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My pal Andy Ihnatko has his annual Oscar predictions up. You can read them here and they put any Oscar predictions I could make to shame. Of course, Andy cheats. He actually goes to see the movies.

Andy will be live-blogging the Oscars as will another pal, Gary Sassaman, who also has his Oscar picks up. My thanks to Andy and Gary who are doing this so I don't have to.

The only predictions I have are…

…that we'll hear a lot of jokes about Dick Cheney shooting people (including a possible Elmer Fudd impression by Robin Williams), a joke or two about horny penguins walking miles for sex, something about George W. Bush not being informed of some Hollywood related disaster (i.e., "The White House denies that the president had advance knowledge of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo."), a line about how Harriet Miers couldn't get to the Supreme Court but Anna Nicole Smith did…and enough references to gay cowboys to kill that topic off for the rest of the year.

…that the "In Memoriam" montage will start with Richard Pryor, end with Shelley Winters and that someone worked overtime to get Don Knotts, Darren McGavin and maybe even Jack Wild in there.

…and that Jon Stewart will surprise a lot of people and be a great host. I also think he'll do a lot less political stuff than anyone expects but that even the slightest reference will bring howls of outrage from those who feel their side has been slammed. It would also not surprise me if someone were to suggest that three years ago, Michael Moore got booed at the Academy Awards for saying what most of America now believes. But I'll betcha it won't be Stewart. This is his chance to show America that he's more than a political comic on basic cable.

I'll be TiVoing the ceremony and watching it with the Fast Forward button properly deployed. The scheduler has it down for three hours but I'm adding an hour of pad, just in case. My good buddy Leonard Maltin will be there doing red carpet interviews. You'll recognize him because he'll be the only person on the premises besides Roger Ebert and Mickey Rooney who knows anything about movies more than five years old.

Our TiVos will soon have a new feature — something called KidZone. It will enable parents to restrict what can be viewed on their TiVos so that Dad can record the Playboy Channel and when he's out, the tiny tots won't be able to watch it. Based on no evidence whatsoever, I have a hunch that parents are fooling themselves as to how effectively they can block access to certain programs on cable or certain sites on the Internet for kids above about ten. I've yet to see anything that would have stopped my friends and me when we were twelve and desperate to see naked women…but I guess it works for children who are younger or not too smart. And I certainly don't see anything wrong with such a capability if it doesn't mess up my ability to record and watch what I want. Here's a press release about this new feature.

My TiVos have finally received the new feature that accesses some Yahoo pages (like rather useless weather forecasts) on your TV screen. We await the arrival of the TiVo Undelete function, which I could really have used last week.

By the way: The other day, I began to notice a tinny, annoying quality in the audio of shows recorded on my office TiVo. I thought something was wrong with my new TV but it wasn't that. It turned out to be the TiVo. I rebooted and the problem went away. Never heard of that happening before but I thought I'd mention it in case it ever happens to anyone reading this.

Veteran political humorist Art Buchwald is dying. Here's a report on his current condition. The article is both depressing and reassuring on some levels. I am especially intrigued by the notion — and I hope this wasn't a joke — that he's written a column that will run the day after he dies.

I will always remember one time when Buchwald was on Crossfire, back when Robert Novak represented The Right. Novak asked Buchwald why he spent so much time criticizing the people in power in Washington.

Buchwald said, "Criticizing those in power is fun, Bob. You should try it sometime."

In the above-linked article, there's a reference to a recent radio interview that Buchwald did with Diane Rehm. Here's a link to a page where you can listen to that interview, which runs about 50 minutes. I found it a bit too painful to listen to right now but I intend to try to make it all the way through…one of these days.

Michael Kinsley on the Bush doctrine (or whatever it is) of spreading democracy around the world…or at least to nations where we aren't chummy with non-elected leaders.

In fact, for an interesting, multi-partisan take on Iraq, read Kinsley the Liberal, then go over to The Corner, which is a group weblog run by the Conservative National Review. Start with this post by John Derbyshire, then go read upwards through more recent postings for a bit. Take special note of where Derbyshire writes…

The difference between the Peters/GWB view and the Will/WFB/Derb view is not that the former opinionators are willing to "do whatever it takes to win," while the latter are not. The difference is, that the two factions have different estimates of what it would take to win. (Defined to mean: Create a reasonably stable, strong, orderly, and friendly Iraq.) And that the former estimate lies inside the boundaries of what the American people are willing to do, spend, and sacrifice, while the latter lies outside those boundaries.

