Once again, I have accurately predicted the future.

Where I am, it's still 93° — Fahrenheit, fortunately, though it could pass for Celsius. But it feels hotter because if you look to the north, you see huge, off-white clouds of smoke from fires in Glendale, La Crescenta, La Cañada Flintridge and Altadena. The fires are nowhere near me but it's still scary. People live up there. People are being evacuated from their homes. Many of them are now sitting in rescue centers wondering if they'll have homes to return to.

Crews are up there fighting the flames…and you can only hope that California's budget problems haven't reduced the effectiveness of that effort. Even if you're not threatened — even if no one you know is threatened — you want to think that everything that can be done is being done. I sure hope so.

I'm sorry to report that cartoonist Marty Murphy passed away on Wednesday evening. I'm also sorry to report that I don't have a lot of biographical info to pass along here. Marty was a highly-regarded and well-liked creator of funny pictures but there doesn't seem to be a lot of history available on him.

He worked extensively in animation…for a long time, at UPA on shorts and on Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, for which he was one of the main storyboard artists. He later contributed to a number of Hanna-Barbera shows including Hong Kong Phooey, Mumbly and especially Wait 'Til Your Father Gets Home, which was particularly designed in the Murphy style.

The last few decades, he was one of the privileged few gag cartoonists in the world to be published in Playboy. He was in almost every issue, often with the funniest gag. I told him once he had the best one and he replied, "I have to be funnier than anyone else to stay in Playboy. I can't draw sexy women."

A nice man, a funny man. There's a memorial service in Hollywood Monday evening and I'll bet the place is full of funny and talented cartoonists. Because that kind of person really loved Marty.

Elections in the Writers Guild are usually contentious and there are times when you wonder why anyone good braves the personal invective and decides to run at all. Our current one isn't quite as bad as some but it's heading in that direction. This article in the L.A. Times will give you a good overview of the current squabbling, which has less to do with the next negotiation than it does to do with the last one.

For whatever it's worth, I'm voting for Elias Davis and (mostly) candidates on his slate, including a few Board members who are also endorsed by his opposition, John Wells. If our silly term limits rule didn't prevent him from running for a third term, and if he wanted a third term, I'd be voting for two-term prez Patric Verrone. I have never really understood the value of any term limitations for any meaningful elected office anywhere. It's like we're saying, "Just in case an elected official does such a good job that we really want to keep him in office, we have to make sure that at some point, we can't have him."

Hey, when you have a moment, go over to the website of my buddy Leonard Maltin and read the story of how a "lost" Frank Capra movie was saved and restored. For those of us who've been saddened over the years by the deterioration and loss of old movies, it's exciting what's now being done via digital technology. And not only are movies being restored but they're also being preserved forever.

And while you're on Leonard's page, keep reading. Lots of good stuff there, including his piece on the Oliver Hardy Festival as well as that TV Stamps unveiling that we both attended.

The folks who run the Mid-Ohio-Con have assembled a nice birthday remembrance of Jack Kirby.

I'll be a guest at their fine convention October 3-4 in Columbus, Ohio. My pal Gregg Berger, one of the best cartoon voice actors out there, is also on the guest list so I imagine we'll be doing some sort of panel about acting for animation. The whole guest list is pretty impressive even if I am on it. This is always one of the best conventions…large enough to have something for everyone, small enough to not overwhelm you. Those of you who complain about monster-sized conventions would do well to attend Mid-Ohio-Con.

Our pal Jim Brochu gets a nice piece in the Washington Post all about that show of his that I keep telling you to go see if it's anywhere near you.

Hey, did you order a copy of June Foray's autobiography yet at www.juneforay.com? If you didn't, don't delay. June signed a huge pile of them Wednesday and they went in the mail that afternoon and are now en route.

If you have ordered, please read the following…

The folks offering the book have discovered a PayPal glitch. One of our friends thought he'd ordered the book but he really hadn't. He received an e-mailed receipt from PayPal that said the order was placed on Dec. 31, 1969. It had no transaction number on it. His account was not debited. And the folks fulfilling the orders on www.juneforay.com did not receive anything — no money, no notice of the order.

If you ordered a book, check your receipt or better still, check if PayPal actually deducted the fee from your account or charged your credit card. If no money was deducted from your account, your order was never transmitted.

If you can't tell that way or you just want to make sure, drop an e-mail to juneforaybook@gmail.com and say, "I think I ordered a book." If there's no record of you having ordered a book, someone will let you know that so you can order again.

Sorry about this but it seems to be PayPal's fault. An awful lot of orders have been received and filled…but at least one seems to have evaporated.

Since it's part of the season at the Ahmanson Theater downtown and I'm a subscriber, Carolyn and I went last evening to see Spamalot. It was my third time, her second….and we took along our friends Earl and Denise, who'd never seen it before. We all enjoyed it very much. Not that this means a lot but I enjoyed it a bit less than the production I saw with the National Touring Company in Columbus, Ohio and a lot more than the one I saw in Las Vegas. Carolyn liked this one better than Columbus.

The difference for me was partly in the audience and partly in the cast. The audience in Columbus seemed more like it was full of die-hard Python fans who knew little or nothing about the show in advance and therefore had many delightfully-unexpected moments. The audience at the Ahmanson seemed a tad less Python-savvy and I got the feeling that a lot of them had either experienced the show before or had seen and heard enough about it that they knew what was coming. That's always a problem with a show that depends a lot on surprise and has been around for a while.

Some members of all three casts were good but I thought overall, the folks in the National Touring Company were a bit stronger. John O'Hurley is playing Arthur here and he's quite good…and even slips in a reference to J. Peterman. The fellow playing Patsy, Jeff Dumas, is also extremely talented.

The show's here through September 6 and if you're local and haven't seen it, try to go. I don't know how much longer it will be possible to see a full-scale production with all the sets and costumes. Any month now, we'll start getting the local and community college stagings that will of necessity be produced on a thousandth the budget. I suspect some of them will be very funny and very creative because the material will lend itself to ingenious interpretations. But you oughta see it once in all its fully-mounted glory.