My old pal Joe Brancatelli runs Joe Sent Me, a website about travelling, mainly by air. With utter candor, he and his columnists cover what's up with the airlines, airports, hotels, etc. You need to be a member to access most of this, though there is some valuable free material available.

Even without a sub, you may be able to read his latest article. In case you can't, I'll summarize: Frequent Flyer programs are bad and about to get a whole lot worse. Over the years, the airlines have quietly modified terms and changed reward levels to make it less and less likely that you'll be able to cash in all those points you think you have to get precisely the free flight you want. Effective in December, Joe explains, Delta takes it yet another level and this is my paraphrase, not his. Their new rules seem to essentially come down to: "No matter how many points you accumulate, when the time comes to cash them in, we'll tell you what you can have and how much it will cost you, and many of our flights will not be available to you for points, no matter how many of them you have."

Joe thinks the new rules will make Delta's plan largely worthless to Delta Frequent Flyers, and that if they get away with it then all the other airlines will follow and that such programs will be useless. I was already thinking in that direction. I have points racked up on about a half-dozen airlines. More and more, they seem like more trouble than they're worth. Between e-mail and paper mail, I receive a steady barrage of reminders that my miles are about to expire and I need to do something with them, a.s.a.p. U.S. Air is always after me to swap them in for magazine subscriptions. Other airlines are offering me travel deals in which I cash in more points than I have, plus I pay $200 and I get a flight that I can purchase for $210 without the miles.

Even before Delta's new strategy to not give you anything free, I was feeling that Frequent Flyer plans were not worth the trouble. The few times I've tried cashing in mine, the bureaucracy and poorly-defined rules discouraged me. In this age of the Internet, I'd kinda like to just make my reservations instead of sending for a rewards certificate that will pay for that reservation on that airline if I qualify, if they honor their own rewards program and if I don't find a better deal at some other airline, which I probably will if I'm not paying for it with miles. I'm sure there are some freebees out there but they don't seem to be worth the hassle. So I'm looking around for a good charity where I can donate all my miles to fly soldiers to bang their spouses or something of the sort. It's not so much that I want to support some worthy cause. I just want to get rid of those points so I don't have to think about them and fret that I'm wasting something valuable.

Joey Bishop died last night at the age of 89. Whenever a famous comedian leaves us, a lot of Internet Traffic steers towards this site for anecdotes, words of tribute and tales of personal encounters…and I'm afraid I don't have much of that for Mr. Bishop. I recall liking his early-sixties sitcom, which I haven't viewed in quite some time, but I can't tell you anything else he did that amused me much. For a time there, he was a talk show star. He had his show on ABC opposite Johnny Carson from 1967-1969 and then he became Johnny's most frequent guest host for a few years, never impressing me much in either venue. When I look at the above photo of The Rat Pack, I see three very gifted entertainers and two guys (Bishop and Peter Lawford) who were in on a pass. Now, with Joey's passing, they're all gone.

So I decided to make this posting an obit for the legendary Vegas parlay of Frank, Dino, Sammy and whoever else they were then allowing into the inner circle. What exists of that act in recording and film is not all that wonderful either, though I have the feeling that to see them in person was so exciting, it didn't matter what they did. (Is there any footage of those guys performing together that doesn't include Dean picking up Sammy Davis and making the joke about thanking the N.A.A.C.P. for the award?) Still, I like the idea of The Rat Pack. It just sounds so cool and hip and fun that the reality of the performance probably doesn't matter.

I once had lunch at a Vegas hotel with a gent who'd worked at the Sands when they were playing there. I said something about how it was neat that those guys were like a "bonus" since obviously, