Some numbers to keep in mind…

With no fanfare and little notice, the national debt has grown by more than $4 trillion during George W. Bush's presidency. It's the biggest increase under any president in U.S history.

On the day President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $9.849 trillion. That's a 71.9 percent increase on Mr. Bush's watch.

And this is before we pay for the big bailouts…

Historians of such things write of the four great silent comedians: Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon. Of these, my favorite is Keaton but the most interesting one may be Langdon, whose stardom was brief and whose best work was confined to a handful of memorable films. He started out making shorts for Mack Sennett in 1924 and soon broke out of that studio's brand of fast-paced, faceless slapstick. Langdon, more so than any other silent comic, took his time on the screen. His expressive, cherubic face enabled him to connect with audiences. Back then, most of the other comedians were either expressionless like Keaton or wearing the human equivalent of clown masks. Langdon was unique and when he was good, he was very, very good.

A star by 1925 and a has-been by 1928, he bounced around the film business as a performer and sometimes a writer (for Laurel and Hardy) until his death in 1944. His story, on-screen and off, is told and told well in a book by my buddy Bill Schelly and I'm here to recommend the new, improved edition. Bill's done a tremendous job of digging up information about a great comic whose life has been sadly under-reported. I've read darn near everything ever published about silent comedians and this book told me plenty I didn't know. Order a copy here.

Comicraft, maker of the finest comic book lettering fonts, is having a "bailout sale" on Display Lettering Fonts. Good time to buy.

McCain's not going to drop Palin from the ticket. Early voting starts tomorrow in Ohio and has already begun in a couple of other states. What happens to those ballots? I don't know but it can't be good for McCain…especially since this may be another election that gets decided in Ohio.

The joint appearance of McCain and Palin with Katie Couric today was embarrassing…for her and for McCain. I know a lot of people think the Governor of Alaska is being hammered by the opposition but, first of all, that kinda comes with the job. More to the point, nothing anyone could say about Sarah Palin could make her look as bad as being treated like an idiot by her own campaign. They hide her away, keep her from most of the press…and then when she does say something, McCain goes out and retracts it and makes excuses for her. That tape of them with Couric looks like a father and his daughter sitting in the principal's office and on the way in, dad told her, "You've caused enough trouble. Just shut up and let me handle this."

Some time after the election, someone in the McCain campaign will either write or be interviewed for one of those "what went on behind the scenes" books and we may find out if a running mate switch was ever seriously considered. I'll bet it was and they rejected it as a cure worse than the disease.

She'll probably do a lot better in the debate than most people are expecting. But that's because most people are expecting her to stumble out, sound like an airhead valley girl and explain that "Roe vs. Wade" are two different ways to cross a river. The woman has got to be smarter than the current caricature…even if her own campaign doesn't seem to believe it.

That's Stan Kann on the left in the photo at left.  With him is Johnny Carson and this was probably taken at The Tonight Show on one of 77 nights when Stan Kann was a guest.

Mr. Kann was a ubiquitous talk show guest for years, appearing with Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin and others. He was a concert organist and TV host who had a unique collection of old inventions and gadgets, many of them vacuum cleaners. For a time, he performed at the Fox Theater in St. Louis and appeared on a local TV show hosted by Charlotte Peters, the mother of cartoonist Mike Peters.

Kann moved to Los Angeles in 1975 but flew all over the country to make appearances. When Johnny Carson or some other host needed someone to fill a spot, they'd often call on Stan to show up with an array of his gizmos, most of which did not work when he attempted to demonstrate them. Kann was frenetic and filled with energy and often clumsy as he tried to get his exhibits operating, and audiences often found it very funny. Johnny Carson would act annoyed but he knew it was good television and would always invite Stan and his silly machines back again and again.

As this obit tells us, Stan Kann died recently at the age of 83. A memorial service at the Fox Theater is planned and I think it would be a lovely tribute to his act if the curtains refused to open and the microphone didn't work.

I spent a fun afternoon today at the Google offices in Santa Monica, giving a talk to people who wanted to know all about Jack Kirby. It was video-conferenced to other Google offices and will be a YouTube video in the next week or two. When it is, I'll point you to it in case you'd like to see me babble for an hour and knock over the microphone stand.

