Various news outlets are reporting that Barack Obama has selected Joe Biden as his running mate. I hope they're wrong.

It's not that I don't like Biden. He seems like an intelligent man who's been right about foreign affairs a lot more often than your average politician. He's also a good speaker and to the extent you want a running mate to be an "attack dog," he can probably do that with great gusto and more class than most.

No, I hope it's not Biden for two reasons. One is that an awful lot of people signed up for the infamous Obama text message announcement on the belief that they'd be the first to know. That message doesn't seem to have gone out…so if it's Biden, then Obama is letting all those people down. That may sound petty but a lot of elections turn on petty matters.

I also hope it's not Biden because I enjoy it so much when the press gets something like this wrong. It reminds us that they're quite fallible. They get a lot of little things wrong but we forget that and need the big "misses" to remind us.

Also, I still think Biden looks too much like McLean Stevenson. But apart from all that, he's probably a good choice. We can now look forward this weekend to all the articles and speeches from Republicans and right-wingers explaining how Biden is the worst possible choice and how Obama might as well concede now. Of course, they'd say that about whoever was picked, just as the Democrats will say that about McCain's selection.

Apparently, Barack Obama was going to announce the name of his running mate today but he heard that I'd predicted he would. Just to make me look bad, he decided to delay. He'll probably pick Biden just to make me wrong on that count, too.

Just for that, I'm throwing my support behind Ron Paul.

For those who grew up in Los Angeles: An interview with "Sheriff John" Rovick, one of our local kids' show legends. Thank you, Rob Rose, for the link.

Fred Rupnow found a new link to the article written by Jackie Vernon's son. Thank you, Fred.

Dr. Phillip Butler is a "long time acquaintance" (his terminology) of John McCain and was a prisoner of war for an even longer time during the same period. He doesn't think McCain should be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.

One cannot help but muse what the folks who brought you the "Swift Boat Vet" attacks on John Kerry would have done with a guy like Butler. One way in which the Kerry campaign (and the media, which is supposed to watchdog what candidates and their surrogates assert) dropped the ball that year was that a lot of folks got the erroneous idea that the men in the anti-Kerry ads had actually served alongside him, witnessed him not earning his medals, etc. Butler was a lot closer to McCain than any of the guys who slandered Kerry were to him.

The big campaign news story, eclipsing even the fact that John McCain doesn't know how many houses he has, is that Barack Obama's about to announce his choice of running mate. Obviously, I have no idea who it is. I have a vague, based-on-nothing hunch that it won't be Biden, Bayh or Kaine from the "short list;" that it'll either be Hillary C. or someone who'll come as a total surprise. But I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it.

What I was mulling was when do you make that announcement? A lot of Obama campaign donors are waiting…waiting to find out via a text message which will be sent to them before the selection is revealed anywhere else. Obama is making a joint appearance tomorrow with the individual so the text message has to come before then…but it also has to come before the news leaks from some other source. If you're Obama, you don't want to rob all those donors of that little, deserved thrill. The closer you get to the time of that joint appearance, the more you risk that happening. So you'll release it today.

When I woke up about half an hour ago, I wondered if it had already been announced. Then I realized it was too early for that. You want to do it when all those donors are awake so the ones on the West Coast don't miss it. Ideally, you want them all at work or school so they can turn to everyone around them and say, "Hey, I have news for you all," and feel special. And you don't want to wait too late in the day because you want it on the evening newscasts. (Late Friday is when you release news you don't want people to notice.)

So I'm going to guess between 1 PM and 3 PM Eastern time and probably closer to 1:00. Let's all watch me be wrong about this.

My GMail account just received this message…

Your account has been randomly flagged in our system as a part of our routine security measures. This is a must to ensure that only you have acces and use of your Gmail and to ensure a safe Gmail experience. We require all flagged accounts to verify their information on file with us. This is the right link for update account page. After you verify your information, your account shall be returned to good standing and you will continue to have full use of
your account. Please note that if you don't verify your ownership of account in 2 x 24 hours we will block/ susspend your Gmail.

