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As mentioned here before, a bill looming before Congress would give communications companies like AT&T and Verizon an increased role in the control of the Internet. Earlier today, I spent some time trying to decipher just what this means. It sure feels like a dangerous change but a lot of folks opposing it are unable to explain just why it will be bad.

Which doesn't mean they're wrong. These days, it is not uncommon for lawmakers and elected officials to cobble up proposals that sound harmless or even beneficial…and they are until you get down to the particulars. George W. Bush has frequently attempted to drum up support for a plan like the privatizing of Social Security while remaining deliberately vague on the specifics. Lack of details is a perfectly valid reason to oppose a proposal…and of course, a seemingly-innocent change can be Step One in a scheme where we'll absolutely hate Steps Two through Ten and wish we hadn't accepted the first phase.

From what I can gather, the most immediate danger is that there will be nothing stopping the big Internet service providers from deciding to manipulate access for their subscribers…for instance, a company like Verizon might decide to block certain websites that espoused views they didn't want people reading. Or down the line, they could start blocking ads for their competition.

Will these and other abuses occur? I dunno. But it seems to me that there is a value to establishing loud and clear that when we go on the Internet, we expect equal access to all sites. Our supplier should just connect us and get out of the way.

I don't particularly believe in online petitions but there's one at Save the Internet, along with more details and facts. Yesterday afternoon, I phoned the office of my Congressguy, Henry Waxman, and told whoever answered the phone that I hoped my representative would represent my feelings on this matter. Whether or not the pending legislation would damage the World Wide Web may be arguable but this much is not: We now have total freedom. Any changes that matter can only result in less.

As I've mentioned before on this site (here and here and here) a group called the Musical Theatre Guild does staged readings of great old musicals several times a year and does a very fine job with them. These are not easy to do. There are no sets, a bit of basic costuming and very little time for rehearsals…all to present a show that was designed to be presented with vastly more budget and prep time. That they can do it at all is impressive…and sometimes, the results are just as entertaining as a more elaborate, polished version would have been.

Last night, MTG presented one of my favorite shows, Li'l Abner. The Alex Theater was packed with my friends and we all seemed to enjoy the show tremendously. They did it without sets (not even a statue of Jubilation T. Cornpone) and a cast of 21, which is about twelve actors shy of the Broadway configuration. Still, it worked just fine. Damon Kirsche was great in the title role, Melissa Fahn was an adorable Daisy Mae, Joe Hart stopped the show as Marryin' Sam and then Michael Kostroff stopped it again as General Bullmoose. Eydie Alyson was a terrific Mammy Yokum and…well, take it from me: Everyone was good. It's really a funny show and the cast got darn near every laugh in the script by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. (If you'd like to read up on the history of the show, I wrote about it here and about the movie version here.)

This is a show that needs to be revived for Broadway. A few years ago, I was talking about this with Elliott Caplin, who was Al Capp's brother and the manager of his estate. There was a deal looming to bring the show back — it's never had a real revival — and I was going to be involved in revamping the material. Elliott warned me that the deal might fall through and he knew this because it was about the eleventh deal in twenty years to revive the show and they'd all fallen through. I don't recall if this one fell apart before or after Elliott died but it definitely fell apart. Some day though, someone will do it and I sure hope they do it right. They could have learned a lot about how to do that by seeing what the Musical Theater Guild did last night.

There are two more performances, by the way. One is April 30 at the Scherr Forum in Thousand Oaks. The other is May 8 at the Carpenter Center in Long Beach. I'm almost tempted to go again.

About eleven seconds after I posted the previous item, Del Williams wrote…

What was the name of the movie Howard Hughes liked to watch over and over when he was living in Vegas? I remember there was one that was his favorite but I can't for the life of me recall what it was.

It was Ice Station Zebra, the 1968 movie that starred Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine and Patrick McGoohan. According to one report, Hughes would run it at least three times a week and would occasionally get on a kick of watching his 16mm print over and over, back to back, several times a day. He had a Graflex projector with an add-on sound system that allowed him to crank the volume up to almost deafening levels because of his poor hearing. He had a whole library of films that he ran over and over including The Sting and the James Bond films that starred Sean Connery. It is not known if he had any particular reaction to Diamonds Are Forever, which was set in Vegas and featured Jimmy Dean as a Hughes-like billionaire.

The story I love about Hughes' movie watching is that he got hooked on the late night movies being run on KLAS, which was the local CBS affiliate. Just as he'd ordered his staff to have Swanson change the contents of their TV dinners, he sometimes told them to call the station and have them run a particular movie he wanted to see. To make it easier for this to happen, he soon bought the station…and thereafter, he didn't need the 16mm projector much. He'd have his crew phone the station and tell them what movie Mr. Hughes wanted to see next…and that's what would be broadcast to all of Vegas without advance announcement or commercial interruption. Once in a while, he got bored with a movie and he'd have them stop a film in the middle and start a different one. This is very similar to what NBC recently did with Celebrity Cooking Showdown.