The visit was fascinating. I'd heard what a great place Google is to work so it was nice to see it. If I had a big company, I'd run it like that. The offices are friendly and fun, with plenty of leisure activities (videogames, pool table, etc.) and free snacks and beverages around for the employees. Lunch in the cafeteria is free and the food, at least today, was excellent. I thought of a half-dozen places I've worked and wished I could have shown the boss around the Google offices and reminded him that no company founded in the last few decades has been more successful.

Also fascinating was a display in the lobby…a screen that shows search terms people were inputting into Google. It didn't show who was typing those searches into the little box but it did show what they were searching for. I saw two searches for info on people I know — one for The Pendragons (the great illusionists) and one search for Tress MacNeille, a fine voiceover actress who I directed in a session just last week. I also saw a number of searches that indicate that a lot of people don't spell so well…and quite a few that consisted of the name of a female celebrity (or in one case, "Mini Me") and the word "nude."

In addition to the good feelings, I came home with a goodie bag that they give to visitors. Not to brag but I am now the proud owner of a Google yo-yo. I haven't thought of a joke about it yet but I have a feeling there is one.

From "Bodwell" comes this question…

You said you found much of the debate dull. In all seriousness, what would you have done to make it more interesting? And is the purpose of a debate to be entertaining?

Entertaining? Not necessarily. But I think they're interesting when they tell you things and show you sides of the participants you didn't know.

Each of these candidates — anyone who's likely to ever be in a Presidential Debate, certainly — has certain stock set pieces and mini-speeches they've developed to all the obvious questions. If you ask anyone running for President these days, "What should we do about Iraq?," they have a rote answer. We don't need a debate to let us hear that. We can hear it in any of their speeches or town hall meetings.

What I'd like to see in these debates is candidates who are knocked off their scripts. I'd like to see them asked questions for which they don't have well-honed replies. Or at least, if they do get to trot out their house numbers, have some sort of follow-up that challenges them to defend the leaps of fact and logic in those canned responses. My problem with Jim Lehrer's moderating the other night was that he kept saying it was "time to move on to the next topic" at moments when they seemed to be about to stray from the expected dialogues.

I'd like to see more of the kind of thing some people call "gotcha" questions. Reporters are afraid of them because they don't want to be criticized if and when one candidate embarrasses themselves. I don't think there are any unfair questions unless they're setting one candidate up to spike the ball on the other. Why not ask the candidates if they can briefly describe each of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights? Or name the leaders of a couple of foreign nations where the rulers' actions may affect U.S. security? The point is to ask questions where the candidate can't just parrot a rehearsed answer. I always think it's telling when a person who wants my vote doesn't know what the Minimum Wage is or what the average person pays for health insurance.

That yearning for the all-too-rare candid response is why I always liked Helen Thomas in presidential press conferences. I know Republicans hate her but she also asked blunt, uncomfortable questions of the Democratic chief execs she's covered. It's said that before Nixon went before the White House press, his aides would prepare a list of every possible question that could be asked and Nixon would prepare responses to each of them. Then Helen would always ask something that wasn't on the list. I'd like to see a debate in which most of the questions are unanticipated. That wouldn't mean avoiding the obvious pressing issues. It might mean asking about more specific aspects of them. Did Lehrer ask anything that the candidates' aides couldn't have expected?

Palin and Biden are going to get an unprecedented tune-in for a Battle of the Wanna-Be Veeps. They both have the reputation, deserved or not, of blurting out unpredictable things. It's not so much, I'd like to think, that viewers will be hoping for a live Bloopers show with someone saying something embarrassing. I think they just want to see candidates without scripts. McCain and Obama didn't have scripts or TelePrompters but they'd said some of those things so often, it didn't matter.

A gentleman named T.J. Rohr is running as a Libertarian for the 87th North Carolina State House. He's a practicing attorney currently serving his second term as a Lenoir City Council member. You can read some of his positions here on his weblog and you can make a donation to his candidacy at his website.

