Ye Olde Comic-Con International has posted their programming schedule for Friday. Again, you might want to take a look and see what events you'll attend when you're not at one of my panels. My whole list should be up over the weekend.

Still working way too late…

The Comic-Con International programming schedule for Thursday has been posted. I'll have the list of the events I'm hosting (i.e., the ones you really want to attend) in a few days here.

I haven't written much here about the budget mess in my state, mainly because there's not much more to say than that it's a mess. Not that long ago, we ousted a governor named Gray Davis and replaced him with one named Schwarzenegger because, among other reasons, we were afraid that if we didn't, this kind of thing would happen. Well, guess what.

I concur with my pal Robert Elisberg about the root of the problem. The root is that we have this daffy system here of grass roots propositions. It sounds oh so democratic in theory but in practice, it ain't working so well. Everyone wants the roads paved, the schools improved, the infrastructure upgraded…but nobody wants their taxes to go up to pay for any of that. The system makes it easy to vote to spend without any connection with how to pay for those expenditures.

Bob correctly fingers one of the architects of my state's current woes — the late Howard Jarvis, who in '78 spearheaded Proposition 13, the aptly-numbered initiative that froze property taxes and other fees. I thought Mr. Jarvis was a horrible man even before that. He spent a lot of time 'n' money trying to ram through bills that said, in essence, that if I'm your landlord, I can do any damn thing I want to you, including tearing up contracts and raising your rent or evicting you whenever I feel like it. He never achieved most of the items on his wishlist but just Prop 13 has been pretty devastating. It basically turned into an invite for the state to spend money it didn't have and couldn't get.

So now the whole of California is one big Ponzi scheme and it's living off credit cards. I seem to remember that in 1978, there was a ballot initiative that was offered as an alternative to 13 by our then-governor, Jerry Brown. There was this sentiment up and down the state that property taxes were too high and were being raised too capriciously. In the hope of heading off 13 and the disasters it could bring, Brown and some others offered a bill that would have limited property taxes but allowed for them to be raised under certain circumstances, mainly if the public thought a given expenditure was worth it.

Jarvis and his group steamrollered over that proposition…which was a shame. I suspect it would have given them most of what they wanted but in a way that would have prevented what we're now facing. It's interesting that Jerry Brown intends to run again for the governorship in 2010. Yeah, I know he acts a little weird and he seems to have the sense of humor of a dead marmoset. But California never had better financial discipline than during his terms of office and that's what we need now.

He's not as well-known as a lot of folks who've left us recently — and at age 96, his death does not come as a shock — but we have to note the passing of Bob Mitchell last Saturday.

In the above photo, Bob is seated at an organ. It seemed like Bob was always seated at an organ. He played one for the L.A. Dodgers between innings. He played in a wide array of venues to accompany silent movies. He was especially good at punctuating the moments and beats in a film, improvising with a perfect sense of scale — never too grand, never too subtle. He made a lot of great movies even better for a lot of us.

Bob did other things as well, mostly in the area of choir music. This obit will tell you about some of them. I just wanted to tell you how good he was at what he did.

This will only be of interest to those attending the Comic-Con International in San Diego…

Up until a few years ago, a favored place for lunch or dinner was the Old Spaghetti Factory, located at 5th and K Streets, an easy walk from the convention center. The wait for a table was sometimes long but if and when you could get in, you could get a pretty decent plate o' pasta for not much money. It was one of the easiest, cheapest places to grab a meal, especially if you had kids with you.

So many were heartbroken when the place tuned into Dussini's Mediterranean Bistro, serving a more upscale, expensive Italian menu in fancier surroundings. Everyone I know who went there felt it wasn't as good and it certainly wasn't as easy on the wallet. Ergo, they should be happy to see on this website that the proprietors have kept the Dussini bar area but turned the rest of the building back into an Old Spaghetti Factory. And like the Comic-Con, the Old Spaghetti Factory is celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year.

In other San Diego Restaurant News: A lot of us were saddened when before last year's con, the down 'n' funky Kansas City Barbecue Company was closed by a fire. Well, it's back, too. They reopened for business last November. Assuming they haven't ruined it in reconstruction, it serves pretty good 'Q, especially the chicken sandwich. And if I had any brains, I wouldn't be posting this because now you'll all be there ahead of me, waiting for a table.

There's a commercial they run every few seconds on MSNBC for an online backup storage service called Mozy. In it, a lady says the following…

For only $4.95 a month, you get unlimited storage. That's enough space to back up your entire computer.

Uh, isn't "unlimited storage" enough space to back up every computer in the world a trillion times? I mean, it's unlimited, right?

