reaching someone in the "corporate customer service" department who promised me that his superior would call me back within two hours. I still haven't heard from that person. Later though, I called Boise again, where it took seven minutes to reach someone (this is their corporate headquarters, remember) and I kept being routed around the organization, spending plenty of time on hold between brief conversations with people who could do naught but apologize and put me back on hold.

Finally, I was connected with a lady with some authority to make things happen. First thing I told her was, "Well, my main complaint used to be about missing items and spoiled food, but now it's about spending twenty-two minutes on hold. (This would have been even more annoying if not for my trusty phone headset. I put the time to good use by sitting here and catching up on e-mail while the "hold" music played. Appropriately,the last tune I heard was a stirring rendition of "You Keep Me Hangin' On.") The lady assured me that within five minutes, I would hear from the Vice-President of E-Commerce for all of Southern California…and sure enough, within three minutes, I did.

Have to hand it to the guy: He did about as good a job of appeasing an irate customer as anyone could have done. I explained that a home delivery from Albertsons' should not then necessitate two trips to the local Ralph's Market to make up for their mistakes. I told him that I'm sure he and every Albertsons' exec would be shocked if they realized how tough it was just to get someone from their company on the line.

I told him I'd ordered $105 worth of groceries and wound up with about $78 worth of edible food. I even asked him my outraged question: "How is it possible for a huge supermarket to be out of Campbell's Tomato Juice?" In response, he said all the right things, took notes and gave me a full refund plus a nice credit towards my next order, should I be inclined to try them again. He also gave me his direct phone number in case I have any problems with that or any other order.

I was impressed. I think the company is woefully understaffed in the phone-answering department but, unlike some times in the past when I've tried to complain to a big corporation, I think I actually talked to someone with the capacity to rectify problems. That does not always happen and it makes a big difference.

How big? Well, I'm thinking of giving Albertsons' Home Grocery Delivery another chance. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Okay, Mark needs to vent…

A couple years ago, I had a happy relationship with a local company that enabled you to order groceries online and have them delivered to your home the next day. The firm was super-efficient and they always showed up with exactly what I ordered. The one time they didn't have an item in stock, someone phoned me in advance and gave me the option of substituting, canceling the entire order or accepting it without the item in question. It worked well, at least for me.

I'm guessing it worked well for many of their customers but they were premature in starting it up (not enough potential customers on the Internet or used to ordering things that way) and also, I read that they had internal problems with financing. Anyway, the company — which kept changing names but was usually called WebVan, I think — went under. (I just did some research. It was HomeGrocer when I started ordering from them, then WebVan acquired HomeGrocer, then it went bankrupt.)

I liked that service so when I noticed that the Albertson's Grocery Chain offered something similar, I decided to give it a try…especially since they stock Progresso Tomato Rotini soup, which has somehow disappeared from most local markets. I placed a $105.00 order last night with a planned delivery window of 1:00-2:30 this afternoon.

Sure enough, at 12:45, a nice man was at my door, apologizing for being early, and he brought in my purchases. I was distracted at the time (had a plumber here) so I just stashed the frozen stuff in the fridge and a little later, went to put things away. That was when I noticed that certain items were in absentia, meaning I hadn't gotten my Chicken Parmesan Lean Pockets and several other goodies.

Okay, mistakes can happen. I phoned the Albertson's Customer Service line where they kept me for quite a long spell on hold, listening to what seemed like the extended, 40-minute mix of Billy Joel singing, "I Love You Just the Way You Are." Finally, a nice lady came on, looked me upon her computer and informed me that they were out of a number of items so I hadn't been charged for them. It was like, "So that's the answer. Anything else we can do for you?"

I asked, "Why didn't anyone tell me what I wasn't getting? Your delivery man didn't tell me which items I was missing. You sent me an e-mail confirming my order but not one saying, 'Oh, by the way, you're not getting your 64 fluid ounce container of Campbell's Tomato Juice.'" She repeated that I hadn't been charged for it or for five other items.

"Fine," I said. "But now I have to go to the market. And if I have to go to the market today, there was no point in me ordering online so I wouldn't have to go to the market today." She replied that on the sign-up portion of their website — which is no longer accessible once you've signed up — it states that they are not responsible for items that they are unable to deliver. (The site, by the way, tells you that specific items are "temporarily out of stock" and doesn't allow you to order them. This was not the case with anything I put in my little online shopping cart.) The e-mail I received confirming my order listed all the items and didn't say that some of them might not be available. And while I'm at it, how does a major grocery chain run out of Campbell's Tomato Juice?

I've learned not to argue for too long with people who have no power to change policy, so I had her kick me up to a higher-ranked Albertson's employee…a move which earned me a few more choruses from Billy Joel. I explained the whole thing again to this lady, adding that the market I would now go to, because Albertson's didn't fill my order, would not be an Albertson's. She apologized over and over and suggested that what I have to do is to write in the little space on the online form, "Call if any items cannot be delivered."