I think that's what the whole Iraq debate is boiling down to: A simple cost/benefit ratio. The American people are deciding — and pretty much on their own because I don't see many pundits or even Democrats making this argument — that the human and financial costs of this war are simply not worth it for what we may get out of it.

My pal Peter David offers the perfect response to the Bushies.

The other day here, I wrote about how PBS, in airing the new Monty Python "Personal Favorites" specials had a few deletions made in material that once ran uncut on their networks. This brought an informative (I think) e-mail from David Thiel, who is the Program Director of WILL, a PBS station in Urbana, Illinois. Here are his remarks in full…

It's true that the climate for public television — and broadcasting in general — have changed since a few enterprising PTV stations first imported Monty Python to the U.S. There are things that we could get away with 30 years ago — even 10 years ago — that would be more problematic today. I doubt that many PTV stations could weather the huge fines that political watchdogs have proposed post-Janet Jackson.

A major issue for PTV programmers such as myself is that it's difficult to be absolutely certain what is and isn't permissible. For a time, it appeared that we could no longer assume that we would be protected by artistic or contextual considerations. The FCC has since clarified their stance and stated that the context of so-called "indecent" content still matters, but even so, I have no reason to believe that a pure entertainment series like Monty Python would be seen in the same light as a "Frontline" documentary. It's worth noting that in 1998 a radio station was fined for airing "Sit on My Face."

I don't know that I would consider myself "terrified by fines," but I'll cop to being cautious in the current climate. I have to balance my personal philosophy of pure artistic freedom against my responsibility as one of the stewards of a broadcast license. Thousands of people in our community depend upon our program services and our non-broadcast educational initiatives, and I think that it would be hubris on my part to recklessly jeopardize them just to prove a point.

To my knowledge — and I reserve the right to be misinformed in this case — the upcoming PBS feeds of the half-hour Monty Python series are unedited. Stations are being advised not to air them prior to 10:00 pm local time due to their content. After 10:00 pm, the FCC's "safe harbor" for indecent programming begins. The "Personal Best" specials were intended to air in prime-time, hence the edits. I hope that clarifies things a bit.

I wasn't suggesting, or intending to suggest, that PBS or any station had an obligation to buck the trends and go to the mat, especially for something as trivial as the cuts in these Python specials. You have to save your energies for the battles that are really worth fighting. But David has hit on one of the problems for broadcasters in a climate like this: The uncertainly of what is and isn't acceptable. It would be one thing if creators could create and broadcasters could broadcast with a strict guide of what is and is not acceptable. But the "rules" are vague, they change from time to time and they're enforced in an inconsistent manner. It is very common in television that they tell you that you can't use a certain word so you cut it out, then hear it used without incident on some other show.

Johnny Carson once did a Carnac bit where the answer was "Ass, bitch and horny." The question was, "Name three words they can say on Saturday Night Live but we can't use on this show." At that moment, he was right. NBC was bleeping those words on Johnny's show, which aired at 11:30 at night but allowing them on SNL, which aired at 11:30 at night. The Standards and Practices people were outraged when they heard the material at Carson's taping and I believe some kind of understanding was brokered: Johnny, having made his point, agreed to cut the joke out of the show, in exchange for which the Censor People agreed to become more consistent.

Of course, the trouble with that kind of variance is that you find yourself erring on the side of caution. Invariably, you cut things that would not have spawned any outrage at all. Standards and Practices people are spectacularly inept at predicting what will cause trouble so they caution you or demand the cutting of all sorts of things that could air without complaint, and they often pass things that do result in FCC fines and/or angry viewers. (The angry viewers are never very numerous, by the way. Weighted against a show's total viewership, they are always statistically insignificant. But sometimes, a few complainers can cause a disproportionate amount of trouble. Lately, they help trigger those ridiculous FCC fines.)

Thanks for the message, David. I absolutely respect the need to not gamble with a station's well-being, especially these days, when the standards are so variable and the punishments are so illogical. Our local Los Angeles station, KCET, ran a lot of things in the seventies — like Steambath, which must have aired a dozen times — that they probably wouldn't dare broadcast today. I'm not sure who benefits from this except maybe HBO, Showtime, Cinemax…

Here's a review of Will Eisner's last book, and it's in an interesting place. It's the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has done so much fine work to combat anti-Semitism and racism. Thanks to Bruce Reznick for pointing it out to me.

Before this site kicks over to tomorrow's date, I want to thank everyone who sent birthday greetings today. I'll try and answer them all but I still haven't responded to all the "get well" messages I got when I was in the doctor place. So it may take a while. Nice to hear from so many friends and even a fair amount of total strangers.