So why am I mentioning this? I don't live in North Carolina and though I agree with many Libertarian positions, I'm not one of them.

I'm mentioning it because Mr. Rohr is a fan of many of the comic books I write. He has boxes of Groo the Wanderer and DNAgents and Crossfire and I hope my revealing that will not cost him the election. You see, I'll shill for almost anyone who buys my comics…so if you're in North Carolina, take a peek at his platform and if you like it, give him your vote and maybe a few bucks.

So busy am I with deadlines that I could only spare about two hours today for the West Hollywood Book Fair, one hour of which was consumed by appearing on a panel I'll tell you about in a moment. The other hour was spent wandering a friendly assemblage of (mostly) small publishers and small booksellers. I missed Vince Bugliosi (who had the longest line you could imagine at Book Expo America) but he couldn't have had more people than Robert Wagner, who was there signing his autobiography…and looking every inch a movie star.

There was one fellow there who was one of bravest men I've ever seen. He had not a booth but the corner of someone's table and he was set up to urge people to support Proposition 8 in the upcoming election. That's the one that would ban gay marriage. This is in West Hollywood. Talk about having a bad corner: That's like trying to drum up support for a Klan meeting in Harlem. I saw a couple of people (all seemingly straight) being hostile to him but I saw even more pause to talk and try and understand his worldview.

I doubt he'll matter. All indicators suggest that Proposition 8 is going down to defeat…and probably not by a narrow margin, either. Even Google thinks it's time. My Conservative friends (I have more than you think) accept this…all but one whose attitude reminds me of the old joke: "He's against making homosexuality legal because he figures the next step is to make it compulsory."

There was also an area where I saw an Obama-Biden table next to a McCain-Palin table. At least when I was strolling past, no one was showing much interest in either and the folks manning them were engaged in amiable chatter with each other. It's interesting to me how little Californians care about the vote in California. They care like mad about who becomes President of these United States but the contest for California's electoral votes was over long ago. Like before we knew who the Democrat and Republican were going to be.

Then I appeared on a panel about comics which was recorded as a podcast for Comics on Comics, an endeavor with comedians interviewing folks who do comics. I appeared with Gregg Hurwitz, who among other gigs has been writing Punisher projects for Marvel. It was a fun hour and I'll link you to it just as soon as it's on ye olde web.

And that's about it. Back to those deadlines…

A follow-up to our previous posting. Earlier today, this news story was on the wires…

(PHILADELPHIA) Sarah Palin told a customer at a Philadelphia restaurant on Saturday that the United States should "absolutely" launch cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan in the event that it becomes necessary to "stop the terrorists from coming any further in," a comment similar to the one John McCain condemned Barack Obama for making during last night's presidential debate.

Now, we have this one…

WASHINGTON (CNN) Sen. John McCain retracted Sarah Palin's stance on Pakistan Sunday morning, after the Alaska governor appeared to back Sen. Barack Obama's support for unilateral strikes inside Pakistan against terrorists.

"She would not…she understands and has stated repeatedly that we're not going to do anything except in America's national security interest," McCain told ABC's George Stephanopoulos of Palin. "In all due respect, people going around and…sticking a microphone while conversations are being held, and then all of a sudden that's — that's a person's position…This is a free country, but I don't think most Americans think that that's a definitive policy statement made by Governor Palin."

That's just embarrassing. McCain has spent the last three decades in an arena where everything a candidate says is fair game, including casual remarks. His reps and advertising folks pounce on every little thing Obama and Biden say and it's understood they will. What's the most charitable interpretation here? That Palin didn't know what she was talking about? That sure speaks well of putting her a heartbeat away from you-know-what. I'm surprised he didn't retract her order of the Cheese Whiz while he was at it.

Folks keep e-mailing me predictions that Palin will "resign from" (i.e., get kicked off) the ticket any day now. I've never believed that because it seemed to me that no matter how things were phrased, the rest of the campaign would have been about McCain having lousy judgment on his most important campaign decision. This would be on top of him having lousy judgment in the Iraq War. But if he has to go around "retracting" everything his running mate says, then the rest of the campaign will be about his lousy judgment in picking her, anyway. Given that McCain loves to gamble — in life and, if this morn's New York Times is to be believed, in casinos — maybe he'll try it.

