Time to introduce you to another one of my zillions of weird and/or talented friends. Bob Claster is a writer and historian and producer and behind-the-scenes guy on many TV shows. When I first met him, he was hosting a great radio series called Bob Claster's Funny Stuff on which he interviewed everyone who was anyone in the field of comedy. He has now set up his own website and on it, he favors us with some downloadable (or listenable-online) episodes of that program. Go listen as Bob chats with comedy icons the likes of John Cleese, Stan Freberg and Mort Sahl.

Bob and I also share a love for Vito's Pizza, a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria in West Hollywood. Years ago, we used to drive across town to Vito's old location. I'm not one of those people who think all pizza in New York is great and all pizza everywhere else is unfit for human consumption…but even folks who feel that way think Vito's is up to the Manhattan Standard.

After a few years of serving great pizza, Vito closed his shop and left town, whereupon Bob went into mourning. A year or so ago, I made him very, very happy when I informed him that not only was Vito reopening in L.A. but that his new digs were within walking distance of the Claster home. Bob is now a regular and when I drop by there for pie, I often run into him. On his site, he has a video clip wherein you can meet our friend Vito, the best pizza-maker in town.

As some of you may know, I'm currently co-writing Will Eisner's The Spirit for DC Comics. In some issues, you'll see reference made to a place called Vito's Pizza. There are also such references in the new Garfield cartoon series I'm currently writing. Vito's pizza is going to make him famous but I'm doing my part, as well.

The New Yorker has an ongoing contest to write a caption to a cartoon. The current cartoon in need of a caption is by Harry Bliss and it's a riff on a comic book cover/page by Jack Kirby. Let's keep an eye on this one…and I may even enter some captions that mention Jack. Feel free to do likewise.

Cartoonist Ted Key died Saturday at his home in Tredyffrin Township, PA, just outside Philadelphia. He was 95 and had been in failing health after a diagnosis of bladder cancer in late 2006 and a stroke last September.

Key was famous for his character Hazel, the sassy maid who first appeared in cartoons he drew for The Saturday Evening Post in 1943. She became a regular feature of that magazine and later appeared in books collecting those cartoons, a syndicated newspaper strip and a popular TV series that ran on NBC and CBS for four seasons beginning in 1961. The above photo shows Key with the acclaimed actress, Shirley Booth, who played Hazel and won two Emmy awards for so doing.

But Hazel was hardly Key's only notable creation. In the late fifties, he worked with animation producer Jay Ward (a childhood friend of Ted's brother, Leonard) and created Mr. Peabody and Sherman, the improbable time travellers who were featured on Rocky and His Friends, aka The Bullwinkle Show. Peabody and Sherman quickly joined the ranks of immortal cartoon characters and a major motion picture of their adventures is presently in the works.

Key authored numerous books and was responsible for the storylines of three motion pictures made by the Disney company in the seventies — Million Dollar Duck, Gus and The Cat from Outer Space. He was also responsible for the comic feature Diz and Liz that ran from 1961 through 1972 in the popular children's magazine, Jack and Jill.

Ted Key was born Theodore Keyser in Fresno, CA on Aug. 25, 1912. In 1933, he graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and relocated to New York where he freelanced cartoons for magazine and occasionally wrote for radio. He eventually relocated to Philadelphia where he continued to write stories and draw cartoons. Key retired in 1993 but King Features still syndicates the Hazel strip using material he prepared for his retirement. He is survived by his second wife, three sons and three grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, the family is asking that donations be made to the American Cancer Society.

One of my comrades in Groo, Stan Sakai, is back from a trip to Poland. You might enjoy his diary of the adventure.

Okay, I didn't turn in when I said I was going to. Remember that story I linked to earlier? The one about the incredible act of sportsmanship in a softball game? This one.

Right. Well, earlier this evening, my friend Bob Elisberg e-mailed me that a nice video telling of the tale had run on ESPN Sportscenter and would probably rerun several times overnight. So I set my TiVo to record ESPN and, sure enough, when I went to check on my way to bed, there it was, nicely told. It inspired me to go prowling the ESPN site and there, I found a video embed of it that I can put here. Take a look. It runs six minutes.

I like my new Lexmark printer…like it a lot. What I don't like is their Tech Support Department. About two weeks ago, I phoned the 800 number to ask if it was possible to make the printer do a certain thing that did not seem to be covered in the manual. I was placed on hold a lot as I was routed from department to department for over 45 minutes, during which I actually only talked to two different people, neither of whom had a clue as to what I was talking about. I suspect they were in India, which is fine, but I also suspect neither one had ever touched a Lexmark printer in his life. That is not fine. Their combined expertise appeared to be limited to how to look up the answers to caller questions in some database of stock responses.

Maybe there was no stock response to my question or maybe neither one understood me. But the first one gave up and handed me off to the second one, and the second one wasted an awful lot of my time 'n' energy, putting me on hold and taking me off it before he finally announced that there was no way to do what I wanted to do. He also kept saying, "Is there anything else I can assist you with?" and then not comprehending my reply of "You haven't helped me with anything yet, sir." Finally, I told him I was giving up and got off the line, whereupon I figured out how to do what I wanted — the thing he'd told me could not be done — in about ten minutes. And once I figured out how to do it, I was able to find it in the manual, where it was all along.