Thanks,
Gmail Administrator

…and in the message are links to click on…links that will allegedly verify your account and allow you to keep it. But of course, this is a scam. For one thing, the links go to a web address located in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an Australian territory. I don't think Google has any offices there.

We all get these but what got me was that this isn't even a good try. Look at the stilted language. Look at the spelling errors. "Acces?" "Susspend?" Most people don't check their e-mail addresses every day so Google is not going to shut anyone down for not responding within 48 hours. For that matter, I don't recall giving GMail much information when I signed up for the account. What are they trying to verify? I'm guessing some sort of banking data will be requested.

It's really a lousy, obvious fake. Bet it catches a lot of people.

The two gentlemen seen above are my two favorite performers in the history of the entertainment medium…a taste in which I am hardly alone. I am sorry to say that their films are not wholly and readily available on DVD in this country…a fact I attribute to a circular problem: Their films are not around so people don't know them…and since people don't know them, their films are not around. The few DVD releases have not done well…and why should they? How would a generation or two even know who these guys are and how wonderful they can be?

Every so often though, we have a brief opportunity. This coming Saturday, August 23, Turner Classic Movies is devoting their entire day to films starring Stanley Laurel and Oliver Norvell Hardy, and there are only a couple of clunkers on the list. In fact, here's the rundown with my annotations. Note that these are Eastern Times so check your schedule.

