Over at The New York Times, reporter Michael Cieply is saying that the informal talks in the Writers Strike have eliminated all or most of the major obstacles to a deal. This is a hopeful sign, of course. There's a news blackout in place but it's hard to believe Cieply didn't hear this from someone in a position to know…and probably someone on the AMPTP side. He is not known for believing what writers tell him or disbelieving what studio execs say. At the same time, I'm also hearing sounds of optimism from sources close to WGA leaders.

That said, it's a fine, even prudent idea to not get one's hopes too high. It is a not uncommon negotiating technique to get the other side into the mindset that the deal is done, and then to throw in a last second demand. In past WGA-AMPTP contracts, negotiating has even continued after the deal was made and ratified. Weeks, even months after the '81, '85 and '88 strikes were settled and work resumed, reps from the studio side were still arguing over what had been agreed to, insisting that their notes said we'd agreed to X when we were certain we'd consented to Y. And even when we all agree on what we all agreed upon, we can't always agree on the interpretation of some clauses and codicils.

If the reports are true, we'll probably see an announcement early in the week of formal talks resuming, and then those might last a few days. If all goes well, the WGA Negotiating Committee and its Board of Directors will proclaim that they have a pact they can recommend to the membership…and then I'd be very surprised if it wasn't ratified. This is all assuming there isn't a last minute lowball.

We mentioned here a few weeks ago the rumors that Young Frankenstein, now playing on Broadway, might not be doing anywhere near the business its backers anticipated. In this article, one of its producers says it's doing okay but admits to some marketing and strategic errors.

Last year on this date, it was our honor to wish a happy 95th birthday to the great comic book artist, Creig Flessel, whose work began appearing in comic books about the time original material began appearing in comic books. The cover at the above left was by him and it ran on Detective Comics #3, which was cover-dated May of 1937. The one on the right is from two years later.

Mr. Flessel is a fine, talented gentleman and an important figure in the history of this particular art form…so it was an even greater pleasure to wish him a happy 96th birthday here today, and I expect to tell him in person at this year's Wondercon in San Francisco. Rumor has it he'll be putting in an appearance. If he isn't there, it's okay. I can just wish him a happy 97th next year.

Anyone here been watching Deal or No Deal? I gave it up for a time — too much forced melodrama, too much padding, too many games where the big amounts were gone before the midpoint — but I'm back. Admittedly, I TiVo the thing, watch the first few minutes and then zip ahead to when it gets interesting, if it gets interesting. That it occasionally does lately is because of a stunt they're doing called The Million Dollar Mission.

After all this time on the air, no one has won the mil, which I'm guessing troubles the producers. They apparently figure that if they never award that amount, America will soon give up on the show. With so much of NBC's ratings riding on the program and a weekday version starting shortly, they probably need to give away a million smackers and soon. So what they do during the Million Dollar Mission is that every time a contestant doesn't win that amount, they add another million dollar amount into the briefcases. Instead of one, there's two, three, four, etc. The other day, a lady played a game where nine of the 26 cases contained one million bucks. She still didn't win the big prize so as they're advertising like crazy, Monday's episode features a game where there will be ten (10) one million dollar prizes in the cases.

The commercials make it sound like you'd better make sure you tune in because this looks like the night someone finally wins the big award. And I'm here to tell you it's not so. The contestant doesn't win the million.

How do I know this? Because the listing on my TiVo for the following week's show (February 11) says, and I quote…

"Eleven $1 million cases" (2008) The Million Dollar Mission continues with an unprecedented eleven cases on the board, holding $1 million each.

So no point in watching Monday when there are only ten $1 million cases. And you don't even have to have a TiVo to get this information. If you go to Yahoo TV right now and search for that week's episode, you'll see…

I'll bet the secret is also blown on most of the online services that provide TV listings. But actually, you could probably have deduced that the contestant on Monday's show doesn't win the million…because the promos, which they're airing every three minutes on NBC, don't come right out and say it. They say it's the biggest night ever, the most exciting and spectacular must-see episode…and they lead you to believe it's going to happen…but they don't say "Tune in and watch someone finally win the million dollars!"

That will happen shortly…and I have the oddest hunch that it will happen before the end of the February "sweeps" rating period. In fact, since they tape way ahead, I have the hunch it's already happened and that they've been scheduling episodes and inserting repeats in order to make sure it happens on a February show, preferably a late February show. What's more, when they get to that week, they're going to make sure everyone knows it, which means they won't be able to just say it's the biggest night ever, the most exciting and spectacular must-see episode, etc. That's what they say when the contestant doesn't win.