This unfortunately adds a new level to planning my day. With HomeGrocer/WebVan, I was pretty confident of getting what I ordered so I just had to order and then arrange to be home during the delivery window. With Albertson's, I have to order, then be up to take a call in the morning…and then, if enough items are outta-stock, I'll wind up canceling the order, which means that all my scheduling goes out the window. Or if I do take delivery, then I have to figure out what I didn't get (because they don't give me a list) and then drive somewhere and purchase it. This is screwy.

She did offer to charge back the delivery fee I paid and to inform highers-up of this shortcoming in their service. What she didn't offer was any reason to try Albertson's Online Home Grocery Delivery Service ever again. So if they fix things, I'll never know. Oh, well. At least I got my Tomato Rotini soup…eight cans of it. That almost makes up for the Billy Joel.

Recently on the weblog here, I mentioned my Uncle Henry, who was a Colonel (I think) in the Army. I also had an Uncle Aaron, and I was thinking about Uncle Aaron last night. No matter where you went with Uncle Aaron, he'd point to some huge building or shopping mall or real estate development and say, "When I came to California, I could have bought that whole property for two dollars an acre!" Even as a kid, I had the good sense not to reply, "Boy, you were dumb" or even, "Why didn't you? Then you could have left me a ton of money when you die."

But I think we all have such regrets. Anyone who's been a comic fan for any length of time recalls buying some #1 issue years ago and wondering why they didn't have the brains to buy fifty copies because that book is now worth a thousand times its cover price. We all remember things we could have purchased at a tiny fraction of their current worth. I have countless such memories.

The other day on the web, I saw someone selling the four plastic Revell models of The Beatles that came out in 1964. Unassembled and in good condition, the set goes for around $3500. Once upon a time and long ago, I had a huge supply of them for free and destroyed what would now be more than $10,000 worth of them.

Around 1965, my father had a friend who worked for Revell. One day, the friend told him, "Hey, you got a son, right? Well, I have a garage full of Revell models. Bring him by. He can help himself to as many as he wants." I was not particularly big on models. I had recently bought, assembled and badly painted the Aurora Superman figure and my father thought I was interested in hobby kits, whereas I was just interested in Superman. In any case, Dad didn't believe in ever turning down anything that was free so I soon found myself in his friend's garage staring at crates of new, unopened Revell models…from 20 to 50 (I'm guessing) of everything the company had put out in the preceding decade. "Help yourself," the friend said. "Take as many as you want. I'm going to throw them out one of these days. I need the space for my new band saw."

I had zero interest in all the battleships, airplanes and car models and only slightly more in the Beatles. But I selected two or three of each of the Fab Four, took them home and assembled them as a joke. I stuck parts of Paul on the Ringo model and glued George's feet on John's head. Near our house, there was a thrift shop that raised cash for a childrens' hospital, and I sometimes found old books and other treasures there.  One day, I spotted an unassembled Aurora Wolfman model there for a quarter, bought it and incorporated some of its pieces in my Beatles (de)constructions. And of course, I painted my genetically-altered Liverpool Quartet in garish alien colors. I'd had to purchase a whole kit of paints to make my Superman model and I had all the ugly non-Superman hues left over. Eventually, I got tired of my aberrant creations so some friends of mine and I had the pleasure of dropping an old bowling ball on them and watching the mutant Beatles shatter.

But the other model kits in that garage did not go to waste. That thrift shop gave me an idea and one day when I was in there, I asked the proprietor, "If someone had a garage full of new, unwanted toys, would you send a truck to pick them up?" He said, "In a second," so I called my father's Revell pal and told him. He was delighted at the prospect of getting rid of the models without having to haul them somewhere himself…and within a week, the thrift shop was well-stocked with them. For a year or two, you could have bought the Beatles and a wide array of cars and planes for a buck apiece there. Later, they added a "five for $4" option so if you purchased John, George, Paul and Ringo, you could take a U.S.S. Missouri battleship or an old Duesenberg for nothing. I always thought it would be interesting to take five models like that, mix all the pieces together, throw away the instructions and see what you could build.

Or maybe not. I recall having a lot of fun building and unbuilding my versions of the Beatles. Every time I see what those kits now sell for, a little more of that fun slips away from me.

I was just browsing over at one of my favorite sites, The Smoking Gun. The folks there manage to dig up a wide array of suppressed or otherwise unavailable documents which they gleefully make available to all. One of the many categories, and perhaps the most amazing, presents a stash of old FBI dossiers. Your government actually spent (and probably still spends) your tax dollars to compile "files" on prominent people…and judging from the ones that are available, these files contain a mix of readily-available info — the kind of thing you can find in the person's professional bio — mixed with gossip, much of it blind-sourced and often inaccurate.

