Several e-mails inform me that Al Franken is now ahead in the recount of the Senatorial election in Minnesota. That may be so according to one set of numbers but every single ballot count (and recount) has been so close that the uncounted (or unrecounted) could easily invert the lead the next day. Who's ahead is just a function of which ballots have been tallied and which haven't…not an indicator of what the total will be. So it doesn't really prove anything that Franken is ahead today just as it didn't prove anything when Norm Coleman was ahead yesterday.

What it all does prove is that we're very, very sloppy about how we count ballots in this country. Almost every precinct recount in Minnesota has yielded a different total than the first time through. Sometimes, the change benefits one guy; sometimes, it benefits the other. The significant thing is that it's different each time. You wonder what would happen if they counted them a third time. Would we then have a third set of precinct totals? Wouldn't it be nice if we did this so efficiently that if you counted the ballots ten times, you'd get the same total ten times? That's how it's supposed to work in banking.

Hey, maybe we could bring in bank tellers to count the votes. It looks like a lot of them are going to be at liberty…

The 2009 Comic-Con International in San Diego will take place July 23-26. They've just announced some more Guests of Honor, one of whom is me. This will be the fortieth of these conventions in San Diego and the fortieth one I've attended.

Can't wait 'til then? The Wondercon, operated by the same folks, is in San Francisco February 27 thru March 1…and I'm a Guest of Honor at that, too. Wondercon is nowhere near as huge as Comic-Con International — which some folks take as a plus and others take as a minus. Either way, it's always a great convention.

Getting back to the Comic-Con for a moment: Some of you may have heard that Shel Dorf is ailing. Shel's the guy who basically started the annual comic convention in San Diego. It's grown and gone through several name changes to become the Comic-Con International we know today…but it started with Shel rallying local fans to organize the event. (I'm trying to pick my words carefully here. There's been a tendency to forget Shel's massive contribution and founding efforts…and when he does get mentioned, the pendulum swings too far in that direction and everyone else gets overlooked. A big history project is in the works that should nail it all down solid.)

I met Shel in 1969 when he told me and others of this annual event he wanted to launch. For many years, he was so much the front man and organizer that some people referred to the gathering as "The Dorfcon." The monster he birthed has gotten very large and very commercial but all of that commerce was founded on a basic love for the comic art form and the people who create in that form…and no one ever loved comics more than Shel Dorf.

Shel has been hospitalized for several months and I'm told he would welcome notes or cards from friends…or even from strangers who appreciate his contribution to the field. Tom Spurgeon posted the address here and if you could find the time to send something, I'm sure it would be appreciated. Thanks.

I can't help but derive a certain sense of reassurance every time another batch of Nixon tapes and documents gets released. He really was everything his detractors said he was. You'd like to think the Presidency would ennoble a man…cause him to rise above petty hatreds and prejudices and try to be the leader of all. But Richard Milhous Nixon truly embraced the mindset that his evil Jiminy Cricket, Pat Buchanan, summarized in an infamous memo; that it was fine to break the nation in two as long as "their side" got the bigger piece. An overlooked aspect of Watergate was the revelation of how much was done to use governmental power to reward Nixon's "friends" and punish his "enemies."

Right after Nixon was elected, there was a famous photo of him greeting crowds and one young lady was holding up a handmade sign that said, "Bring Us Together." That's a nice thought but the Nixon administration never had the slightest interest in bringing "us" together except by nuking the opposition into oblivion. Oddly enough, it was not the politics of the other side that he loathed — he made an awful lot of things on the Liberal Wish List happen. It was merely this deep-rooted belief that in life, if someone isn't demonstrably with you, they're against you…and if they're against you, you have to kill them before they kill you. I always thought it was poetic and appropriate that Nixon's political demise was largely because of what the people who were "with him" did to and for him.

A Los Angeles institution, the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, is in financial trouble. I've been there a few times — just last year for a birthday party, in fact — and it's a charming, wonderful place. Take a look at the slide show that accompanies that article and tell me it wouldn't be a shame if this Mr. Baker's business, school and workshop went away. If you live in the area, please consider booking a party there or otherwise supporting their fine work.

Have you heard what Tony Dow's been up to lately? You know Tony Dow…star of the sitcom classic, Leave It to Beaver. That's him in the above photo…with Jerry Mathers as You-Know-Who.

Well, Tony's done some acting and some TV hosting and some producing and directing…but he's also been sculpting and they say he's pretty good. He'd have to be because he was recently chosen as one of three sculptors to show at the Societe Nationale Des Beaux Arts exhibition in the Louvre in Paris later this month. One of his abstract bronzes will be on display there…and in the field of sculpture, you can't do much better than that.

