As millions of you have written me, I was wrong to say Steve Martin hasn't toured in years. As a stand-up comedian, no…but he sometimes tours with his banjo along with other pickers. So sue me.

A popular feature of The Smoking Gun is a library of "riders" — those special contracts in which big (and not-so-big) stars make eccentric demands of any venue in which they perform. Recently, another site uncovered the shocking demands of Steve Martin…especially shocking since he hasn't toured in something like twenty years.

While you're at it, you might like to see how Mr. Martin has been known to handle his mail.

More Fred Kaplan on the change of leadership in the U.S. Afghanistan effort.

Number five in a series…

If you're going to Comic-Con in San Diego (in less than a month, for God's sake!) you should download the latest copy of the Comic-Con Magazine, or at least read it online. You can do both those things here. And if you're not going…well, take a peek and see what you're going to miss.

President Obama has rid himself of General McChrystal and installed General Petraeus to run things in Afghanistan. And you just knew I was going to link to what Fred Kaplan had to say about all this.

If you're planning to fly anywhere between September 8 and November 17 of this year, check out the deals that Southwest Airlines is offering for the next few days. If they go where you go, you might get a bargain.

He's almost twice as popular as BP!

According to the the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Barack Obama's numbers are down but they're not as bad as the approval ratings for Congress and a number of other government agencies. But you know whose numbers are really down? BP has a favorable rating of 6%. That's six. Half a dozen. Two times three.

By contrast, O.J. Simpson has an approval rating of 11%. But here's the odd thing. I can almost understand Simpson's number. There are people in this world who think he didn't murder his ex-wife and Ron Goldman…that he was wronged, framed, ruined, whatever. I think they're either ninnies or largely unfamiliar with the details of the case, but I understand how there could be the 11%.

But the 6% who like BP…where are they coming from? Do they think Shell put all that oil into the gulf and arranged for Mark Fuhrman to plant a bloody glove so BP would take the blame? Maybe they're stockholders. If I were a stockholder in BP, I think I'd be royally pissed at its management but I'd probably say nice things about the company to pollsters.

Really, who are these people? I know they didn't poll Congress because the number there would be a lot higher than 6%.

I'm guessing the 6% are mostly people who think it was just one of those silly little mistakes that can happen to anybody who doesn't invest in minimal safety precautions. In a strange way, it's probably comforting to the BP execs. I mean, they don't have to worry about doing something foolish and hurting their reputation. Tomorrow, the members of the Board of Directors could all go out and molest nuns and their rating would only drop to like 5.5%.

The article says that the poll has only gotten a few lower ratings of anyone or anything. Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro each clock in at 3%…which gives me a great idea for the new BP ad campaign: "As popular as Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro combined!" If I were them, I'd spend a couple of billion on commercials and billboards spreading that slogan. It would be a much better investment than, say, actually cleaning up their mess.

Number four in a series…

And here's Fred Kaplan's take on the whole McChrystal magilla.

Here's a link to the Rolling Stone article by Michael Hastings that's causing so much talk. It's about General Stanley McChrystal — as of this moment, the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. As a result of this piece, that could change any minute.

Here's another article about the idea of putting a high-speed train between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The DesertXpress one sounds like about the dumbest, certain-to-fail idea I could imagine. It would carry passengers to and from Vegas but would go no farther west than Victorville, which is about 80 miles east of Los Angeles. What they don't seem to get is that that's the difficult 80 mile part of the trip from L.A. to Vegas. The appeal of a rail system to Vegas would be to be able to avoid the bumper-2-bumper trudge to get out of Los Angeles…and you'd have to go through that to get to Victorville and pick up the train there. You'd also be leaving your car in a very strange place. The main competing proposal wouldn't go from L.A. to Vegas, either. Angelenos would have to drive to Anaheim to pick it up…and wouldn't.

I'm thinking an L.A./Vegas high-speed train would be great. But I'm not going to see a useful one in my lifetime.