The California Supreme Court will rule Tuesday on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the recent ballot measure that reinstated a ban on same-sex marriage. The ruling will also determine whether 18,000 (or so) same-sex marriages will continue to be recognized by the state.

As readers of this blog know, I think it's ridiculous that two folks of the same gender who are already "married" in many senses cannot be man-and-man or wife-and-wife in every sense. I also think it's inevitable that gay wedlock will become legal and commonplace, and that we'll look back on efforts to block it with much the same attitude we now have towards racial segregation or not allowing women to vote. But I'm thinking it just might not be a great thing if my state's high court decided to overturn the ballot measure. I think I'd rather see it overturned by another ballot measure…as it will be, next time we're asked to vote on it. Some polls even indicate Proposition 8 would fail if we voted on it today.

I guess I'm wondering out loud here if it wouldn't be better to do it that way, thereby making the decision The Will of the People instead of The Will of the California Supreme Court. If the justices overturn it, they may be legally correct but we'll then have to hear about "activist judges" who think they know better than the citizens of the state and are thwarting "our" decision. That kind of thing could energize the anti-gay forces just as they're losing strength. A lot of people are willing to accept same-sex marriage as something that society has decided is okay but not as something some court has forced upon us. Yeah, I know it might take longer to make gay wedlock the law of our land if we wait 'til it can get on a ballot again…but it also might make people on the fence more apt to be comfy with it and not provide swing votes for its opponents.

On the other hand, I think it would be cruel and inhumane if the court were to somehow void or rescind all the same-sex marriages that have already taken place. Those folks followed the law as it stood on their wedding days. I hope the Tuesday decision doesn't tear them asunder.

Members of the Screen Actors Guild are currently voting on a long-awaited contract. Here's a video that runs almost ten minutes which features a lot of familiar faces explaining why they're voting against it…

Not being a member of SAG, I don't get a ballot…but I have read and heard a lot of the pro and con arguments. The video above gives some (not all) of the arguments against. The "pro" arguments all seem to sidestep the question of what's actually in the contract and to make two points. One is that SAG is so deeply divided that it cannot mount the kind of strike and solidarity that would be necessary to improve it. The other is that the contract's expiration date is roughly the same as that of all the other major Hollywood unions. There is, therefore, a chance that all those unions could link arms in a few years, sing a few choruses of "Kumbaya" and mount an all-out, shut-the-town-down-'til-we-get-what-we-deserve work stoppage.

That's possible. But it's also so unprecedented and world-shaking that it's hard to have a lot of confidence that it will happen. Producers aren't, for the most part, stupid. They have calendars. They must be pretty sure they can head that off…which doesn't mean they can. Maybe they can, maybe they can't. Still, it seems foolish to me to take a bad deal this time because you're confident you can get it all back (and more) next time.

The first argument has some merit and it sadly reminds me of the way my union, the Writers Guild of America, folded in 1985 and took a terrible, terrible deal. In fact, it was such a rotten deal that it not only cost us billions but — and read the rest of this sentence carefully — it put us so far down that it practically guaranteed we'd have to strike in '88 just to dig our way out a little from the pit into which we'd been dumped.

I usually don't like penile analogies in labor matters. A contract or a strike should be about arriving at a deal that works for all parties, not about proving that someone is tougher than someone else. Still, the best way to describe what went on in the WGA back then is as follows: In '85, we gave up one testicle rather than go to war and then in '88, we had to go to war in order to keep the other one. It would have been a lot easier and less costly to fight the first war.

Alas, what happened in 1985 was that our leadership splintered and collapsed. Those of us who wanted to fix bayonets and charge into battle looked at the front of the hall and didn't see anyone capable of leading us to the men's room, let alone to war. Everyone up there was too busy fighting with everyone else. I voted against the contract but I could certainly understand the resignation of my friends who agreed it was a sucky deal but felt the game was lost and it was time to move on.