So, let's see…how would this work? The post-debate polls come out Monday. Obama is 5-6 points ahead in most of the pre-debate polls. Let's say he's 8-9 up in the new ones. Palin calls a carefully-scripted press conference (no questions) Monday afternoon to announce that she has family matters to deal with, an unfair "witch hunt" of an ethics investigation, etc. No one has asked her to quit but she's bowing out for the good of the cause and God Bless John McCain. McCain "reluctantly" accepts her resignation, says he's asked the Republican National Committee to quickly convene whatever kind of quickie gathering is necessary to nominate someone new. Thursday's debate, of course, is off. Sarah Palin totally vanishes for a while, only to reappear after her term of office is up as the Oprah of Fox News.

A day or two after she quits, McCain names someone new…someone who's been a lot more carefully vetted. That would probably mean someone roadtested in past presidential races, which lets out all women. It would have to be someone sufficiently right-wing that McCain wouldn't lose all the rabid Conservatives who loved gun-totin', anti-abortion Palin. It would also have to be someone with strong Wall Street cred since that's the issue where McCain is really getting hammered. Sounds to me like Mitt Romney…but of course, that's if McCain is being logical, which has not been a sound bet lately. Or maybe he'll feel it has to be another woman, lest he lose too much of the female vote. Or maybe it'll be a real Hail Mary pass and he'll go with Larry the Cable Guy or…

Naw. It's all too much of a gamble, even for McCain. He'll stick with Palin. Unless he doesn't.

One of the sillier rituals of political campaigning — they all do it, they should all stop doing it — is when the candidate goes around and shows "he (or she, in this case) is 'one of us'" by nibbling on the local cuisine. It's Al Gore eating a taco on the assumption that's the key to the Mexican vote. It's Mitt Romney proving he understands the needs of Italian voters by wolfing down a slice of pizza. For a while, candidates thought the way to the Jewish vote was to go to New York and be photographed in a deli with Ed Koch.

This is the lowest form of pandering. There might be something significant to the candidate physically going to certain neighborhoods if there was any reason to believe he or she would go to them (or ever return) except as a campaign photo-op. But it always struck me that whether they knew it or not, this wasn't a politician trying to get the ethnic vote so much as the stupid ethnic vote. You'd have to be pretty dumb to believe a candidate shared your views, felt your pain and bonded with your people just because he or she spent an hour in your part of town eating something greasy and fattening.

The essential stop on any such swing is Philadelphia and one of the many fine establishments that offer Philly Cheese Steaks. A fuss is always made when a candidate does this…and like I said, they all do this and they should stop doing this. Not that there's anything wrong with Philly Cheese Steaks. I like 'em, too. But it matters way too much, when it shouldn't matter one bit, which stand they go to (Pat's or Geno's) and whether the candidate has his "wiz wit." Never mind what they'd do about the economy or whichever war we may be in…does the person who wants my vote know to order theirs with Cheese Whiz and onions — and do they know the language of ordering?

This ceremony reached some peak of inanity the year Bob Dole was running for Prez. Senator Dole was hustled to one of the steak shrines and handed a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich dripping with sauteed onions and Cheese Whiz to bite into for the cameras. What's wrong with that? Well, Dole only has one working arm. It is humanly impossible to eat a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich with one hand.

There was a look of panic on his face as the sandwich was thrust at him. I suspect Bob Dole could have faced down nuclear superpowers without flinching but he was genuinely terrified that the press was about to photograph him getting onions and gooey cheese all over his face and clothes.

Fortunately, his aides were ready. One rushed in with a sandwich that had been cut into bite-sized chunks and which had been cooked long enough before that the cheese had hardened somewhat. This just pointed up the absurdity. Grown men had actually planned for this. They'd sat around a conference room somewhere and said, "We need to have our guy photographed eating a Philly Steak Sandwich but he can't eat a Philly Steak Sandwich…what'll we do?" And they worked out that they'd get the photos of him with the entire sandwich, then switch it for one he could take a bite or two of. Reportedly, that's all he ate — a bite or two.

