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Here's an article about one of the most important inventions of the last few centuries, ranking right up there with the airplane, computers and telecommunications. I am speaking of course of the pizza box.

Well, not everything starts tomorrow…just the 2011 Comic-Con International in San Diego. And if you have a badge for Preview Night, it all starts in around 26 minutes. (I have such a badge and a lot of good it'll do me. I'm still in L.A. putting the finishing touches on one of those annoying work-related tasks. If you value your safety, stay off the 405 whenever I leave here.) Already, even this far North, I can feel the energy swelling and hear people putting on their Klingon costumes. I don't mind the folks who wander the convention in costume but for the fact that they're darn near all the news crews shoot, which in turn causes my mother and other relatives to figure, "Oh, at a comic convention, everyone dresses up" and they ask if I might be going as Green Lantern this year. The last costume I wore in my life was on Halloween when I was about nine. Given how little candy I scored that night, you can understand why I gave that up.

Posting here will be light until I get back. It'll depend a lot on how much time I have and how good the Internet connection is in my room. I don't usually have good luck with hotel "high-speed internet access." The last place I stayed, it would have been easier to walk over to the remote server and download the pixels by hand. I have no idea what that means but doesn't it kinda sound like a joke?

Here for the last time is my schedule of panels. If you see me around the con, please say howdy. I'm not nearly as busy as the eternal expression on my face or my list of panels would indicate…

A month or three ago, I did an interview for a website called Internet Voice Coach which is all about how to become a successful voiceover performer. The conversation should be of great interest to anyone who's thinking they might like to do that for a living. You can hear it here.

An interview with Joe Simon, one of the wisest and most creative guys to ever work in comics.

They're going to open a Five Guys across the street from the store where I do my grocery shopping.

And now it's not even sneaking up on us anymore. It's charging full speed in our direction. I'm putting the finishing touches on a schedule of things I want to see and do and appointments with people I want to be around. If all goes well, I may have a chance to pee sometime on Saturday between 3:07 and 3:08. That is, if my 3:05 belch doesn't run long. I've also planned where and when I'm going to dine. I haven't figured out what we're doing at Quick Draw! yet but I know where I'm having rigatoni bolognese on Sunday evening. (Hey, those of you who are familar with Quick Draw!: You know that game we play called Secret Words? It's the one where I give the cartoonists a list of words they have to convey via drawings to an audience member? Well, if you have a great Secret Word to suggest, e-mail it to me before tomorrow evening. It's got to be something that isn't obvious…where the artists will have to sweat a bit to figure out what to draw in order to communicate the word. Last year, they all got hernias trying to depict "miscellaneous.")

The main tip I'm going to give you today here is this: Memberships for the 2012 Comic-Con will be on sale at this one. Read this page and realize that if you're there, it would be a lot easier to go buy a membership for next year instead of counting the hours until the next time you can purchase one. It would also be a lot easier than deciding a year from today that uh, hey, you need to find some way to get a badge. I'm hearing from a lot of people who have suddenly decided, months after it was sold out, that they want to go to this one. Remember too that if you buy a membership and then aren't able to use it, it can be sold back to the con. The 2012 convention runs July 12-15.

Here's my schedule of panels. No changes since the last time I posted this link…

At least once an hour, someone writes to inform me that Neil Gaiman said nice things about me and this blog in the Nerdist Podcast he did recently. My thanks to all who e-mailed to tell me and my thanks, of course, to Neil. The whole interview is worth a listen; not just the part about me.

Elizabeth Stevens has some thoughts on the state of the Muppets now that they're in, for the most part, new hands. I agree with some of this but not all. When I get some more time (yeah, like that's going to happen soon), I may write a piece in reaction to it.

In an odd way, I think Southern Californians are enjoying "Carmageddon," this weekend's shutdown of a portion of the 405 Freeway. Yes, it's a crisis…but it's a crisis from which no one is likely to die or have their lives irrevocably altered, and we'll be past it in a day or three. Would that every crisis was over in 72 hours and that the worst thing that might happen is people being late for work. Yes, some businesses may suffer a bit and some folks will miss flights or other appointments. But we've had enough advance warning that most people have been able to make plans accordingly.

Me, I'm going nowhere near anyplace likely to be impacted. The local TV news crews are promising hourly updates all weekend to tell us how things are going and how bad the traffic snarls may be. A lot of us can sit home, watch helicopter shots of Angelenos in bumper-to-bumper sardine mode, and feel superior to those who somehow thought they could get from Sepulveda and Ventura to Sepulveda and Wilshire without going completely around the world in the other direction.

A freeway closure is probably a greater disaster here in L.A. than it would be in some other cities. Out here, traffic reporters are always telling us that a certain road is closed or congested so we should "use alternate routes." The problem with that is that for many commutes, there are no alternate routes…or if there are, people don't know them. Maybe it's about time some of us learned if not a second way to get somewhere then at least how to program our Global Positioning Systems to show us.

My pal Bruce Reznick sent me this link to a good article about Mel Blanc.

It's sneaking up on us like it does every year around this time. I'm now in that mode of my life where I divide everything I have to do into three categories — Things I'll Do Before The Con, Things I'll Try To Do Before The Con But Probably Won't, and Things I'm Already Planning To Do After The Con. Everyone I'm talking to is looking forward to the big event, though they all wish they had an extra week or so before it starts. And the folks on the convention staff, who I talk to now and then, are working at a superhuman clip. I continue to be amazed that they pull this thing off every year. It involves matters and tasks you never see and wouldn't imagine someone has to do.