I fear SAG is now in a comparable position. What the WGA and DGA got was acceptable. The SAG offer is the same in some regards, different in others, and it adds in a lot of terms that are unique to actors and quite pernicious. In an ideal world (which despite the election of Barack Obama, we don't seem to have just yet), the actors would demonstrate grand solidarity, vote it into oblivion and within 48 hours, the producers would have a new, more benevolent one on the table. For lack of unity and leadership, that ain't gonna happen. If the contract does fail, which seems doubtful, it will be by a small margin. That's like going into a war where the other side has a nuclear arsenal and you're armed with Daisy Air Rifles.

I don't know what's going to happen except that SAG doesn't have the kind of leadership necessary to fight this thing. The Board of Directors vote to recommend this contract was 53.38% to 46.62%…pretty much split right down the ol' middle. There will probably be a lot of members who'll vote Yes because though they know the deal stinks, they feel like my friends did in '85.

How would I vote? I'd vote No but I'd brace myself for losing this one…or maybe worse, winning by a tiny margin. But fortunately, I don't have to vote. I'm not a professional actor whose career is involved with the Screen Actors Guild. At the moment, that feels like a good thing not to be.

Over on a website called Eclipse Magazine, I see the following news item…

Director Kenneth Branagh and legendary Marvel Comics writers Stan Lee and Jack Kirby have found the man they want to step into the role of The Mighty Thor and have cast Australian born Chris Hemsworth as the hammer swinging action hero.

It's nice of them to give Jack a writing credit but it's even nicer of him to help them cast their movie, fifteen years after he passed away.

Speaking of the Comic-Con, as I believe I just was: This year, to note the fortieth assemblage, the convention crew has concocted a hardcover book jammed with convention memories — hundreds of photos, old ads, reproductions of past badges, anecdotes, schedules, etc. Gary Sassaman and Jackie Estrada did the heavy lifting and…well, I just got an advance copy and it's a glorious, memory-jogging book for anyone who's ever ventured to one of these events. I haven't crawled through every inch of it yet but what I've gone through has been just about perfect.

And hey, it's worth the price alone just for the wraparound cover by Sergio Aragonés. If you look closely (see the detail I isolated below), you can spot Sergio and me being pedal-cabbed to the con. That's how we usually arrive, except that before I lost all that weight, it took six cyclists to get us there.

I dunno if the book will be available anywhere before the con but that may not matter. You're going to want to purchase your copy at the con. It'll just be more appropriate that way.

Joan Alexander, the original voice of Lois Lane on radio, has died at the age of 94. That's her in the above photo, posing with Harry Donenfeld (the publisher of the Superman comic books) and Bud Collyer, the radio voice of The Man of Steel. She was best known for that program but she appeared in an awful lot of other programs, and also had a decent career in television. Among her other jobs, she was a panelist on the game show, The Name's The Same, which we've occasionally discussed here.

This obit will tell you a lot more than I can, but it does have one thing wrong. It says she and Collyer did the radio roles in the 17 Superman cartoons produced by Max Fleischer and Famous Studios in the forties. Actually, the last few had very good sound-alikes, not Collyer and Alexander.

One thing in that obit surprised me. It said she had once been married to actor John Sylvester White, who was best known for playing Mr. Woodman, the beleaguered principal on Welcome Back, Kotter. I knew John pretty well when I worked on that show. He was a charming man who talked openly about his past, which included destroying his career for many years at a time via alcohol…but he never mentioned that he was once married to Lois Lane.

The Comic-Con International in San Diego has sold out for Thursday. Tickets for Friday and Saturday were gone weeks ago. Sunday passes will probably be gone before this month is out.

This is May. The convention isn't until July 23-26…two months from now. Amazing.

It may also interest many of you that a couple of terrific Guests of Honor have been added to an already-stellar list…the legendary comic genius Stan Freberg and his wonderful wife, Hunter. We are officially delighted.