Bill Clinton carried Pennsylvania by 9%. I'm glad he won but I sure hope it wasn't just because he was able to eat his sandwich with two hands.

Anyway, I mention all this because yesterday, Sarah Palin made her stop on the Cheese Steak Tour. She did not go to either of the two biggies, Pat's King of Steaks or Geno's. She went to Tony Luke's. While there, she actually answered a question. Someone asked her about what we might do in Pakistan and she took much the same position that her running mate called reckless when it was voiced by Barack Obama. That's a bit of news…but I fear it mattered more to some people that she had her cheese steak "wit" Cheese Whiz and onions.

Here's a little more on that story about KNBC (the local NBC channel in Los Angeles) deleting that train collision joke from an episode of Late Night With Conan O'Brien.

There's a lot of discussion on this around the Internet. What the discussers don't realize is that the deletion under discussion — the one I linked to where KNBC newsperson Colleen Williams interrupted — was the second time this was done.

The first was Friday, September 12, the day of the Metrolink crash. Conan did this bit called The Celebrity Douchebag Collider which involves two model trains having a head-on collision. He taped the gag well before the Metrolink accident and later that evening, KNBC got a call from New York that said, in essence, "Hey, take a look at this before it airs in Los Angeles. It might be a problem." The folks at the local station took a look and decided it would be bad taste. Bodies were, after all, still being hauled out of the wreckage of a real head-on train collision.

So they did a live news cut-in during Conan's show…an update on what was going on at the accident site, I believe. Whatever it was, it caused the train joke not to be seen in Los Angeles. They did not explain that the news insert was being done to avoid broadcasting a possibly-offensive joke.

On the show for Monday night, September 22, Conan did another Celebrity Douchebag Collider bit. Again, KNBC decided to not air it but instead to insert a news cut-in. This time, they had the anchor (Ms. Williams) explain that they were doing a news update to avoid telecasting a possibly-offensive train collision joke. I would assume they mentioned it this time because it seemed so bizarre and out of place. (The first time didn't seem so odd because the report from the crash site was relevant and timely news.)

Remember I said I wasn't sure how I felt about KNBC doing this? Now that I know more of the story, I'm more inclined to think they did the right thing. It was right to do it the first time. A lot of people were still in shock over the accident, in some cases because they'd lost friends or loved ones. And since it was right to do it then, it seems a little more right to do it the second time.

This is a little different from the way I felt some time ago regarding a somewhat similar incident. In that instance, an episode of The Tonight Show did not air as planned due to a large airplane crash. I thought then the concern was a needless worry but this matter of the train crash is different. I think KNBC made the proper call.

My longtime buddy (since high school) Bruce Reznick sent me a link to an article by Stefan Kanfer about how younger audiences have too often rejected motion pictures for being in black-and-white. Like anyone with a smidgen of taste or brains, I think it's bonehead foolish to not want to see a film because it lacks color…but I also think we sometimes make too much of that as a reason. To some extent, the folks who avoid black-and-white do so because they associate it with movies that are so old as to seem irrelevant to them. It's the remoteness of the material that's scaring them off, not the black-and-white. If we're going to fault people for not appreciating great movies, let's get their mindset straight. They wouldn't be any more eager to see that hoary Bette Davis film if she were in Technicolor.

Frankly, in this piece, I think Kanfer overstates his case. I don't see the nine Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals in black-and-white as inferior to color pictures like Singin' in the Rain and An American in Paris. I just think he likes Fred better than Gene Kelly…a preference I do not share but can understand. I also think the glories of Mr. Astaire would have been just as bountiful if those movies had been made in color.

The point is that many younger folks do have a prejudice but it's mainly to the fact that a movie is unknown and features people they haven't heard of functioning in a world they don't know. Black-and-white is usually just the indicator of that. Once the recalcitrant filmgoer is forced over that hurdle — once someone makes them experience something new — there's a good chance they'll like it. In Kanfer's article, a bunch of high school kids reacted negatively at first to the notion of watching Twelve Angry Men because it was in black-and-white. But they watched it and they liked it and I don't see what the problem is here.