Instead, they'll say something more explicit…and then to make certain everyone knows, they'll leak it to the press or get it up on the Internet somehow…or something. What they won't do is let it be an actual surprise. TV doesn't do that anymore.

For those of you interested in animation and especially in Disney animation: An interview with our pal, Disney Legend Floyd Norman.

I think I picked an interesting week to poll the readers of this site as to who they thought would be the Democratic nominee for the post of Prez. Early on, Hillary Clinton took an early lead and for several days, Obama was around 31% and Edwards was around 16%. But even before he announced he was getting out of the race, the numbers for Edwards dropped into the single digits and Obama began picking up what I'd guess was most of that support plus some from each of the other choices. For what it's worth, I selected Hillary when this poll went up but if I had to make a prediction today, I'd probably flip a quarter…or maybe pick Obama. It feels that close to me.

I'm not even sure who I'm going to vote for in the Democratic Primary next week. A couple of the candidates who are on the ballot but out of the race probably reflect my views better than either Clinton or Obama but I don't see the point of a "symbolic" vote for them. No one ever notices how many votes the withdrawn candidates get so the symbolism doesn't register anywhere that matters.

Here are the results…

I know a lot of folks keep coming to this site to see if there's any news on the strike…so for you people: There's no news on the strike. At least nothing I've heard. The rumor mill says they're still having informal talks. That's probably true. At least, we'd probably hear if it wasn't. The rumor mill further says those talks are going well. That may be one of those news items based on nothing. In any case, there's no indication as to when those talks might turn into real negotiations, which would presumably be a matter of formalizing the terms.

Meanwhile, officials of the Screen Actors Guild are criticizing what they know of the Directors Guild settlement and asserting that they will not allow it to become a template for their own, upcoming negotiations. One might infer they're saying that now because they know that the WGA reps are accepting a large chunk of the DGA deal, at least as a rough model even if some of the terms and numbers change. And one might be dead wrong to infer that. We don't know. The DGA deal has, probably unfortunately, become the AMPTP's starting point for bargaining. Any union (not just WGA or SAG) is going to have to do a certain amount of pushback against it.

When will we hear something? Your guess is as good as anyone's. I still think an immediate goal is to make enough progress in the next week or so that the WGA will feel comfortable about granting a waiver that will allow the Academy Awards to have a real writing staff. I'd certainly trust our leadership to make that determination and to trade that off if they feel they're making genuine gains. Still, the fact that one or both sides wants to make a deal ASAP doesn't mean that's going to happen. So sit tight.

This is a blanket "thank you" to all the folks who wrote in with suggestions and/or offers of help with my computer virus problem. Lucky me, I had two at once. From what I can tell, the first one somehow managed to bypass and then disable my virus program. It should not have been able to do this — it's an old, known virus that the software is supposed to protect me from — but it did and that opened the door for the second. Both infected my main computer and the first one got onto my main computer, my secondary computer, two external Maxtor harddrives and three SanDisk cruzer flashdrives. Quite an ambitious little fellow, I'd say.

Cleaning involved my regular virus program, an online virus scan and two other virus programs which I downloaded and ran in trial mode. Collectively, they identified both viruses — albeit under an array of different names — and removed the one that was only on one computer. Getting rid of the other was a little harder. I had to go in and manually kill processes, delete hidden files, delete registry entries and restore a few files from a recent backup. All four pieces of anti-virus software I used claimed they could remove this second virus but for some reason, none of them could. Still, they gave me the info that enabled me to research the virus and then figure out how to do the manual scrub job.

End of story? Unfortunately, no. I got the virus off my main computer but not before it nuked something in the boot sequence. I'm pretty sure all the data's there…I just can't get to it. To deal with this, I took the easy way: Shipped it over to my computer guy and told him to build me a new computer, boot the old one off another drive and then transfer my data over. I was about due for a new P.C., anyway. It should be here by the weekend.

But thanks to all who offered help. A couple of you suggested I chuck the Windows systems and defect to the World of Mac, where viruses are pretty much non-existent. True…but I think I have too much invested in this software in terms of knowledge, money and emotion to start cross-dressing now. And you'd better all be glad I feel this way because if I ever did switch to a Mac, someone would surely invent a killer virus for them…a bad one that would nuke your data, destroy your system and tell everyone you went to high school with that you wet the bed.

…for a commercial…