It's been a few months since I put one of these up. I have to replenish my PayPal account with funds…and this isn't even because I've been buying weird stuff on eBay. I just need to dispense some bucks for good causes.

Hayao Miyazaki, who is to Japanese anime what Walt Disney was to American animation — an obvious analogy but not a bad one — will make a rare appearance at the Comic-Con International in San Diego. The New York Times has an article about this…and even quotes me.

Among the most popular things we offer at this site are three columns that I wrote about what I call "Unfinanced Entrepreneurs." Basically, these are folks who want to hire you to write or draw things and you'll get paid much later, if at all. The first of these columns can be read here and then that link will lead you to the others.

Writers and artists are always being nudged, coerced, conned, shoved or otherwise trampled into providing their services for future money and/or low money, too much of which turns out to be nonexistent money. In some cases, they may be persuaded (or may persuade themselves) that it's bad for the soul to be too militant about being compensated; that a True Artist creates for the joy of creation and that you don't want to be the mercenary kind of creator, or have anyone think you're of that bent. We have a name for people who think that way…

We call them chumps. And usually, they're chumps who subsist in a constant struggle to make their rent payments or stop their bank from sending "the boys" over to surgically remove a Visa card. General rule of thumb: You're not going to write the Great American Novel (or anything) if your electricity's been turned off.

As the economy in our nation gets worse — and as technology makes it easier and easier to look like a publisher or producer while one is sitting at one's computer in one's skivvies — this problem worsens. I dunno how many calls I've gotten lately from writer and artist friends who've been screwed eight ways to Sunday on some recent project. Sometimes, the screwing has been done by companies of great reputation…folks who actually have the money they're not paying. Most of the time though, we're talking about "companies" (note the quotation marks) that are kiting the entire enterprise, hoping they can stall paying you until your work makes them a profit and then they can pay you out of those profits.

And when they don't make profits — or don't make enough to pay themselves and you — guess who doesn't get paid.

I'm probably repeating some of the things I said in those columns but they bear repeating. If you want to write and/or draw, it's easy to lead with your heart. You want to create things. You want them to be published or produced. You see others making nice livings doing what you think you should be doing. So when someone comes along who says, "I can publish [or produce] your work," you want to believe it's all going to work for everyone's benefit.

Waaaay too often, it does not. You need to develop a nose for opportunities to work for nothing. You need to be able to sniff out the ones who have zero or close to zero chance of actually getting the book published, getting the movie made, getting your work before the public. And within the tiny subset of those who actually have the resources, knowledge and funding to get the book or movie out, there's a tinier subset of entrepreneurs who will actually cut you a check that will clear. I've been fortunate enough that in the forty (My God) years I've been a freelance writer, I've made a good living and usually managed to avoid the eels. But I've been duped or swindled at times, many of which were instances where I just plain shoulda known better.

I mention all this because first of all, we all need that constant reminder. If you think you're creating something of value, treat it as something of value. No one else will if you don't. That means insisting on being paid that value and not in hypothetical, down-the-road bucks. There are times when it makes sense to invest but when you do, you have to think a little like an investment banker. Their success is 100% contingent on knowing which stocks are good gambles and recognizing that many are not.

I also mention this because I've been reading the blog of Colleen Doran. Colleen is an artist of exceptional skill and spirit. If I were a publisher in a position to do so, I would hire Colleen and lob large sums of cash at her — in advance! — because the work she would do for me would make me even larger sums of cash. It is appalling that anyone like that is ever wronged by publishers…or that any publisher could be so inept at publishing that they couldn't make money issuing the work of Colleen Doran.

She is courageously blogging about some of her experiences in order to aid others. I don't know the specifics of her encounters but the kind of thing she discusses definitely happens and it happens way too often.

One sound point she makes is that you should never be afraid that by standing up for your rights and refusing to be exploited, you can get a rep as a troublemaker and can somehow be "blacklisted." That does not happen. There is no way a sleazy publisher or producer can do much more than simply decide he or she doesn't want to deal with you again.

This is not a bad thing and can be a very good thing, indeed. In those forty years of writing for dough, the only employers who have ever decided never to deal with me again because I stood up for my rights and contract were folks I wouldn't work for again if they paid me in advance and in cash. I'd probably figure the cash would bounce. There are some where it's just like getting in the snake pit. If you get in, you're going to get bitten and it's your own damn fault. Don't act so surprised when the cobra strikes. That's what they do.

To read Colleen's tales of woe, start here and go forward. And do not get discouraged because it's so bad out there for so many talented folks. Instead, the trick is to feel empowered by knowledge and awareness. Colleen is sharing some of her mistakes with you so you don't have to make them yourself.

I'm getting up entirely too early.