I will be hosting my usual marathon of panels and events, including all your old faves — The Golden Age Panel, The Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel, Quick Draw!, a couple of Cartoon Voice Actor panels and many more. There'll be a special spotlight event for the First Lady of Cartoon Voices, June Foray, and one with the Frebergs, as well. The whole schedule won't be up until some time in July, I would imagine.

This will be the fortieth of these conventions and the fortieth I've attended. Matter of fact, some of the programming this year will be devoted to the history of the con, and we'll be recalling those days at the El Cortez Hotel when it was a big deal that there were three thousand people there. At this year's con, there'll be three thousand people ahead of you in line to buy a Diet Snapple. But it's still going to be great. At least, it has been the last thirty-nine times…

One of my "pet" issues is stopping the exploitation of the young and aspiring by entrepreneurs who seem (sometimes deceptively) to be in a position to make their dreams come true. In the field of cartoon voiceover work, we have a lot of folks out there who are offering "coaching" and lessons and access to agents, and kids who yearn to follow in the voicesteps of Mel Blanc and June Foray flock to them. Some charge reasonable rates and do their charges much good. But some charge them a fortune and deliver little of value. One way to separate the latter from the former is that the former often turn down potential students as lacking sufficient talent. The sleazy kind never seems to turn away anyone who has sufficient cash, no matter how little promise they may show.

Artists get scammed in different but no less scummy ways. Lately, aspiring or outta-work animators are being solicited to enter "contests" in which they labor for free on projects which may or may not ever amount to anything…and if successful, may or may not reward their volunteers. The terms might as well say, "We get everything, you get nothing except what we decide to give you." That's not good for an artist's wallet, career or soul. (Last time I pontificated on this subject, I got an e-mail from a self-proclaimed "enterpreneur" who insisted there's nothing wrong with gambling and he pointed out that I once spent a lot of time playing Blackjack. I wrote back to him that, first of all, I didn't bet my career on Blackjack, and I was also playing a game with clearly-defined payoffs if I won.)

Lately, Amid Amidi over at Cartoon Brew has spotlighted a couple of these cases of getting kids to work for free by calling it a contest. Here's one and here's another. Amid and I have friendly disagreements about many aspects of the cartoon biz but we're on the same page on this one. And I fear that with the economy zooming about like a well-greased luge ride, it's only going to become more prevalent.

The L.A. Times, a newspaper with declining sales, on the declining market for newspaper comic strips.

One of the great things about the Internet is that it brings people together. For years, I was aware of a fine TV writer named Mark Rothman. He worked on a number of successful shows, including The Odd Couple, Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days. Once in a while, someone even got us confused because, as we all know, all comedy writers named Mark might as well be the same person. We had many mutual friends but we'd never met.

We met over the Internet…and earlier this year when he started a blog, I recommended you visit it. He's a funny guy and he tells a good story. Many of you have written to thank me for sending you his way.

This afternoon, we finally met in person…over lunch at Nate 'n Al's deli in Beverly Hills. This is more or less the natural habitat of two Jewish comedy writers. He had the chicken liver plate and he squished his carrots into the mashed potatoes. I had a half a corned beef sandwich on rye and a cup of chicken noodle soup, and then I got a "to go" order which I took to my mother. I figured you'd all want this information.

We swapped stories and discovered that we knew even more of the same people than we'd previously thought. I had a great time and it reminded me to mention the following here: If you aren't going to Mark Rothman's blog, you're missing a lot of great show biz anecdotes and observations.

Conan O'Brien (who I think cut me off the other day on Barham Boulevard) is prepping to take over The Tonight Show with Jay Leno shifting to a 10 PM show. Lynn Hirschberg takes a look at how Conan's getting ready.

Last night, I had the sad chore of putting up an obit for my pal Vince Davis, who among his many other credits was the producer for several seasons of Garfield and Friends. I couldn't find a photo of Vince but Norman Quebedeau, who was one of the many fine artists who worked on that show, sent me this one that he took in the office. That's the Vince Davis some of us remember…and will never forget. Thanks, Norm.