In 1972, a report on Dean Martin was requested by Alexander P. Butterfield, the Deputy Assistant to the President. We will forever be grateful to Mr. Butterfield for it was he who revealed the existence of the taping system installed by his boss, Richard M. Nixon. Butterfield was probably following orders, maybe even Nixon's, when he ordered this paperwork…and you can read what he received here. As you'll see, it consists of some common knowledge plus some unsourced gossip,including some scanty evidence that Mr. Martin was gay. While I obviously can't swear this is not true, I did know Craig — one of several children Dino fathered — and Craig used to tell pretty authentic-sounding stories of his old man bedding a steady stream of famous ladies. None of that info is in the report but I was especially amused at this paragraph…

So here's the question: Should we be more outraged that our government assembled this kind of info on citizens? Or that they relied on such vague and probably inaccurate sources? And how about that sloppy redacting job, blacking out what appears after Dean Martin's name in the above? The censored section is followed by "were," which tips us that there's another name under there. That means that the word after Dean Martin's name is "and" then we presumably have a first name, a space, then a last name. Since this document was typed in a non-proportional spaced font, it's easy to look at the line above and figure out that the name that was blacked-out has ten letters.

Okay, it's 1955 and some source mentions a name with ten letters in the same breath as Dean Martin. Gee, I wonder who that could be.

A ten-letter name — probably the same one — is blacked-out on the first page where it says Dean and someone else made a pornographic record in May of 1956. Hmm…who was Dean Martin working with in May of 1956 who had ten letters in his name? That's too early for Joey Bishop. Can you think of anyone who might have been in a recording studio with Dean in May of 1956? (Hint: Dean and his partner played their last professional engagement at the Copacabana in New York on July 24, 1956.)

And back on the second page of the report, it looks like a ten-letter name has also been redacted in the sentence about names being found in a book of alleged clients for a homosexual prostitution ring. I'm guessing it's the same ten-letter name each time and that they did make the dirty record but that the gay stuff is an outright lie which someone in your Federal Bureau of Investigation took seriously. The guy who compiled this was inept and so was whoever was assigned to cross-out the name of Martin's cohort to conceal his identity. One hopes they do a better job of protecting the identity of mob informants.

It is worth noting that this report is dated August of 1972. The infamous FBI boss, J. Edgar Hoover — who gathered smut on people— died in May of that year. Still, the information in the document is from the FBI files so it was almost certainly collected on Hoover's watch…even though, as it notes, there was no formal investigation of Martin. I really, really hope that the many intelligence failures we've experienced lately in this country weren't because the bureau was busy gathering this kind of poop on Harry Connick, Jr.

Over on Cartoon Brew, the fine website he operates with Jerry Beck, Amid Amidi has posted this message in which he says…

It's easy to make fun of TV animation execs, but it's even easier to make fun of the twits who work at the networks' Broadcast Standards & Practices divisions. These low-lifes have done more to ruin TV animation and suck fun and entertainment out of cartoons as anybody else has since the Seventies. Speak to anybody who has worked in TV animation and they're likely to have countless stories about the inane changes and arbitrary cuts that S&P people like to make.

He's right, and I certainly have as many of those stories as anyone. However, whenever anyone dumps on Broadcast Standards, I feel I should toss in my own observation that one of the main reasons they get away with mauling our stuff that way is that producers let them. When I've worked on live-action TV shows and the Standards folks handed me a list of fourteen changes, I could always talk them out of at least half and it didn't even take a lot of effort or debating skills. On the remaining alterations they demanded, it was usually possible to work out minor alterations that retained what I wanted to retain but satisfied their complaints. And, truth be told, I often decided that a change was immaterial or even that they were right. I didn't like the process at all but it was certainly possible to minimize the damage.

Alas, some of the animation producers for whom I worked over the years didn't like to fight, perhaps didn't want to fight. When I was story-editing Richie Rich, Bill Hanna was always rushing to move episodes from the script/storyboard stage into the layout/animation phase. The worry was usually not that a show might not get finished by its air date but rather, that there might be artists on staff with nothing to do. If production was behind on Super-Friends (let's say), Hanna would give that show's crew Richie Rich layouts to do, lest they sit around on the payroll for an hour with nothing to draw. There were times when on Monday, the ABC Standards lady — who took pride in being the toughest in the business — would give me notes on a Richie storyboard. It would take until Tuesday for me to connect with her and get her to back down on most of her points…but by then, Mr. Hanna had made all the changes and shipped the episode off to Korea for animation. I liked Bill Hanna in many ways but when he gave interviews and complained how the networks were ruining their shows with stupid changes, I thought he was omitting a very significant, self-inflicted part of the problem.

I worked for another animation producer who, I came to realize, didn't fight Broadcast Standards because he liked the wholesale laundering of his product. Why? Because he was counting on making serious cash in the decades to come when the shows we were doing were rerun in syndication. Okay, nothing wrong with that…except that he believed there was more danger of a show not selling in the future because it was too "violent" than of it not being "violent" enough. (I put "violent" in quotes there because what passed for "violence" there was one character throwing a pie at another, or bank guards having guns even if they never drew them.) Anyway, a lot of "violent" scenes and hard-edged gags got into the scripts and storyboards because they were being produced initially for one of the networks and that's what that network's Programming Department wanted.

