Some wonderful person has put my personal e-mail address on a mailing list that is being bought or acquired by folks in the entertainment industry who send out press releases. I do have a special e-mail address for stuff like that. It's press@newsfromme.com and I welcome anything sent to that address. But suddenly, a flurry of e-mailed press releases are coming to my personal address, the one to which human beings send real messages.

A lot of these press releases seem to think I'm a huge website like Slate or Salon and they're offering to set up personal phone interviews for me with TV and movie stars or authors. So far, it's no one I yearn to meet but one of these days, I may just take them up on one of these offers.

The main thing I'm thinking of doing is starting a policy that if anyone sends an unsolicited press release to one of my e-mail addresses other than the one above, I'll write a little sentence about the movie, TV show, product, CD, book (whatever it is) and say it's a piece of dogshit. It'll be interesting to see if that makes the unsolicited press releases stop and if so, how fast. Maybe if I also write that the people responsible for the dogshit are probably sex criminals…

I may be away from this blog for a day or three trying to finish a script that must be finished. I may also try sleeping, which I haven't done so far today. But I leave you with…me.

The Animation Guild is doing a series of interviews with folks in the cartoon field and they finally worked their way down to me. Last Monday, I sat for a few hours and answered questions from the union's Business Rep, Steve Hulett.

(As an aside: Long ago and far away, I had a number of problems with that labor organization to which I then belonged. Or more specifically, the man then running it did things that caused some of us to debate: Incompetent or deliberately working against the interests of those he was supposed to represent? Things got a whole lot better for all when that guy was replaced by Steve.)

But as Bette Midler says, enough about them and more about me: What follows is Part 1 of a two-part interview with Yours Truly. It runs 51 minutes and the second part, which I'll embed mañana, is longer. I won't fault you if you don't make it all the way through. I couldn't without getting sick of me.

I thought we'd talk mostly about my cartoon writing career and some of that's in there but we ended up discussing all sorts of things I've written and how I got this job or that job…

If you like interviews with Stephen Colbert, here's one he did for one of the many websites that follow his work. And it's not about the kind of topics you usually hear him talk about.

The Wall Street Journal, not exactly a fan of President Obama, says that it's a myth that he has been on a reckless spending spree. "There has been no huge increase in spending under the current president, despite what you hear," they say. Great. But I think one of the places I've heard that has been The Wall Street Journal.

Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett has his proof that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii so apparently Obama's name will appear on the presidential ballot there. In this post, I wondered what that was all about since this was how the drama had to play out. Why, I pondered out loud, did Bennett even bring it up at all?

Then I got to thinking and may have answered my own question. I think a lot of the illogical things we hear candidates say are said because one specific donor with a lot of money wanted them said. Yes, they may alienate certain potential voters but it's a long time to Election Day. There's plenty of time for those voters to forget or to be whipped up against the opposition. Right now, the idea is to get the money.

Bennett wants to run for governor. So my guess is he met some wealthy Arizona tycoon who leans heavily to the right on account of that's the side where he carries his wallet. The guy is Birther Loco and he said to Bennett, "I might be inclined to support you with some serious money if you were the kind of guy who'd make an effort to get that Kenyan Socialist's name off the Arizona ballot." (There's talk Obama may be able to carry the state and that must drive some folks there mad.)

Bennett knows there's no way to deny Obama a slot on the ballot but the Rich Birther doesn't want to admit that. So Bennett does what he does and now he can go to that potential donor and say, "Well, I tried. Now, about that campaign contribution…" It's gotta be something like that.

…that is, assuming tomorrow is the day you go see the production of Follies currently playing in L.A. at the Ahmanson Theater. It's the recent Broadway revival minus Bernadette Peters…and though we sure love us some Bernadette Peters, Victoria Clark is so good in that part, I can't imagine Bernadette being any better.

I've seen Follies several times including the previous Broadway revival. They run through Times Square about as often as the Q Train and they're usually as crowded. This is easily the best Follies I've seen and oddly enough at Intermission, Carolyn turned to me and voiced the same reason I'd been thinking: It's the clearest. We could hear and understand every line and not just because the sound system was pretty darn good. It was the performances. The actors had such clarity of who they were and what was going on around them that I found myself understanding much that I'd missed in previous productions. (We were sitting, by the way, in the fourth row of the Mezzanine and we didn't miss a line, a facial expression, a nuance, anything.)

The actors? Jan Maxell, Danny Burstein, Ron Raines and Ms. Clark played the two couples who discuss roads they didn't take and might still. The other ladies of the Weismann Line included Elaine Paige, Jayne Houdyshell, Terri White and Susan Watson, most of whom managed to stop the proceedings with solo turns. The "Mirror, Mirror" number led by Ms. White and featuring all the one-time showgirls intermingling with ghosts of themselves was one of the best things I've ever seen on a stage.

I wish I had time to rave more but I have things to do and probably, before the night is out, a soup can to post. I am incredibly busy at the moment but I am so glad Carolyn and I went to see Follies last night. This has been a frantic week of problems and headaches, but for around two and a half hours at the Ahmanson, everything went right and I sure needed that. It's there through June 9. If you're local, get tix. If I can find the time, I may go back.

It's possible to get a Global Positioning System for your car with voices from Sesame Street. This has got to be irresistible to drivers under the age of twelve…

Joe Conason has a suggestion for guys like Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes: If you really are concerned about "saving marriage" as you claim, you should start by getting rid of those quick and easy divorce laws you guys use all the time.

We continue to be amazed at how DNA testing and other techniques keep proving that our justice system ain't nearly as good as we used to think it was at convicting the guilty. The National Registry of Exonerations is swelling with examples; of people who were convicted and perhaps even had their convictions upheld…but were later proven innocent. And we're amazed there isn't more outrage at procedures and a process that is this bad at determining guilt.

Ben Brantley over at the N.Y. Times, thinks audiences have gotten too carried away with awarding standing ovations to shows. I agree and I'd suggest the major reason, which Mr. Brantley mentions briefly, is that when shows feel overpriced, you want to believe they were that good and a standing o' is the audience's way of telling themselves it was.

Ken Levine (who either owes me a lunch or I owe him one) recalls local Los Angeles television — in particular The Lloyd Thaxton Show and its many clones. Thaxton's program was an example of how a little ingenuity — and a healthy lack of inhibition — could overcome a budget that wouldn't cover three expired cans of corned beef hash at the 99-Cents-Only Store. His afternoon dance party show on Channel 13 here was kinda like what American Bandstand would have been like if Dick Clark had been willing or able to get into the fun instead of introducing it from afar. Dick was not a performer. Neither was Lloyd but he didn't let that stop him.

Ken went on one of the local shows. I can think of few things I'm less likely to do in public besides dance. Given the choice of dangling from a helicopter by my earlobes or dancing with a girl on TV, I would have told you to fire up the chopper. And yet I did dance once on a TV variety show and I don't think I've ever told that story here. I'll tell it before the week is out. Stay tuned and go read Ken.

Have you seen the Anti-J.F.K. Coloring Book? A coloring book is just about the right demographic for the folks who'd believe this kind of stuff.