Almost as great an honor is this: Tony is the guest today on Stu's Show, the fun 'n' informative entertainment chat show hosted by my amigo, Stuart Shostak on Shokus Internet Radio. And by now, you really oughta know how this works. The show is on live from 4 PM to 6 PM Pacific. That's 7 PM to 9 PM on the right-hand coast…and if you live somewhere else, you oughta be able to figure out when to tune in.

To tune in, just go to the Shokus website and click where they tell you to click. Stu's Show will come streaming through your computer speakers, loud and clear. Each episode reruns all week but listen today when it's live. It's more fun that way, plus you can phone in and ask Tony a question. In between playing Wally on Leave it to Beaver and getting into the Louvre, the man's had an amazing life and career, well worth hearing all about. End of plug.

So I'm walking through a parking lot the other day and I pass this lady…about twenty-five, I'd guess. She had that "Paris Hilton" look; not so much a physical resemblance as an attitude that said, "I'm rich and gorgeous and that's enough in this world." Sadly perhaps, that's not always wrong. To make matters worse, she was walking a purple poodle.

That's right: A purple poodle. She or someone had taken this cute little poodle and dyed its fur purple. And I don't mean a shade of white with a slight lavender tinge. We're talking serious purple. I mean, the dog was this color.

Naturally, I stared…first at the purple poodle, then at the lady, then at the purple poodle again. She said to me, "You're looking at my purple poodle."

I said, "Of course. I'm supposed to. You don't dye your poodle purple unless you want people to look at it.

She said, "She loves being purple."

I said, "No, she doesn't. She may not mind it but your dog did not wake up one morning and think, 'Oh, I wish someone would come along and dye me purple.'"

She said, "She loves the attention." And you would have been proud of me because I thought but did not say, "So do you, lady."

What I did say was, "I assume your purple poodle has a name."

She said, "Yes…Penelope. We call her Princess Penelope the Purple Poodle."

I asked, "Is she any relation to Claude Cooper, the kleptomaniac from Cleveland?" The lady had no idea what I was talking about. (If you don't, watch this.)

Since the conversation was long since over, I said goodbye and walked off. As I did, I heard her say to someone else, "You're looking at my purple poodle."

The U.S. Supreme Court makes some of its wisest decisions by just deciding not to interfere and to allow the rulings of lower courts to stand. Yesterday, they declined to interfere with a California decision that says, basically, that state law officials cannot ignore local laws that allow Medical Marijuana to be grown and used. Good for them.

That's a photo of Gene Colan. If you read a Marvel Comic in the late sixties or seventies, you know and love the work of Gene Colan. He drew most of their books at one time or another but was especially noted for long runs on Daredevil, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, Sub-Mariner, Tomb of Dracula and Howard the Duck. Great guy, great artist.

If you are anywhere near Mountain View, California this weekend, you have a rare opportunity to meet Gene Colan, shake the hand that drew all those great comics and maybe buy a signed something. Gene rarely ventures far from home these days but on Saturday, December 6, he'll be at Lee's Comics in Mountain View from 2 PM to 4 PM. If I could get there, I would but I can't. Here's all the info you need to do what I can't do.

People in Show Business love failure — others', of course, not their own. They flock around it, gloat about it, talk about it and occasionally even learn from it. Recently, a new Cirque du Soleil show opened in Las Vegas, toplined by magician Criss Angel and while it's too soon to write off Criss Angel Believe as a failure, there's already a flurry of schadenfreude in the air.

That may be understandable as it's the union of two entities that some have been dying to see suffer. Cirque du Soleil produces magnificent shows but they're a little pretentious, a little overpriced and in Vegas, a little too ubiquitous. The phrase "stretching themselves too thin" has been uttered. There are presently six Cirque shows playing there with at least three more rumored as in development. That's a lot of Cirque.

Criss Angel is a successful entertainer but his work — previously almost exclusively on television — has been criticized for certain excesses of ego and of maybe/sorta/kinda skirting the magician's television code. That's the unwritten credo that says that you don't employ camera trickery, you don't put anything on the screen that you couldn't put on a stage in front of a live audience. Most magicians who appear on the tube have stretched that principle or found loopholes in it…for example, editing a routine down so it goes much faster on television (and therefore seems more remarkable) than would be possible live. Or doing an exterior levitation feat and cropping the shot so the home viewers don't see the overhead cranes that were clearly visible to anyone who was there on tape day.

Many in the magic community admire Angel's showmanship and ingenuity but feel he has broken that credo. His partisans — and he has many — said that was nonsense and that his new Vegas show would prove how incredible he could be in a live setting. Well, Believe ain't proving anything of the sort. Not so far, anyway. There have been bad reviews and reports of terrible business, along with the inevitable jokes about the magician making his audience disappear…and those who savor the flops of others couldn't be happier.