But then when their Standards and Practices said something had to go, this producer was eager to comply. He got his shows laundered down to a level that he thought would be more saleable and then, when the Programming Department complained (or the writers and artists who worked on the show bitched), he could say, "Don't blame me. Blame those idiot censors who ruin our shows." It is probably worth noting that the shows in question have not done that well in off-network syndication.

Just so we're clear: I am not saying Broadcast Standards changes did not and does not harm shows. They've done and continued to do some absurd, illogical things to all forms of television programming. But it's not always just a case of innocent artistic types having their work trampled by cave people in the censor business. It is often a case of the folks who have money on the line being stingy or timid.

And in fairness, I should mention that in the eight years I wrote Garfield and Friends, we never had a single Broadcast Standards note that I felt was unreasonable or harmful. Early on, the gent assigned to us by CBS gave me a list of about ten no-nos: Mentioning brand names, choking someone by the throat, having someone stick their finger in an electrical outlet,etc. They were pretty minor caveats…things I probably wouldn't have done anyway. As long as I avoided them, we got along fine…so it isn't always an obstacle.

Kevin Boury writes a response to my message about the colorizing of Moe, Larry and Curly…

Mark, Mark, Mark…I can only imagine your furor if someone went back and changed the entire color scheme of, say, New Gods#1 to make it more appealing to today's youth. While they are at it, how about some new backgrounds for Groo #20 so that there won't be as many people in the crowd shots to distract today's readers with their shorter attention spans?

I've got it… Let's rewrite It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World to make the jokes more relevant to today's younger markets. And then we'll add some digital performers, like Brittney, to some shots so the kids will pay to see their hottest stars in a cameo role. Ooh, laser beams. What that movie needs is laser beams. Howzabout instead of a group of palm trees, the lasers make a big "W" in the sky and then a lot of cool effects and some smoke and change the soundtrack to Jessica Simpson. Or better yet…It's a Mad, Mad, Mad. Mad World with the Kids from American Idol. I am sure you would have no problem with that.

Or when they start to colorize The Dick Van Dyke Show so that today's children will be enticed to watch it. Too bad they can't just watch it for the writing and the acting. That's why I did.

Taking the last of these "suggestions" first: I'm not sure anyone has suggested that colorizing The Dick Van Dyke Show will attract consumers who were avoiding it just because it was black-and-white. Once upon a time in the Great Colorization Debate, that kind of notion was batted around but I don't think anyone is currently colorizing old films with that as a motive. Rather, the idea now seems to be that colorization can create a kind of variant edition. Remarketing what you've already marketed is a big thing in many industries these days but nowhere more than in home video. You know…they put out your favorite movie on DVD and you buy it. Then a few years later, they put out the new, improved version with the better transfer, audio commentary, documentary on "the making of…" and deleted footage. That gives them the chance to get you to buy it again, plus they can proclaim a "new" $29.99 event which might snag consumers who haven't bought the old version which is now marked down to$9.99, anyway. Colorizing, by and large, is a way of offering a new incarnation of something you already own.

I now have all the episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show on DVD in their pristine, black-and-white state. I don't think they'd make much more money by releasing colorized versions but if they did, I don't see how this harms me. I ain't gonna buy 'em. The only way I can see myself objecting is if (a) the colorized versions replace the originals and make them hard to acquire or (b) if Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke raise a stink. I doubt either of these will happen. If it's done, it will probably be done with their consent…and if they aren't outraged, why should I be?

When someone discusses altering a piece of creative work, I think you have to go on a case-by-case basis and ask what aspects of the work should be sacred. Then you have to consider whether it's being done well or not. Your Mad World example sounds lousy to me, just as you intended. Recoloring New Gods #1 sounds like a wonderful idea. Jack Kirby hated the way it was colored in the first place. Obviously, if someone recolored the book and made it worse, that would be bad but I don't think that's an argument for not recoloring it at all. To me, insisting it should be just the way it was in 1970 is like saying that if you reprint a novel, you shouldn't fix the typos. Moreover, if you reprinted New Gods today, you'd almost certainly be printing on whiter paper with brighter inks and a wider palette, and the old color scheme might look even worse than it did originally. So it's not going to be faithful to the original either way, which is often the case when you transfer work from one medium to another.

As for your suggestion of altering Groo, that's an easy call. Sergio Aragonés drew that material and he owns it. So whether or not to make the change is his decision, and I don't see that anyone else's opinion even enters into it.

For the most part, I like to see things as originally intended and I doubt I'll buy the colorized version of anything unless some colorizer creates something very special. In the meantime, since colorized versions don't seem to be knocking the originals out of existence, I don't see the process as the threat that some once thought it was. If it's done and it's done badly, it's just a bad repackaging that I don't have to buy or even look at. It's like when they did that color, shot-for-shot remake of Psycho that most of us ignored. It didn't diminish the original one bit and probably, somewhere, there was someone who really enjoyed it. If someone gets a bang out of seeing the Stooges in color, I say let 'em enjoy themselves. My big gripe is still that it raises the price.