I received a bitch 'n' moan letter from someone who didn't grasp the concept that we're not having a Golden Age Panel this year because there won't be enough Golden Age writers and artists on the premises to have one. I still only know of two and one has his own spotlight interview. This is not the fault of the convention, which has been extremely generous about inviting veteran comic creators and often offering to pay all expenses. The problem, of course, is that our older talents are getting older…and since a lot of them do not have anything current to sign or sell, making the trek becomes a hardship with little reward. I explained this to the complainer but he apparently feels we should drag these people to the con at knifepoint.

The people at my favorite fast food chain, Five Guys, are ready for the con. They just this week opened a new outlet about a 10-15 minute drive from the convention center. It's at 670 University Ave., San Diego, CA 92103. If you need a Whole Foods Market while you're in town, the closest one to the con is about a block from that Five Guys.

Almost lastly: One of the great things about San Diego is the climate. The current forecast for the dates of the Comic-Con calls for mostly clear skies, daytime temps between 68

Weird writing habits of famous authors.

Everyone in Southern California is shivering in terror about this weekend's planned closing of the 405 Freeway. Portions of a bridge have to be demolished and they're closing the thoroughfare on Friday night after the rush hour traffic. It's supposed to reopen at 5 AM Monday morning and the firm doing the work will pay steep fines if this does not happen — $6,000 for every ten minutes they're late…and that's per side. So if both sides of the freeway reopen ten minutes late, that's $12,000. Sounds to me like the construction company is pretty confident…but an awful lot of folks are acting like the 405 could be closed for days after.

I don't think so. Admittedly, things could go wrong…but hey, that freeway has been known to shut down for hours when some truck jack-knifes and dumps a load of rutabagas. Somehow, the world survives. It all feels to me suspiciously like the hype that preceded the '84 Olympics in Los Angeles when we were told that gridlocked traffic would prevent any of us from getting our cars out of our driveways until weeks after the last game. Or the big Y2K panic when we were cautioned that every computer, ATM, timepiece and socket wrench would shut down at the stroke of Midnight. Didn't happen. "Carmageddon," as they're calling this bridge demolition, is starting to sound like one of those media-hyped doomsday scenarios that doesn't live up to its billing.

So that's what I think. However, I must confess that I have no plans to go near that part of the 405 for a month or so.

A print of a lost Charlie Chaplin film was recently found in a thrift shop in London. It's not a major work — a World War I propaganda short he made in 1917. But still…

Among the things I've learned to never argue with people about is deli food. It's on the list with religion, the Kennedy Assassination, what was the best James Bond movie, PC vs. Mac and Leno as opposed to Letterman. Some of the most pointless, no-one-can-win debates in this world are about these topics. So when I say that Canter's on Fairfax is my favorite Southern California deli, I'm not looking for rebuttals. You like Jerry's or Nate n' Al's or Art's or Langer's or Brent's or Junior's? Fine. I've had good meals at all those places except, of course, Jerry's in the last five or ten years. (I think the last time I had a really good meal at Jerry's, the bus boy was — and I'm not kidding — Andy Kaufman.)

Anyway, I like Canter's but that's not the point of this item. Every year, Canter's does some incredible cheapo deal for one night to celebrate its anniversary. I'm not sure why they do these because the place is pretty well-known and usually packed…but they do. Tomorrow night from 4 PM 'til Midnight to celebrate their 80th anniversary, you can get a corned beef sandwich, a "taste" of potato salad, a pickle and a little chocolate rugala for eighty cents. Ordinarily, the sandwich alone is $11.75 and it is not overpriced at that.

I will not be dining at Canter's tomorrow night. Why? Because if past experience is any indicator, people will start lining up to get in around Noon and by 7 PM or so, there will be around a three-hour wait for a table. I don't know about you but my time is worth more than four bucks an hour.

(And can you imagine the poor sap who gets there at 10 PM when the line is, I'm guessing, down to a two-hour wait? And he stands there and he stands there and he inches up and finally, he gets in at 12:01 and the sandwich is regular price again? It would really suck to be that guy.)

Two years ago, some friends of mine and I dined at Canter's the day after a similar offer. I think the same meal was 78 cents that year. Things were cheaper everywhere back then. The waitresses at Canter's are often very funny and very chatty and ours was describing the line to get in the night before. At one point, it was up to four hours but people stood in it.

One guy in particular waited all that time and when he got in, she went up to him and said, "Well, I guess I know what you're going to have." Because that's what everyone was having. He told her, "You know…I like pastrami better than corned beef."

She told him the corned beef sandwich was 78 cents and it came with potato salad, a pickle and a little dessert. The pastrami sandwich was $11.75 and it came with a pickle but no potato salad and no dessert. The fellow said, "That's not fair. Any other day, a corned beef sandwich and a pastrami sandwich are the same price, right?"

She said, "Right."

He said, "So they must cost you the same thing to make, right?"

She said, "Right."

He said, "So how come you can't give me pastrami for 78 cents? You're not losing anything on the deal."

She said, "Listen, I don't make the rules here. The rules are that for the next three and a half hours, corned beef is 78 cents and pastrami is $11.75."

The guy thought about it for ten seconds and finally said, "Oh, what the hell. Give me a pastrami on rye."