One of the technicians who worked at the station later told the story of getting a call late one night informing him that Mr. Hughes wanted to see an episode of Sugarfoot, the old western series starring Will Hutchins. The technician replied that he'd be glad to thread one up but the station didn't have any reels of Sugarfoot in its library. The voice on the other end of the line said, "We'll get you one." A few hours later, a print of Sugarfoot arrived. It had been flown in from Los Angeles by one of the airlines that Hughes owned, probably on an otherwise-empty plane since there were then no scheduled LAX-LAS flights after Midnight. Back before the VCR was popular, home video could be kind of expensive.

From someone named Jason comes this message that I had to share with you all…

As an ex-employee of Ben and Jerry's (I was a former tour guide at the original factory in Waterbury), I can tell you why Vermonty Python is only available in pints: variety. In order to have the most flavors available at a given time, Ben and Jerry's makes some flavors pint exclusives, like Karamel Sutra and Vermonty Python, and some flavors scoop shop exclusives, like Bananas on the Rum. This way, they can keep making some of the less popular flavors that are on the cusp of going to the Flavor Graveyard™. Another reason is convenience. Vanilla Caramel Fudge is only available in pints because it was such a mess in the scoop shops (yes I also worked in a scoop shop, I was almost a lifer) due to the fact that the fudge and caramel pooled to the bottom of the 2.5 gallon tub, leaving a tasty, goopy soup. Hope that sheds some light on the subject.

It does…and it reminds me that I've never told my favorite Howard Hughes story here. It goes back to the period when Hughes was living on the top floor of the Desert Inn in Vegas. That's the hotel that tried to evict him so he bought the place.

Hughes was living in a darkened bedroom with coverings over all the windows. He would spend all day either fiddling with paperwork that never meant anything or watching television. A small, well-paid staff would wait on him, which usually amounted to bringing him fast food or TV dinners. Hughes would see a commercial for Arby's roast beef sandwiches and he'd say, "I want to eat that," so his handlers would fetch him Arby's for all his meals for a week or two. Then he'd see an ad for Swanson's TV dinners and he'd say, "Get me that," and that would be his meal of choice for a few weeks…and so on.

There was a brief crisis when Hughes tried the Swanson's entrees. He preferred the turkey over the chicken, but the turkey came with peach cobbler, which Hughes didn't like. He liked the apple cobbler included in the chicken dinners…so he ordered his staff to call Swanson's and tell them to switch the cobblers. The "Mormon Mafia" (as his employees were called) pretended to do this but what they'd really do is buy one of each dinner and swap the dessert when they served Mr. Hughes his Swanson's turkey dinner.

That's how one of the world's richest men dined for years — Arby's, KFC, Bird's Eye, etc. In the meantime, all the folks who waited on him were feasting at the most expensive Vegas restaurants…on expense accounts.

But that's not the story I wanted to tell. The one I want to tell — and as far as I know, it's true — began one day when Hughes saw a commercial for Baskin-Robbins and decided to try some ice cream. An employee was dispatched to the local 31 Flavors to bring back 31 scoops — one of each current variety. Hughes sampled them all and chose Banana Nut as his favorite. Thereafter, no matter what he had as a meal, he'd be served a scoop of Banana Nut for dessert.

This went on until one day when a staffer noticed their supply was running low. A runner was sent to buy more but he reported back that Baskin-Robbins had rotated the flavor off its current list. Someone called the ice cream manufacturer and asked when it would be back. The answer was, "Some time next year." None of Hughes' employees wanted to go in and tell the old man that they couldn't bring him the Banana Nut ice cream he loved…so they asked the company if they could make up a special batch for Mr. Hughes. The Baskin-Robbins people said they'd be glad to, but the minimum order was a thousand gallons.

Again, no one wanted to bring bad news to the billionaire…so they ordered the thousand gallons. They also rented refrigerated trucks to transport the order from the Baskin-Robbins plant in Southern California to Vegas, and ordered the kitchen manager at the Desert Inn to find space in their refrigerators for a thousand gallons of ice cream. This required several days of work and the purchase and installation of several new freezers.

The caravan of trucks arrived just in time. The day it all got there was the day they served Mr. Hughes the last remaining scoop of Banana Nut ice cream from the old supply. He finished it off and announced, "That was great but it's time for a change. From now on, I want French Vanilla."

What we have here is a clip from The Tonight Show for January 23, 1974. Johnny Carson's guests that night included Jack Benny, Mel Blanc, Maria Muldaur, Dr. Irwin Maxwell Stillman and Jim Henson…and this is Henson's spot with Kermit the Frog. You can see a bit of Benny at the end.

It's really world-class puppeteering. Henson was not a ventriloquist but he manipulated Kermit so well and gave him so much personality that you never really notice that Jim's lips are moving. (Although I always suspected that he grew the beard and mustache, which he did not have when he first began appearing on television, because they helped hide his mouth.) It's also quite charming that Kermit forgets the lyrics to his signature song…

A week or two ago in a monologue, Jay Leno mentioned some new bit of bad news for the White House and he said, "My God, that's the worst thing that's happened to the Bush administration all day."