Perhaps I will get tossed out of some gathering of film buffs for saying this but I find myself unable to drum up any real objection to the "colorization" of old movies — especially things like Three Stooges comedies. Yes, there is a certain implied insult of us, the buying public; like we're all so shallow and teenage that we'll pass up a great film because it's in black-and-white, whereas we'll patronize it in color. Since most TV and movie marketing panders to that kind of consumer, I don't see the point of getting incensed over it as it relates to colorization.

I would love it if every movie ever made was available in the full, complete form that its makers intended. That's never going to happen. In the real world, a lot of changes are made to movies, including trims for TV time limits and broadcast standards, recropping for TV format, insertion of commercials, restoration of deleted scenes, exhibition of alternate endings, remixing of music, reformatting for airline showings, plus all sorts of adjustments of color and image during film-to-video transfers. Some of those are done not by mercenary exploiters of the material but by well-intentioned film historians…and they're not always for the worst. Of the changes that I think are not for the better, colorization strikes me as one of the lesser offenses, especially since I seem to always have the option of viewing the non-colorized version.

That's a key point. Back in the eighties when colorization first reared its controversial head, a lot of the upset seemed to flow from the premise that the colorized Casablanca would supplant the genuine, black-and-white article and we would never again be able to see Bogie in the original monochrome. That has not happened. Maybe it's because colorization has never become as popular as some hoped/feared but at no point has anything more important than the first season of Gilligan's Island ever become available in only its colorized edition — and even there, the black-and-white quickly became available again. So that argument has pretty much gone away, and it is less true than it once was to say all colorization is hideous. A lot of it wasn't very good when it started but it's improving. I have yet to see a case where it makes a movie better but I don't think that's outside the realm of human possibility. At its very worst, it's just something you can ignore, like you don't have to listen to the commentary track or watch the deleted scenes they include on the DVD.

So I guess I should be happy about the newly-released Stooges DVDs (like this one and this one) which offer both b/w and colorized versions of the same films. After all, they give you a choice, right? Well, not really. You can watch either but you have to pay for both. Sony-Columbia Home Video previously released DVDs which each contained five Stooges shorts for $20, marked down to $17.36 on Amazon. They also had this collection of 18 shorts for $45.86 (Amazon price). Each of the two new collections contain four shorts in color and the same four in b/w for $22.46 each…or you can buy both discs for $31.47. Unless you think having two copies of the same short is just as good as getting two different ones, that's a substantial price increase.

The shorts on these two new sets are pretty well chosen but most of them have already been on recent, still-available DVD sets. So if you're a Stooge Completist, assuming there is such an animal, you're going to buy a lot of material you already have in order to get a few items that aren't already on your shelf. I don't know about you but I'm really sick of seeing things I already own repackaged in an attempt to get me to buy them again. (Which reminds me: Aren't they about due to force another edition of Goldfinger on me? I haven't bought a new, improved version for months.)

Lastly, I will say this for the new Stooge sets: The colorization is pretty danged impressive. It still has that "lobby card" look but it's quite pleasant. I have no idea if it's "historically accurate," as they claim, and don't think it matters…but it was no hardship to see Moe in full color as he jabbed his fingers in his brother's eyes. It was also no better than seeing it in black-and-white. Ultimately, I don't think colorization is, as some put it, "a desecration" of a great art form. I think the main thing wrong with it is that it raises the price.

I am back from seeing about eight thousand previews of coming attractions which were followed by the new Michael Moore film.  What follows is my instant reaction and I reserve the right to expand on or amend the following in the days to come.  There was a lot there to think about…and I guess that alone speaks well of the movie.  For the most part, I enjoyed it more than I expected, and I'm glad I went…and actually wish I'd gone earlier.  I have not attended a lot of the big hit movies of the last few years because by the time I could get around to going, I felt like I'd already seen all the best moments in commercials and talk show clips.  There was a lot in Fahrenheit 9/11 that was new and unexpected to me but I think I'd have had a better time if I wasn't already sick of the clip of Bush hitting the golf ball and the clip of Moore driving around Washington blasting the Patriot Act through loudspeakers and the clip of the old man dancing at the amusement park.  (Oh, wait. That last one's not from this movie. It's the new Six Flags advertising campaign…)

A polemic such as this movie forces me to confront a question for which I have no easy answer.  To what extent should we tolerate fighting dirty against opponents who are not only fighting dirty but winning?  Moore lands some low blows and does a lot of emotional manipulation in Fahrenheit 9/11 but nothing that hasn't become the norm in talk radio and political campaigns.  We live in an era where, for example, it is inconceivable that a candidate could have skeletons in his closet and his opponents would say, "Let's rise above that kind of thing and not use it."  If you were running against me for public office and you unearthed a piece of dirt about me — or even something of questionable accuracy that might stick anyway — it would be hurled.

You might keep your hands clean and not hurl it yourself but someone on your side would make sure it got out there.  If I had something on you — and again, it wouldn't have to be totally true, just hard to disprove — would I use it against you? I'd like to think I wouldn't but I'd also like to think I could win without it…and I can't be sure of either.