• 6:00 AM — Night Owls (1930) – Stan and Ollie help out a policeman played by Edgar Kennedy, agreeing to break into his superior's home so he can arrest them and score points with the boss. Well, what could possibly go wrong with an arrangement like that?
• 6:25 AM — Blotto (1930) – Stan and Ollie go out for a night on the town to get drunk…and manage to do so even though, unbeknownst to them, Mrs. Hardy has replaced their booze with tea. One of their funniest shorts.
• 6:55 AM — Brats (1930) – Stan and Ollie play themselves and also, thanks to trick photography, their sons. A cute, funny short. Mr. Hardy, sans mustache, makes an especially adorable toddler.
• 7:20 AM — Hog Wild (1930) – Stan and Ollie attempt to install a radio antenna on Mr. Hardy's roof. Guess how many times Mr. Hardy will fall off that roof.
• 7:45 AM — Be Big! (1931) – Stan and Ollie demonstrate why married men should never try to stand up to their wives. They're trying to go to a convention but spend most of this film trying to get Hardy's boots on and off.
• 8:15 AM — Laughing Gravy (1931) – Stan and Ollie attempt to hide a dog from their landlord. They don't do a very good job of this…but then they never did a very good job of anything.
• 8:50 AM — Our Wife (1931) – Stan and Ollie attempt to engineer the elopement of Mr. Hardy with a lady of similar girth, which means cramming everyone into a tiny car. A cameo by Ben Turpin makes this one a delight.
• 9:15 AM — Pardon Us (1931) – Stan and Ollie go to prison, get out of prison, wind up back in prison, etc. Their first starring feature started out to be a short but it got padded into a longer film and the patchwork shows. Still, there's much to laugh at, especially if you like dentist humor.
• 10:30 AM — One Good Turn (1931) – Stan and Ollie try to assist an elderly widow they think (wrongly) is about to be evicted from her home. This is the only film they made where Stan, in essence, turns on Hardy and gets mad at him — an odd twist in their relationship.
• 10:55 AM — Beau Hunks (1931) – Stan and Ollie join the Foreign Legion, as they tended to do from time to time. This was either a very long short or a very short feature but whatever it was, it's exactly the right length for the material.
• 11:35 AM — Helpmates (1932) – Stan and Ollie attempt to clean up the Hardy home before Mrs. Hardy returns from a trip. This film is highly educational in that it shows you why you should never ask Stan Laurel to help you clean your home before your wife returns from a trip.
• 12:00 PM — Bonnie Scotland (1935) – Stan and Ollie are tricked into joining the Scottish Army, which in this film functions a lot like the Foreign Legion. An okay feature but not one of their strongest.
• 1:25 PM — The Fixer Uppers (1935) – Stan and Ollie try to help a woman who feels her husband has been neglecting her. The plan is to fake an affair between Hardy and the lady to make hubby jealous. This is not a good idea.
• 1:50 PM — Them Thar Hills (1934) – Stan and Ollie escape to mountain country to soothe Ollie's frazzled nerves and wind up drunk and in a spat with a jealous husband played by Charlie Hall.
• 2:15 PM — Tit For Tat (1935) – Stan and Ollie operate an appliance store and quarrel with their neighbor, Charlie Hall. Something of a sequel to Them Thar Hills…the only time The Boys referenced one film in another.
• 2:40 PM — The Live Ghost (1934) – Stan and Ollie get stuck on a ship that's supposed to be haunted. The Boys didn't do a lot of this kind of storyline but when they did, it was always very funny.
• 3:05 PM — The Devil's Brother (1933) – Stan and Ollie in a light operetta about a fabled bandit. This is a very good film about half the time…when no one's singing and the camera is actually on Laurel and Hardy.
• 4:40 PM — Me and My Pal (1933) – Stan and Ollie each, in their own ways, manage to screw up Ollie's wedding day. With another superb performance by the great foil, Jimmy Finlayson, who was always worth watching.
• 5:10 PM — Their First Mistake (1932) – Stan and Ollie arrange for Ollie to adopt an orphan. This was by no means the first mistake these guys made but it was a pretty big one.
• 5:35 PM — Pack Up Your Troubles (1932) – Stan and Ollie get involved with another orphan — the daughter of an old army buddy. This is one of their better features though what happens is more charming than funny.
• 6:45 PM — Scram! (1932) – Stan and Ollie are ordered by a judge to leave town for vagrancy and somehow wind up breaking into his home. You get the feeling their screen characters weren't the brightest bulbs in the batch?
• 7:10 PM — County Hospital (1932) – Stan and Ollie deal with Ollie's hospitalization and Stan's attempt to drive him home through the streets of Los Angeles and past a bad rear-screen projection.
• 7:30 PM — The Chimp (1932) – Stan and Ollie attempt to remake Laughing Gravy but with a chimpanzee instead of a dog and a marital infidelity angle tossed in.
• 8:00 PM — The Music Box (1932) – Stan and Ollie attempt to deliver a piano to a house atop a very long flight of steps. This was their big Academy Award winner and Stan's pick as the best short they ever made.
• 8:35 PM — Sons of the Desert (1933) – Stan and Ollie sneak off to a convention without the wives. A lot of Laurel and Hardy fans will tell you this is the best film they ever made.
• 9:45 PM — Way Out West (1938) – Stan and Ollie attempt to help a young lady reclaim her rightful inheritance from the evil Jimmy Finlayson. A lot of Laurel and Hardy fans will tell you this is the best film they ever made.
• 11:00 PM — Swiss Miss (1938) – Stan and Ollie get stuck working at a hotel in Switzerland, where they get involved in a couple's romantic problems. A pretty good film when they aren't dealing with that couple's romantic problems.
• 12:15 AM — Block-Heads (1938) – Stan and Ollie reunite after being separated after World War I, and Ollie brings Stan home to meet the wife. Always a mistake. One of their weaker features but it has some great moments.
• 1:15 AM — The Flying Deuces (1939) – Stan and Ollie join the Foreign Legion, just for a change of pace. A pretty good film which, because it's public domain, is readily available in real crummy, chopped-up prints. Turner seems to have a good, complete copy of it.
• 2:25 AM — A Chump at Oxford (1939) – Stan and Ollie go to College in the unlikeliest of places…and Stan gets a blow on the head which turns him into a brilliant, effete intellectual. A good film with a lame ending.
• 3:30 AM — Saps at Sea (1940) – Stan and Ollie are trapped on a boat with a notorious killer. I really like the first half of this film but not so much the second.
• 4:30 AM — Air Raid Wardens (1943) – Stan and Ollie are in charge of civil defense during World War II, making you wonder how we ever won. Not one of their best.