Friday, I got a follow-up call from another gent with Lexmark — also, I suspect from his accent, within walking distance of the Taj Mahal. His mission was to make sure I was satisfied with my experience with their Tech Support. I said no and and explained to him that it took me 45 minutes to get no help whatsoever from people who didn't know what the heck they were doing. I'm not sure he understood what I was telling him, either…but he apologized about twenty-nine times for whatever it was.

I'm really tired of total strangers apologizing to me on behalf of a company or business in which they have little power or responsibility. So an anonymous guy is sorry…where does that get me? What I'd like him to say is something that leads me to believe my complaint will be passed along to folks who might do something to make sure it doesn't happen again.

But what I'd really like is an extra option when the recorded voice tells me my call will be answered in the order received. It would say something like, "A member of our staff will be with you shortly. At any time during your conversation, press the pound key if you'd like to speak to someone smarter."

Good night, Internet. I'm turning in early tonight. Early for me lately, at least.

I have not had the chance yet to read The Ten Cent Plague, a new book by David Hajdu that chronicles the "horror comic" scare of the fifties. I will get to it, I'm sure, when deadlines ease. In the meantime though, I wanted to mention that Mr. Hajdu was interviewed this weekend on C-Span's Book TV and I think I've found an online link that will actually work if you want to watch it that way. The C-Span site seems to be Mac-friendly and usually doesn't like showing anything to any of my PCs. But this link just might get you a watchable stream.

And then again, it might not. Not only does C-Span apparently only have one cameraman with one camera but they seem to be expecting that guy to fix their website in his free time.

My buddy Paul Harris is a great broadcaster who's currently between gigs but never mind that. I found this story through his weblog and I think everyone oughta go read it. You'll see why.

The Las Vegas production of Spamalot — which as you may recall, I didn't think was very good — is closing July 13. That's a little more than a year after it opened and that's probably a big disappointment to the folks behind it. It's also a disappointment to those of us who've watched one Broadway-type show after another not do well in Vegas. Mamma Mia is still running and so is the Vegas remodel of Phantom of the Opera, but pretty much everything else has crashed 'n' burned. Jersey Boys opened there last night and we'll see how that one does.

In the past, I've suggested that one of the problems is that people who want to see Broadway shows don't want to see the truncated versions that Vegas offers. That may drive off a few patrons and the quality of some productions may keep others away. But the more I think about it, the more I think there's more to it than that. Maybe people who visit Las Vegas have so many other options…and a yearning to do the things one can only do in Vegas. I'm going to think about this some more and write a piece here one of these days about it.

From Alex Pascover…

I'm sure I'm about the hundredth person to email you about this, but I wanted to comment on your post regarding the presidential vs. congressional disapproval numbers. First, I'm not sure it's correct that as many people disapprove of Congress as Bush (as opposed to people who simply do not approve), but maybe it's so. Regardless, the disapproval of Congress is bifurcated — there are those who disapprove of Congress from the right; there are many more of us who disapprove of Congress from the left because they haven't acted decisively enough to end the war or implement the (progressive) domestic policy proposals that swept them into office. (Of course, this is overwhelmingly laid at the feet of Senate Republicans who have filibustered literally every single piece of domestic legislation this year, but poor press coverage of what's happening in Congress means that this is not widely understood.) That's not the case with the president — most everybody hates him for about the same reasons.

Moreover, disapproval of the president means something much more significant than disapproval of Congress simply because he's a single person. You can disapprove of Congress as a whole still liking your representatives — indeed, that's the case for most people. And it's why most members get re-elected. (Unlike you, I don't think this is a bad thing, although it will be better a year from now when the Democrats' margin in the Senate and a friendly president will make the GOP intransigence unsustainable.) But that doesn't make sense with the president, where the man and the institution are the same guy. For this reason, the measurement scales are way off — Bush's unpopularty numbers are historic. Congressional unpopularity — even if the numbers are the same — is just high; it's nothing like a record. And that's because these institutional reasons put a lot of downward pressure on Congressional approval numbers and a lot of upward pressure on the president's in any situation. It's astounding that Bush is so unpopular that he's managed to overcome the significant positive bias in these kinds of polls for a president.

Obviously, these numbers would make more of a difference if Bush were running again, but as you said, McCain is basically running for the a third Bush term (except, mind-bogglingly, with even an less consistent policy agenda), so it still has some predictive value.

Yeah…I think McCain's current popularity is because people keep hearing the word "maverick" and not realizing that his most recent pledges are essentially to do everything Bush has done wrong except to do more of it. There's also a great personal affection for McCain. He's charming at times and funny and a genuine American hero, even if he can't currently bring himself to actually vote against the torturing of others. I expect the nation's view of him to change before November, especially if he keeps having these "senior moments" that are causing even some who like him to wonder if he's up to the job. The way it seems to be going is that on odd-numbered days, he says something painfully honest and damning to his own stated platform and then on even-numbered days, he goes out and "clarifies" that he meant something else.

But you're right. People on the right don't like Congress because it's controlled by Democrats and it keeps refusing to do what Bush wants. People on the left don't like it because it isn't actively undoing much of what Bush has done. Folks in the middle look at all that gridlocking and political tap-dancing and just moan at what an inefficient body we have there. I think the knee-jerk tendency to return all those people to office is a bad thing but you're right. We hate Congress as a whole and often love our own reps. I'm very happy with my Congressguy, Henry Waxman; not so thrilled with either of California's senators.

I am not, by the way, in favor of term limits for any office. I think that if we want to elect the same person over and over until they drop, we should be able to do it. I just think we shouldn't do it as often as we do already.