I suspect a lot of the folks who are mad at Michael Moore don't know it (or won't admit it) but they're actually mad at Bush and his cohorts for leaving so many mudballs around for their opponents to hurl.  They range from all the times Bush has stumbled over proper names and gotten that "deer/headlights" look in mid-sentence to all the times this administration has backtracked on its own words.  If you generally like the direction in which Bush is taking this country, it must make the heart sink to see a clip of Bush saying "This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda," followed by an old clip of him pretty much saying that.  Maybe there's a simple explanation…but there was also a simple explanation for Al Gore's seeming claim that he'd "invented the Internet," and his foes never let that stop them from selling it as an example of his dishonesty.  Does anyone seriously think those who want to defeat Kerry will not use every unflattering clip of the man they can get their mitts on?  For good or ill, this is how the game is now played, and we might as well get used to it.

Throughout Fahrenheit 9/11, I was conscious that Moore was tossing out a lot of circumstantial indictments and charges that were not fully formed.  For example, he makes a huge deal of financial ties between the Bush family and various Saudis but never quite boils it down to a specific accusation that because of them, either President Bush did something that was not in America's best interests.  On the other hand, Bush's folks made a huge deal of the fact that they found a long-ago photo of John Kerry seated two rows from Jane Fonda at some concert or speech.  Both sides do it, and since it works, they will continue to do it…so I can have one of two possible reactions: I can wince at the tactic of guilt-by-association and condemn Moore for using it.  Or as a person who thinks George W. Bush has been very bad for this country, I can applaud Moore for landing a blow for "our side." Which reaction do I have?  I don't know.  I don't like either of them, any more than I like the names I'm going to have to pick from when I mark my ballot.

Some are saying this film could sway the election, and I think they're wrong.  It won't cause a lot of Bush voters to go Kerry, if only because they won't see it.  Voters on the fence could conceivably be swayed, though I suspect those folks will have plenty of other factors competing for their sympathies before November, by which time Moore's film will be largely forgotten.  My guess is that the main damage Fahrenheit 9/11 will do to Bush is to get some folks who were already planning to vote against him to make sure they get to the polls and maybe to donate and work harder for his defeat.  And the main damage it will do to us is that next year, if Moore wins the Oscar for Best Documentary, we'll have to listen to another boorish acceptance speech.

I still have no idea what possessed Western Publishing to put out comic books based on The Ed Sullivan Show and 60 Minutes. A variety show and a news show?

I can almost see the Sullivan comic as they seem to have been interested in Topo Gigio, the little Italian mouse that appeared routinely on Ed's Sunday night variety show. But why did they think the comic book buying public would be interested in a strip about, as the cover says, "Jew Comedian Myron Cohen"? It's six very boring pages of Mr. Cohen just standing there, telling jokes about his relatives. Even at that, it's more entertaining than the three-page story about the plate spinner, the four-page trained seal act or the attempt to re-create in comic book form, a musical number by "British pop singing star Shani Wallis." The Beatles, who are advertised on the cover, appear in only a single-page gag that is really only about Ringo. (His drum set gets lost just before showtime so he winds up playing on the stomach of a tortoise.) Each strip is "introduced" by Ed Sullivan and either the letterer kept screwing up or someone thought it would capture Ed's personality to misspell the names of the acts he's introducing. The art for the comic was produced by the studio of Alberto Giolitti, who was best known for his work on Gold Key's Star Trek comic and Turok, Son of Stone. Giolitti worked in Italy so perhaps they felt he could best capture the essence of Topo Gigio…but he makes Myron Cohen look like a pterodactyl and in the one panel where Ed introduces "sports legend Billie Jean King" in the audience, she looks like George Takei. A very weird comic, indeed.

Even odder is the 60 Minutes comic, the interior of which resembles Gold Key comic books like Twilight Zone, Ripley's Believe It or Not and Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery but with Mike Wallace and Morley Safer acting as hosts. They narrate allegedly-true crime tales which in the one issue were all written by Leo Dorfman. The three stories were illustrated by Jack Sparling, Jose Delbo and John Celardo.  The most interesting (and least believable) is the first one in which Mike Wallace takes a film crew into an old mansion that is supposedly haunted.  The other two are equally difficult to believe and the only redeeming feature of the comic is the one-pager in the back in which Andy Rooney (drawn by Winslow Mortimer) editorializes on how annoying it is to see TV shows turned into comic books.  The comic that precedes his page proves that pretty conclusively.

That's all I have now.  There are other great Gold Key adaptations and maybe I'll get to some of them one of these days.  If I've missed your favorite, please write and tell me.