That's kind of how it's been going lately: Every day or so, there's a new poll or a new revelation or a new document or a new general or former supporter calling for big changes. I'm starting to feel sorry, not so much for Bush and his crew, but for all the people who supported them in good faith. I've backed politicians who turned out to not be as competent or honest as I once thought. It's not a pleasant realization.

The latest blow is tonight's 60 Minutes interview with Tyler Drumheller, who was once the highest-ranking CIA officer in Europe. He says there was plenty of accurate intelligence on Iraq and its alleged weapons and its supposed attempts to acquire yellowcake uranium. The White House, he claims, simply ignored the good intelligence because the flawed reports fit their agenda. This will not come as a surprise to anyone but it adds to the pile-on.

And the week is just starting…

Okay, we've had Monty Python TV shows, movies, DVDs, records, books, concerts and a Broadway show. What's next?

How about Monty Python ice cream?

(By the way: They don't seem to sell this flavor in their parlors but Tuesday is Free Cone Day at all Ben and Jerry's Scoop Shops.)

Comic book creators are getting better deals these days. This article explains.

I don't drink beer or have much to do with horses. Still, for some reason, I'm a sucker for the Budweiser Clydesdales and the commercials they appear in. Don't ask why. I don't know.

Here's kind of a nice one. (This is an ifilm embed and they don't seem to work with as many browsers as the others. So if it doesn't play for you, go to this page. You may have to sit through a commercial to see a commercial, though.)

As you may recall, NBC abruptly pulled the final two episodes of Celebrity Cooking Showdown from their Thursday night and Friday night schedules, substituting reruns of other shows.

Looking at it just in terms of immediate ratings, that may or may not have been a good idea. The Deal or No Deal rerun that ran Friday in place of the last episode of the cooking series won its time slot by a hair. Its first half hour got a 5.0 and the second got a 5.9. Would Celebrity Cooking Showdown have done better there? We'll never know but it doesn't seem likely. Clearly, not much of America got hooked on the bake-off to the point of following it every night. Then again, the finale of a reality show usually does better than an average episode, and the competition on other networks that night wasn't strong.

Saturday night, NBC had a stealth airing of the last two installments of Celebrity Cooking Showdown. Nobody knew they were on and each hour got around a 1.8 rating, which is about as poorly as one can do on a major network. In the TV departments of all the Walmarts across the country, there are usually enough sets tuned to NBC to get a 1.8. Had they aired the shows on Thursday and Friday, they might not have done as well as the reruns put in their place but they'd sure have done better than a 1.8. I'm curious if the folks at NBC think it was a good trade-off.

Congress is about to vote to give several top communications companies, including Time-Warner, Verizon and Comcast, a certain amount of control of the Internet. I dunno how this will work but I'll bet we won't like it.

There's nothing I like better than a good Laurel and Hardy film, and our link today is to three glorious minutes from one of their best. I'm sorry it's colorized but it's not offensively so…

Glenn Greenwald on how the Bush administration loves to leak information to reporters.

Here's today's installment of Get Fuzzy. It looks to me like the storyline will be continuing next week.

Comic book/strip artist Richard Waring Rockwell passed away last Tuesday at the age of 85. Dick was a charming gentleman who lived too much of his life in the shadows of others. His name was rarely mentioned without noting that he was (a) the nephew of the great illustrator, Norman Rockwell, and (b) Milton Caniff's uncredited ghost artist on the Steve Canyon newspaper strip for some 35 years.

Dick began his comic book career in 1948 working for Stan Lee at what was then called Timely Comics. He also worked for Lev Gleason, Dell and several other publishers before (and occasionally, after) connecting in 1952 with Caniff. The way the story is told, Rockwell applied for membership in the National Cartoonists Society, which involved submitting a sample of his work. Caniff, who was then in charge of looking over applications, saw Rockwell's and immediately called him to say he qualified for membership and to ask if he was available for work. Rockwell was…and he was soon drawing a lot more of Caniff's strip than Caniff was. For much of the next 3.5 decades, Milton would write the strip, Rockwell would pencil it and ink in everything but the main characters, and then the art would go to Caniff who would finish things off and retouch wherever he deemed necessary.

After Caniff passed away in 1988, Rockwell brought the strip to a proper close and then turned his attention to his other projects. All the time he'd been working on Steve Canyon, he'd also been drawing editorial cartoons, illustrating books and working intermittently as a courtroom sketch artist. This article from 2003 discusses his work in this field. Dick also taught art for over thirty years at New York University and the Parsons School of Design, and had recently been teaching at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

I was privileged to work with Dick on a few projects, including a Blackhawk story of mine that he illustrated. He was a dedicated professional who deserved more time in the spotlight than he received.