Hey, remember that unintentional sale Amazon had on comic book collections and graphic novels? I'm hearing from some folks who got their mispriced bargains and others who didn't. I seem to be among the "didn't" group. I've yet to hear a thing from the Amazon folks about it but the online invoice for my order is mysteriously missing most of the items. They just removed them from my order without telling me, which is a bit odd. I'm not surprised not to be getting 'em but I was expecting some sort of note or notification.

Going to WonderCon in San Francisco? You should. It's April 2-4 and a great time is already had by all. I'll be moderating a bunch of panels. On Friday, I get to introduce Stan and Hunter Freberg. On Saturday, I interview Murphy Anderson, discuss Creator Rights, appear with my friend Sergio and interview Joe and Adam Kubert. On Sunday, I host "Art of the Cover," a great shop talk panel where great cover artists discuss what it takes to make a great cover. If you click on the banner above (or here), you'll get all the details. See you there.

This evening, superstar publicist Jeff Abraham and I went down to the new Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles for An Evening With Bob Newhart. The museum has been doing these events with important folks in the recording industry and Mr. Newhart was the first honoree in the category of Comedy, as opposed to Music. A loving and respectful audience turned out to hear him interviewed and he closed by favoring us with one of his earliest routines — the one about the submarine commander briefing his crew. Gosh, he's a funny man.

Let's see what I can recall that will translate to this format. Someone in the audience asked him who his favorite comedian was. He immediately said, "Well, this is not to get back to Rickles…" His answer was Peter Sellers and he explained why — because he never seemed like he was trying to be funny — and then did a suprisingly good impression of Sellers in one of the Pink Panther movies.

He talked about his early days as an accountant and how his first, best-selling album came to be. He was writing and performing his little monologues in and around Chicago, occasionally on local TV. Disc jockey Dan Sorkin became familiar with his material and recommended him to Warner Brothers Records, which was then a new, struggling company. The execs there liked what they heard and said, "We'll record an album next time you play a night club." Newhart had to inform him he'd never played a night club and had no plans to start. Because of their offer though, he began to look for one that would take him in.

That took several months. Finally, on his first such date, they recorded The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, which became one of the best-selling albums of all time…not one of the best-selling comedy albums. One of the best-selling albums, period. It not only put Newhart on the map…it put Warner Brothers Records there, as well.

From there, it was on to more records and to TV. Asked which of his two long-running sitcoms he preferred, he said he couldn't pick. He discussed the wonders of Suzanne Pleshette and the odd trio of Larry, Darryl and Darryl. He talked about being best friends with Don Rickles. He told funny stories about appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show. Answering a question from an up-and-coming stand-up comedian in the audience, he spoke of the plain, old-fashioned bravery involved in getting up in front of an audience that you have to make laugh. It was all quite wonderful. But then you'd figure two hours with Bob Newhart would be, right?

Bruce Bartlett explains about the National Debt: What it is, how bad it is, why certain proposals to curtail it don't make sense. I won't pretend I understand this whole thing but that's okay. Neither, apparently, do a lot of professional economists.

Well, as expected, it turns out those great prices on Amazon yesterday were a computer-type error and folks who ordered are now receiving e-mails telling them so. In some cases, Amazon is just cancelling the entire order. In some, they're reportedly saying they will honor portions of the orders that were placed. A number of customers ordered dozens, maybe hundreds of books and Amazon is going to send them a few of what they wanted at the prices that were posted.

I have no idea how they're determining who gets some of their books and who doesn't. Maybe it has to do with what they ordered…how many copies are available, what it will cost them to make good on certain items. Maybe they're taking past customer loyalty into account…I dunno. I ordered a few books that weren't mispriced and seven that were…and I haven't heard anything yet. I'll let you know what happens.

Lots of folks who peruse this site are interested in the history of Marvel Comics. One aspect that doesn't get a lot of attention is that Martin Goodman, the firm's founder and publisher (until he sold the company in the late sixties) published other kinds of magazines, as well. His outfit, which was sometimes called Magazine Management, put out a lot of cheap "men's" magazines — some with macho adventure tales, some with pictures of undraped females. A lot of notable writers worked for that side of the company, including Mario Puzo (best known, of course, for The Godfather) and Bruce Jay Friedman, who wrote many fine stories and dramatic works, including the play, Steambath.

Josh Alan Friedman is a son of Bruce Jay, which also makes him the brother of the fine cartoonist, Drew Friedman. Josh is an accomplished musician and author, and his weblog has been serializing some interviews and pieces on the history of Magazine Management. Here's Part One. Here's Part Two. Here's Part Three. Here's Part Four. And here's Part Five. I hope there will be more.

I'm going to try to make this my last post on the "In Memoriam" segment since it's a macabre topic…though it does seem to matter to more people than care about, say, who won for Sound Mixing. This article discusses some of the omissions. Its author remembers, as I didn't, that Farrah Fawcett was in Cannonball Run but he doesn't mention Henry Gibson's most impressive credit, Nashville.

Also, this is a little thing but maybe not to some folks' families. On every one these awards show, it seems — Oscars, Emmys, Tony Awards — when it comes time for the "In Memoriam" reel, the TV cameras miss a couple of the first people. They're pushing in on a long shot and the prepared presentation doesn't go full screen right away until about the third person.

The first three people in the Oscar salute last evening were Patrick Swayze, composer Maurice Jarre and western actor Monte Hale. Swayze was clearly visible but I bet most people missed the next two. With all the fuss that gets made over who gets left out of these things, you'd think the producers of an awards show would make sure that those who are in are seen.