Time for two more of the obscure, even spurious comic books based on popular TV shows which Western Publishing Company issued in the sixties and seventies under the Gold Key (and sometimes Whitman) labels. These two are so difficult to find that some people have accused those of us who write about them of perpetrating some sort of hoax on an unsuspecting public…

There were eight issues of the Hawaii Five-O comic book, all produced out of Western's New York office. Paul S. Newman wrote the first, second and fifth issues and the rest were reportedly scripted by George Kashdan. All of the artwork was done by Luis Dominguez who did such fine art for Western's Boris Karloff and Twilight Zone titles.  Above is the cover of #3 which contained the story, "The Beachcomber Burglar," in which Steve McGarrett matches wits with a daring daylight thief who is stealing things apparently not for their value but to tweak McGarrett.  He leaves behind clues and the entire "game" distracts McGarrett and his men as they struggle to figure out where he will strike next.  My favorite moment in the story is when McGarrett is sitting in his office late at night, staring out the window as Danny Williams walks in.  You can almost hear the serious tones of actor Jack Lord as he asks, "What kind of man would steal fifteen crates of cat toys?"  Danny absently jokes, "Someone who's distracted by shiny objects" and that jars McGarrett's thinking and causes him to realize that the Beachcomber Burglar's crime spree is intended to distract.  A shipment of $20,000,000 in untraceable currency is being transported to a bank on Oahu and if Five-O follows the Beachcomber's leads, they will be miles away from there at the time of the delivery.  "That has to be it, Dan-O," he shouts as he calls for his car and back-up units.  And sure enough, when Beachcomber Bob shows up to steal the money, figuring McGarrett and his men are off on another island, there they are.  A very clever tale.

Three issues of Dragnet 1969 and one more of Dragnet 1970 (continuing the numbering) were published out of Western's Los Angeles office with scripts by Don R. Christensen and artwork by Doug Wildey.  Doug told me that he was allowed to visit the set on the Universal lot and to sketch Jack Webb and Harry Morgan from life.  "It was not a big deal," he said.  "Webb's face didn't change much no matter what he was doing."  The first issue (pictured above) presented a story called "The Big Puzzle" in which Joe Friday and his partner Bill Gannon investigate a string of murders all occurring within a two-hour period on the same afternoon.  The three victims were all killed in the same manner and obviously by the same murderer…but there was no apparent connection between them.  Friday's gut tells him that the key to finding the culprit is to figure out why those three people were killed.  He and Gannon investigate all their lives and can't find anything…until he realizes what they had in common. I won't ruin the story for you by telling you what it is but Wildey drew a great sequence showing Friday and Gannon, once they figure out the pattern, racing to prevent Murder #4!

More of these in a week or so.

Here we go with two more looks at Gold Key Comics of the sixties and seventies based on then-popular TV shows. Don't spend a lot of time searching for these on eBay as they rarely turn up. Perhaps that's why they go largely unmentioned in most of the official comic book price guides.

The only issue of the WKRP in Cincinnati comic book received limited distribution due to the problems of Western Publishing, which by then had changed the name of its comic book line from Gold Key to Whitman. For a time, they published their comics under both imprints — that is, part of the press run would say "Gold Key" and part would have the "Whitman" insignia. The ones that had "Gold Key" in the upper left were for conventional newsstand distribution, whereas the "Whitman" titles were sold on a non-returnable basis to department and toy stores, the same way Western distributed its activity and coloring books. By 1980 when they did this one issue of WKRP, they had given up on newsstand outlets so no more Gold Key editions were being published, and many books that were written and drawn were not published at all, even under the Whitman logo. (A few, like the Disney titles, were printed overseas.) It's possible that subsequent issues of WKRP were drawn but never made it to press. The writer is unknown but the art was by J. Winslow Mortimer, who at one time was a main artist for Superman and Batman. He had done a long run for Gold Key on the Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids comic, and some others, and was then drawing Spidey Super Stories for Marvel. He did a nice job drawing "Blonde Ambition," in which Jennifer (the Loni Anderson character) goes on a TV show not unlike The Dating Game, little realizing that the unseen bachelors she must pick from are her co-workers, Johnny Fever, Les Nessman and Andy Travis. As she questions them, each fantasizes about marrying Jennifer and we see these daydreams acted out. The ending of the story is a bit of a cop-out as the unctuous game show host invokes a hitherto-unknown rule and claims the date with Jennifer for himself.

Somewhat better distribution was accorded the company's M*A*S*H comic book, which is not to say you'll be able to find a copy of it. The first issue (pictured above) was also produced out of the company's New York office and featured a script by Arnold Drake and art by Sal Trapani, though Trapani was apparently assisted on penciling by Charles Nicholas, whose work was usually seen in Charlton comics.  In it, the book-length story "Steckler the Stickler" tells of a young, by-the-book lieutenant who is transferred to the M*A*S*H unit and immediately begins causing trouble as he begins to parrot obscure regulations from army manuals and to report the tiniest infractions.  Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan and Frank Burns were both fierce about rules on the series but they were medical folks first and foremost, whereas Lt. Simon Steckler isn't a doctor nor is he particularly bothered when his demands that regulations be followed gets in the way of saving lives and treating patients.  For example, in one scene he insists that a vital shipment of supplies be returned to the issuing post because the forms accompanying it were filled out improperly.  Naturally, he butts heads constantly with Trapper and Hawkeye, especially because Hawkeye is working around the clock to save the life of an injured soldier who needs some of those supplies.  It gets so bad that Margaret and Frank join forces with Hawkeye and Trapper to entrap Steckler, tricking him into violating regulations and forcing him to report himself and demand his own transfer to another unit.