I haven't seen the show but a magician friend who has reported that it has a few stunning and new effects — one or two that are almost worth the hefty admission price alone — but that it all fails to coalesce into a coherent, consistent presentation. Renovations are said to be underway and I'd sure like to see them pull this one off. If Cirque du Soleil and Criss Angel can simultaneously live up to their reputations, it could be a helluva good show.

Several folks have sent me links to the above photo, which is in the UCLA Photo Library. You can glimpse a larger version of it at this link. The caption on it reads…

COMIC BOOK HEAVEN — Rick Durell, El Segundo, left, operator of a gasoline station*, and Burt Blum, manager of Cherokee Book Shop, 6607 Hollywood Blvd., look over comic books in store, largest center for them in the country.

In '65, I was thirteen years old and an occasional patron of Cherokee Book Shop. It was a business which claimed (probably rightly) to have been the first store in the world to sell old comic books to true collectors. At the time, America was dotted with second-hand booksellers who offered any old comics they came across at a nickel-or-so apiece. Cherokee sought out the earliest books in the finest conditions and priced accordingly.

The business got a lot of publicity — newspaper articles that were incredulous that anyone would pay ten (gasp!) dollars for an old comic book, even if it was Superman #1 — and the impact of those articles was huge. First and foremost, it sent people scurrying to their attics and basements in search of lost treasures. They'd find old comics, phone Cherokee and wind up selling them for what seemed like glorious found money…usually less than 10% of the resale price. Then the articles would also drive new customers to Cherokee and, of course, they spawned hundreds of copycat businesses, including several within a few blocks of where it all started.

A visit to the store was an adventure. I don't believe Burt Blum was actually the manager of Cherokee Book Shop. I think his brother Jack was. But Burt presided over the comic book division, which was upstairs and open whenever Burt felt like being there. You'd sometimes go in and be told Burt was off surfing…so too bad. Even when open, the business revolved around Burt's whims. No prices were marked. You had to ask him and he'd charge you whatever his mood (and his estimate of your desperation to own that issue) told him to charge. Some fans went to enormous lengths to get on Burt's alleged good side, which I'm not sure I ever saw. Most of the time, I'd see him barking at kids to unbutton their jackets. He treated every one of us as a potential shoplifter, which was justified. There was much thievery, though usually not by the folks he suspected.

He made his real money off customers like Rick Durell, who I also knew. Rick, who passed away around fifteen years ago, claimed to have started this whole business of paying real money for real old comics. As the story went, he walked one day into Cherokee, which specialized in rare antiquarian books of other kinds. There, he met Jack and/or Burt and offered cash for perfect condition copies of Golden Age Comics. Soon, the store was locating them and in the process, it developed a client list of buyers like Rick who built huge collections — in some cases for investment; in others, to recapture their childhoods. The Durell Collection — I have no idea what became of it — was amazing. At one point, he claimed to own two dozen copies of Action Comics #1, all in perfect condition.

I never bought many comics at Cherokee. I couldn't stand the little game of humbling yourself before Burt to ask the price of a comic you wanted. The prices were often steep and you felt like a pauper if you declined the deal. Some fans I knew had developed a cozy enough relationship with Blum that he was willing to haggle a little…but he could also turn on you, decide you weren't a serious customer and order you off the premises.

But it was an interesting place to be, even if the cramped quarters and atmosphere weren't conducive to hanging around. You might meet someone famous (I met Jules Feiffer there) and you might make friends with a fellow lover of fine comics. You might also see the second act of the following drama: A kid would come in and spend, say, fifteen dollars for a copy of Batman #4 from 1941. A few days later, the kid would be back with the comic…dragged there crying and screaming by a father who'd accuse Burt of cheating his son and demand a refund. I wasn't there that often but I saw it happen at least twice, and a friend of mine who worked there estimated it as a twice-monthly occurrence.

At some point, Burt's supply of Golden Age Comics seemed to dry up. The last time I was up there, the oldest book on the premises was a Wonder Woman #12 or thereabouts. The day had passed when Burt could idly fan out a bridge hand of thirteen copies of Captain America #1, just to gloat. He began catering almost wholly to buyers like Rick Durell and opening the room upstairs only when one of them had an appointment. I have no idea when the whole enterprise closed down because by then, I didn't know anyone shopping there.

Burt Blum surfaced years later running a pretty good old book shop in Santa Monica but according to this article, it shut down in 2002. I was in there once and I knew it was Burt because someone had told me. But I didn't buy anything there that day. I was afraid I'd have to ask him the price and then, if I didn't want to pay it, he'd throw me out of the store. (No, that's not true. He was an okay guy and I wish I'd had the time or inclination to interview him about his Cherokee days. He was a pretty important part of comic book history…)

*UPDATE, added much later: The caption on the photo from the UCLA Library reads as quoted…but Rick's family tells me he didn't run a gas station. He worked for the Chevron (formerly Standard Oil) Refinery, in El Segundo.