Geoff Boucher takes a look at the collaboration of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Sorry again to be too busy to post much lately. This will change.

So I go to an appointment in a medical building on La Cienega Boulevard today and I'm waiting for the elevator. Along comes a man who is also waiting for said elevator. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye and I say to myself, "That's Christopher Hitchens." Then I turn and look more directly at him and I realize that he's not Christopher Hitchens. Not at all. Looks an awful lot like him but isn't.

I do not say one word to the man but he sees me looking at him and informs me, "I'm not Christopher Hitchens."

I laugh and say, "How many times a day do you have to say that?" He replies, "There's a certain look some people have…I'm afraid they're going to start yelling at me or trying to debate. Some people have."

Just then, the elevator arrives. We get in, I select my floor and I ask him which one he needs. He tells me, I punch it in and I say to him, "That's a plastic surgeon, I presume?"

He says, "No, but I've considered it."

That's the end of that story. Coming up in a day or so here: Why I like Jay Leno but I'm having a hard time liking his new show. Based on the ratings, I'm obviously not alone in this dilemma.

Every so often the last decade or so, we get a little stark reminder of how computers are changing the world, making some businesses obsolete. Around 1990, every typesetting house I'd ever used in Los Angeles went out of business. What had once cost $100 could now be done for free by any kid with Microsoft Word and a good set of fonts. Other markers of this kind come along from time to time. The latest for me is the announcement that the Graphix company is discontinuing its Unishade and Duoshade illustration board. I think they were the last company in the world that made this kind of art paper.

Explaining what it is will be easier if I just focus on the Duoshade variety. Duoshade board is art paper that has two patterns printed on it in different invisible inks. When you buy the paper, you also get little vials of developer fluids that make the invisible ink visible. You do your drawing in black ink and then when it comes time to add "tones" to it, you employ the developer fluids. One developer fluid brings out pattern #1, which in the example here is a pattern of lines that create a (roughly) 25% grey area on the page wherever the fluid is applied. The other developer brings out a 50% pattern. You can see this better in the enlargement below…

This, by the way, is an illustration that Jack Davis did for one of the MAD paperback books.

As you can see, what results is a drawing with two halftone patterns on it. A printer can shoot the page as line art because the "grey tones" are already screened. The paper has been used often for black-and-white illustration work, or sometimes artists employ the Unishade kind which only has one pattern. It came in very handy for years…but now that so much art is being done on computer, the halftone tools in Photoshop have rendered it obsolete. Just another thing that's gone away on us…

This is kind of a morbid topic but we've talked about it in the past. I'm speaking of the "In Memoriam" segment on the Emmy Awards. Usually, these things have a cut-off — nobody who died within X weeks of the telecast gets in. But this time, someone did some last-minute editing and included Patrick Swayze, Larry Gelbart and Henry Gibson, which was nice.

Among those who didn't get in: Jack Narz, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, Robert Novak, Don Galloway, Mr. Blackwell, Billy Mays and Beverly Garland. I always feel a bit sad for the loved ones of someone like that who doesn't make the cut. Jack Narz logged an awful lot of hours of television in his career so you wish they could have made room for a guy like that.

The first person in the montage was Edie Adams but I don't think most people saw her because the camera was slow to zoom in on the screen. They made the same mistake on the Tonys last year, as I recall…another shame. Edie Adams was a pretty important person in TV history.

Overall though, it was a nice 'n' classy tribute, especially with Sarah McLachlan singing, "I Will Remember You." Good choice. It might have ruined the moment if they'd brought up The Knack to sing, "My Sharona."

A number of e-mails asked me about DirecTV and if I like it better than my local cable options. Yes, I do. My local cable company is Time-Warner and about twice a day — via phone call, e-mail, paper mail or even someone coming to my door — I'm offered their service for increasingly low prices. If the trend continues, by November they'll be paying me to take their service.

But I don't want it. They keep saying, "We have 200 channels." Well, yes, but they're missing a number I enjoy, plus they don't have both the west coast and east coast network feeds which can be obtained in certain areas. I am in one such area so this makes it possible for the TiVo in my office to record the following each Monday through Friday for me…

• 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM — Countdown with Keith Olbermann*
• 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM — The Rachel Maddow Show*
• 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM — The Jay Leno Show
• 8:00 PM – 8:30 PM — The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
• 8:35 PM – 9:35 PM — The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien
• 9:35 PM – 10:35 PM — The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson
• Then I used to record The Colbert Report from 11 PM 'til 11:30 but for reasons mentioned earlier here, I now record the 6:30 AM showing. Finally, there's…
• 11:35 PM – 12:35 PM — The Late Show with David Letterman

(*Before anyone accuses me of watching only Liberal shows on news channels, I only watch Olbermann when Olbermann's on, I rarely watch more than a little of Rachel if that much, and earlier in the day, I usually catch a random hour or so of whatever's on Fox. Hey, did you know Obama has appointed 82,000 "czars" and George W. Bush only had three?)

So you can see why I like getting the west coast and east coast network feeds. It makes it easy to record shows that are opposite each other. (For a brief time, I also TiVoed Late Night With Jimmy Fallon after Conan and recorded Ferguson after Letterman. But I rarely got around to watching Mr. Fallon's program so I unTiVoed it and moved Craig into that slot.)

I have another TiVo downstairs on which I can record any show I want that airs while the above programs are being recorded, and then I can transfer them upstairs to watch on my office TV. But this way, I get the regular shows directly on the office TiVo and can watch them as I work or blog or do Sudoku puzzles or whatever it is I do on my computer here.

Sometimes, I tell a Time-Warner hard-seller that I would consider their service if they had the east coast network feeds and if they ran stations like Comedy Central from an east coast feed. I would imagine there's some contractual reason why they can't do this but they never say that. They say, "Uh, we wouldn't want to take up a channel slot with something that just repeats what's on another channel earlier." No, but they'll take them up for multiple shopping channels or nineteen versions of Encore, MTV or ESPN. I suspect more subscribers would rather have two bites at CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox than to get every possible gospel and shop-at-home network. On the other hand, they do run CSPAN3, which DirecTV somehow refuses to pick up.

The reason I mention all this is to wonder: How long before CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox start encouraging cable companies to carry multiple feeds of the same programming? It could only increase viewership, which is something those networks fervently crave. It works so well for me I can't believe a lot of folks wouldn't like it. Even if I had a DVR that could record two channels at the same time, it's still handy to be able to watch shows earlier. I watched the Emmys three hours before anyone local with cable got to see it. Multiple feeding may not be the next step in television but I'll bet it's not far off down the line.

One interesting new business is taking hold in Los Angeles, and I would imagine elsewhere: Food trucks. These are like the old-style catering trucks but they visit different neighborhoods with food you'd actually want to eat. They roam about and you can find out where they're going to be on their websites or via Twitter.

This page tracks a number of them, including Barbie's Q, which is the only one there I've tried so far. About once a week, they park themselves for a few hours in a business district not far from my abode and they sell pulled pork and brisket sandwiches, primarily to folks who work in that area. I got one of each about two weeks ago and thought they were quite deelish. There are a few others I've heard about that may get my business if they come 'round.

That page, by the way, links to similar pages that track food trucks in San Francisco, Portland and New York.