I have not been able to see a copy of the second and final issue which, insofar as I know, received limited distribution in the United States due to a contract dispute over rights between Twentieth-Century Fox and H. Richard Hornberger, the author of the original M*A*S*H novels (under the pen name of Richard Hooker) whose publisher argued that the contract for the movie and TV show did not extend to comic books.  Before Western's lawyers advised that the comic be suspended, several foreign editions were reportedly published as was a special English language press run that was distributed via military bases.  When I worked for Western, I did see a proof of the cover which advertised a story called "The King of Korea."  I don't know how or if the legal dispute was resolved but I was told that the first issue of the M*A*S*H comic book had sold poorly so it's likely Western just decided to drop the entire project.

More of these in a week or so.

Time to tackle one of the vital questions of television history. This was sent to me by "BradW8" and it's about Hank, a one season (1965) sitcom on NBC…

This has been bothering me, and I know you've written about the show, which is why I'm asking you: What was Hank thinking?  I saw the show when it first ran, and found it pleasant enough.  Like you, I found it unusual for any TV series of that time to have a final episode that wrapped everything up.  But a lot of it went over my grade school head, and it's only after thinking back to my own college years that it hits me: How did Hank expect to graduate, if all his credits were taken under aliases?  If his intel hadn't been faulty, and those two students not shown up when he was impersonating them, presumably he'd have gone on his merry way until he got enough credits to graduate.  But how could he claim them?  This may have been covered somewhere and I just missed it, but I can't seem to find it.  I realize it's probably some time since you last saw the tapes, but if you happen to recall I'd sure appreciate it.

For those who don't recall the show, I'd better explain the underlying storyline: Dick Kallman played Hank Dearborn, a fellow of college age who couldn't afford to go to college due to lack of funds and the need to raise his younger sister.  They were orphans and though he was old enough to be on his own, there were social workers who felt that sis Tina, who was around twelve, should be in an orphanage.  Neither Hank nor Tina wanted that so Hank had to keep proving he could support her, which he did by holding down a stunning array of odd jobs: Delivering dry cleaning, driving an ice cream truck, etc., most of these done at or around the local university.  At the same time, he wanted to get a college education so he'd dress up in different disguises which he kept in the back of his delivery van and sneak into classes, eluding the campus police.  As if that wasn't complicated enough, he was also trying to date a girl who was, you guessed it…the daughter of the Dean.

A little premise-heavy, wouldn't you say?  The producers apparently agreed.  They did a whole year of episodes about Hank almost getting caught and Tina almost getting put in that orphanage before deciding that it was all too gimmicky.  So in the last episode of the season, Hank was caught impersonating one real (absent) student and then another, and his whole racket was exposed.  The authorities were ready to send Tina to the orphanage and Hank to jail for impersonating a freshman or something of the sort…but throughout the year, he'd done so many good deeds that the Dean was flooded with requests to forgive.  I forget how it was all resolved but I think it was argued that in an era of so many students "dropping out," Hank should not be punished for "dropping in," plus professors came forth to say he was a great, if unregistered, student.  It all came down to Hank taking a final exam and if he passed, the charges would be dropped and he'd have proven he was fit to keep raising Tina…and it had a happy ending.

The show had marginal ratings and as they neared the end of the first season, the producers realized that the premise was dragging the show down.  They told sponsors and the network that they'd get rid of it and set up a new, simpler life for Hank Dearborn.  When they did the last show of Year One, they closed off the "drop-in" gimmick and, hoping for Year Two, set up a more organic format.  But since the show was then cancelled, that last episode wound up actually "ending" the series, which brings us to BradW8's question: How did Hank figure that attending classes under false identities would get him his degree, which they said in the theme song was his ultimate goal?

I actually put that question to the late Martin A. Ragaway, who was one of the show's writers.  He said, approximately: "The guys behind the show thought the gimmick was so great that it would run for years and they'd all be very rich and on to other things before anyone had to worry about that.  They thought Hank would be in college forever.  They were actually discussing how long Dick Kallman would be able to pass for a college student.  In other words, it didn't make sense and they knew it.  The producers didn't have a long-range plan but they assumed viewers would assume Hank, being such a clever and resourceful guy, did."  I always assumed that his goal was the education, not the actual degree but you're right, BradW8.  They did say he planned to somehow get a diploma out of the deal but there was no obvious way in which that could have happened.  If and when someone chooses to rerun those shows, maybe we'll spot a line or something that one of the writers snuck in to give a hint of what Hank was thinking. But if we believe Marty Ragaway, there was no conscious plan.  It was just one of those plot holes in which sitcoms of the sixties (and before and after, I suppose) abounded.

I wish someone would rerun Hank.  In the meantime, over at TV Party, they have a terrific page on the series, complete with video clips.  Look for the one that will let you watch about a minute of the show, theme song included.  The show had a great theme song, complete with lyrics by Johnny Mercer.