I've wondered here in the past if anyone ever falls for those e-mail scams that tell you you can share in someone's inheritance of a huge amount of money. Apparently, someone does.

John Dickerson on that newly-noticed video that shows George W. Bush being briefed before Katrina hit and not appearing to grasp what it all meant. So far, I haven't seen much of a counterspin on this one.

I love magicians and I especially love magicians who invent brand new tricks and do things on stage that no one else has ever done. You don't catch Sylvester the Jester doing the linking rings or the cups-and-balls…or if he did, he'd put his own, animation-inspired twist on those hoary illusions. Sylvester bills himself as "The Human Cartoon" and replicates on stage, many effects you'd find in a good Tex Avery short. In the course of one show, he is electrocuted, decapitated, stretched and squashed, and even has a few holes blown in him. It's all very original and very well-done and very funny.

You can find out where to see him at his website but for much of March, I can tell you where to see him: In a late show, Friday and Saturday nights, at Theatre West in Hollywood. Located appropriately near the old Hanna-Barbera studio, the Jester will be destroying himself on stage for your amusement, and I intend to get up there and see this happen. If you love magic or cartoons, you'll enjoy what he does…and I'm guessing one or the other applies to everyone who visits this site.

Jack Wild is the kid who, at age fifteen, played the Artful Dodger in the movie of Oliver and stole, not only people's purses but the movie, as well. Shortly after that, he became the human star of the popular Saturday morning series, H.R. Pufnstuf. After that, he has a brief moment of glory as a pop star and after that…

Well, "after that" was not kind to Jack Wild. He had problems with alcohol and tobacco and life in general. Sid and Marty Krofft, who'd produced H.R. Pufnstuf, became like surrogate uncles to Jack. When I worked for them, he'd occasionally visit the office or turn up at a party and I always enjoyed talking to Jack. A lot of folks felt sorry for him but I never got that he felt sorry for himself…not even the last time I ran into him. It was about three years ago and most of his voice was gone due to cancer of the mouth, one of the nastier things that can happen to a human being. Jack had a little card he'd show to people to explain why he couldn't talk and we had an odd, sad conversation with him responding mostly in mime and little grunts. He was proud that in spite of everything, he was still doing occasional acting jobs.

Jack died on Wednesday. He was 53. Here's a link to an obit.

Lennie Weinrib, who was the voice of H.R. Pufnstuf, just phoned me from Chile, where he now lives. He said, "Tell the world that Jack Wild was the nicest, most talented kid I ever met in all my years in show business, and that we're all just devastated at the news." I can't put it any better than that.

Back on KCAL, someone just said, "This started out as a routine traffic stop as part of an investigation of a stolen vehicle. The woman didn't want to go to jail." So to try and stay out of prison, she stole a police SUV and drove it around for 75 minutes. Good way to avoid a stolen car rap.

KCAL's news coverage has ended and they've returned to regular programming, which is people arguing in the TV courtroom of Judge Mathis. A woman is claiming her ex-boyfriend kept refusing to get a job and wasn't paying back money he owed her and had promised to pay. The ex-boyfriend is claiming that because of her drunken misbehavior, he was also driven to drink so it was her fault he was unable to find work. For some reason, these people thought it would be a good idea to go on television, air their private dispute, argue over which of them was the bigger drunk and let Judge Mathis settle it. This makes about as much sense as stealing the police SUV.

And how far are we from the day when they'll arrest someone like the lady who was driving around Palmdale and Lancaster, then bring her directly into a TV courtroom? Having just watched the arrest, we'll be able to then watch the trial. Judge Mathis can sentence her and then later in the day, Judge Judy can rule on her appeal. By evening, we could have the prisoner on Fear Factor for possible execution. Or just let Simon Cowell insult their grooming.

It might work. Couldn't be a greater miscarriage of justice than the O.J. trial.

Actually, she's been mainly in Lancaster the last fifteen minutes or so. On Fox, they're monitoring (but not letting us hear) some conversations the woman is having on the police radio with authorities. They're discussing (a) whether she's faking her emotional distress, (b) whether if she is, she's doing it to try and establish some sort of defense for when she winds up in court and (c) whether she's just enjoying the attention of all the helicopters overhead and news coverage.

This just in: She's stopped, police have stormed the vehicle and they have her down on the ground and under arrest. And now they're leading her away to another police car. Hope she doesn't steal this one, too.

I'm switching channels and watching the pursuit on different stations. Someone on Fox News just said that this vehicle would have probably have had a full gas tank at the beginning of the shift, but of course we don't know when that was. I'll report back if there's any more useful information like that.