Like I said, a pretty good list. And I will note that this website is responsible for one good thing about it. Months ago when it was first announced, they weren't showing Them Thar Hills and Tit for Tat in the proper sequence. The folks at TCM are enormously conscientious about presenting movies as well as humanly possible and they instantly took our suggestion to heart and assured me the schedule would be adjusted. As you can see above, this has been done.

You might want to set the old TiVo, especially for the 8 PM – 11 PM block, which would give you what are arguably their best short and two best features. I hope TCM does more of this as they're about the only way a couple of new generations will have the chance to see these two wonderful performers…and maybe create a market for the kind of DVD releases we should have had years ago.

I spent much of Tuesday evening waiting, waiting and waiting for a prescription renewal at my local CVS Pharmacy. It took them close to 35 minutes to figure out how to bill my secondary insurance, thereby saving me about $20. If I'd known at the outset it would take that long, I'd have eaten the twenty bucks and split…but I always thought it would just be two more minutes.

One reason my matter took so long is that the staff of six was made up of one actual pharmacist and five assistants who, if they put their five heads together, couldn't have told you how often to take a One-a-Day Multiple Vitamin. The pharmacist was the only guy who knew anything — or had the power to do anything — and he was so busy straightening out problems that he wasn't filling prescriptions, adding to the backup.

The biggest crisis during my time there involved a rather attractive blonde lady who was two days from running out of Wellbutrin, which I gather is a powerful antidepressant. She had a prescription for another batch and she had insurance to cover most of the cost of the drug…but due to a clerical error by the CVS folks, a form for "prior authorization" was not filed. If it had been, the price would have been around $40. Since it wasn't, the price was around $300, which she does not have and would resent paying if she did.

One of those assistants told her she should either pay the $300 or come back in however many days it will take for the prior authorization to be filled out by her doctor (who's on vacation) and then processed by her insurance firm. Raising her voice enough to be heard throughout the store — and probably at a nearby Walgreens — she yelled, "Don't you understand? I run out of pills in two days and I can't afford to pay three hundred dollars!"

The assistant told her to calm down. She replied, "The Wellbutrin is to calm me down. If you think I'm upset now, wait'll I come back here in three days!" And then suddenly, she was like Bill Bixby playing The Hulk: "You won't like me when I don't have my Wellbutrin!"

That finally caused the pharmacist to step in and referee. This meant going through the whole story again, with the lady getting so agitated that he finally handed her a small bottle of Wellbutrin — a "loan" against the quantity she'll eventually receive. He also promised to personally expedite the authorization. It all kept a lot of people, myself included, waiting for an awfully long time.

The pharmacist seemed like a smart, decent guy and when he finally got around to my problem, he solved it in under two minutes. I couldn't resist asking him what percentage of his time there he spent actually filling prescriptions and what percentage was consumed by bureaucratic business like dealing with insurance screw-ups. He said, "10% prescriptions, 80% insurance, 10% other paperwork." If I'd gone to school and studied all sorts of potions and pills and however much medicine you need to know to fill prescriptions, I think I'd resent spending my days on the phone to Blue Shield. And I'd be real afraid of that lady who was almost out of Wellbutrin.

Hey, you know those flight attendant admonitions to turn off your cellphones and other electronic devices? Well, we may not be hearing them much longer. American Airlines will be offering wi-fi (for a fee) on their flights and others will follow. This article explains about it and quotes my old pal Joe Brancatelli as being skeptical about the whole thing, at least from a business standpoint.

We've been following the case of Juan Manuel Alvarez, who in 2005 parked his SUV on some commuter train tracks in Los Feliz and caused a wreck that killed eleven people and injured more than 180 others. I had a little trouble fathoming why the trial of this guy had to take more than about twenty minutes.

Alvarez begged for forgiveness and claimed that it hadn't occurred to him that anyone on the train would be injured. Yeah, I can see where you might not think that parking your SUV on train tracks and dousing it in gasoline could possibly do any harm.

Today, a judge sentenced the guy to eleven consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole. His Honor further said he wished he'd been able to just sentence him to prison "forever," as if that would be longer than the sentence that was imposed. Frankly, I'll be very surprised if Alvarez serves out more than eight life sentences even though stupid dies hard.