Okay, I'm done with this topic, at least until the next awards show.

Every year, people complain the Oscars are too long. Okay, that's a fair comment. But some of them don't seem to get that the show is not more than three and a half hours because its producers keep trying to do a much shorter show and failing. The show pretty much comes in each year at the length they plan it to be, give or take ten minutes. This year's ran about five minutes over its anticipated time.

Bitching about the Oscars being too long is like kvetching that 60 Minutes runs an hour…the one key difference being that 60 Minutes tells you how long it's going to be. The sin of the Oscars that relates to its length is that they fib and say "three hours" when they know darn well it's going to be 3.5 and change. I assume that's mainly so that folks in the East Coast won't say, "I gotta go to work tomorrow…maybe I can't afford to stay up until it's over, in which case maybe it's better to not watch any of it." Or something of the sort. Saying it'll be three hours instead of three-and-a-half may fool a few people who need to be in bed by 11:30 and cause them to tune in.

Could they cut it? Sure. Dump the dance numbers. Cut most of the clip packages. Trim the long walk-ons for presenters, plus have fewer presenters. The year Jerry Lewis hosted back in the sixties, some columnist claimed, apparently as a joke, that what Jerry wanted to do with it was to stage a two-hour Jerry Lewis Special and in the last twenty minutes, he'd just open all the envelopes, bring up the winners and let them make their speeches. There have been years since when that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. (What Mr. Lewis actually did that year was a pretty typical telecast, except that he hurried through things so much that the show actually ran short — the only time they ever had to fill at the end. I believe he brought out all the winners and had them all sing "Hooray for Hollywood" or something.)

But they're never going to cut the show…much. Not unless the ratings really plunge. A certain part of the audience tunes in to see the fashion show and another portion just wants to see celebrities. Most of all though, you have to remember that the broadcast exists primarily to promote product. The studios want those clip packages in there. They want someone to come out and tell you all about films up for Best Picture…all ten of them, this year. It's really an infomercial done in formal wear. Worse, it's an infomercial that contains lots of real, unabashed commercials that go for a high price. The longer the telecast goes, the more of those the network gets to sell.

I didn't watch much of this year's but it seemed to me like either Steve Martin or Alec Baldwin alone would have been better than the two of them. If you ever want to know what show biz people mean when they say "no chemistry," that was a sterling example. Most of the speeches I saw were fine. The only thing I caught that seemed real bothersome was those moments where a friend of the nominee comes out and tells the nominee what a great human being he or she is. Yes, it is possible for there to be too much fawning at the Academy Awards.

The "In Memoriam" reel started with Patrick Swayze and ended with Karl Malden. Many on the Internet seem outraged that Farrah Fawcett was omitted and there's also a groundswell for Bea Arthur. They both had grand careers but neither was in that many movies, which is what I presume explains the decision. Oddly enough, I didn't see anyone on the web upset that Henry Gibson was bypassed. Henry was in a lot more theatrical films than Fawcett and Arthur put together…and one of Mr. Gibson's was the highly-acclaimed Nashville.

Apparently, there was a nail-biter over whether the ceremony was even going to be transmitted to Cablevision homes in New York due to a contract dispute between that outfit and ABC. The fight was settled some fourteen minutes into the show and then the remainder was available. Apparently, someone doesn't like Neil Patrick Harris…who, by the way, has now become to award shows what Charles Nelson Reilly used to be to every other kind of program. An hour or two in, I tweeted something about how New Yorkers were demanding that their cable companies stop transmitting the show.

I have no comments on any of the winners, other than that it would be nice if some day, a woman could achieve something in some field without someone cuing up the song, "I Am Woman." I suppose if the black guy had won, the band would have played "Ebony and Ivory."

Nor do I have any predictions about the ratings. The thing in New York will complicate matters a bit since even after Cablevision began carrying the show, a lot of people didn't know it. That won't lower the numbers much but what might is that there was no real emotional issue where half of America was rooting for one person or one performance. Still, you never know with these things. I would expect though to see some new record set for most Twitter Tweets in a 3-and-a-half hour period. I was following a couple of folks, including Roger Ebert, Bill Maher and Rob Corddry, all of whom were a lot more entertaining than the broadcast. Mr. Ebert's Tweets are archived here. Maybe by next year, they'll skip the televised ceremony completely and just give the awards out on Twitter. It would certainly race along nicely if winners had to keep their acceptance speeches down to 140 characters.

I mentioned here the other day that the TiVo people would soon unveil their Series 4 line, though it might be called something else. Well, about twenty minutes after I posted that, they announced the TiVo Premiere, which will ship next month. I haven't had the time yet to read all the articles and figure out if I want one or if I'll tough it out with Series 3. But if you want to jump into the fray, read this and then read this and maybe even read this. As the owner of one of the first Series 1 machines (I used it to record I Love Lucy in its first run), I have more than the typical consumer's interest in all this.

Ezra Klein explains about things like the filibuster and reconciliation. His main point is that the rules are being twisted in ways that go against both the original intended applications and also the precedents. He's absolutely right. And is there a man, woman or child alive who doubts that next time the Republicans have the majority and the Democrats are in the minority, both sides will be twisting them back in the other directions?

I'm getting e-mails with an unsourced rumor that much of the Amazon graphic novel sale was a computer error; that some of those books were never supposed to be priced so low. Possible, I suppose. Before prices reverted, I ordered about a dozen books. I'll let you know if I get them for the prices upon which I clicked. Fortunately, I have the e-mailed order confirmation.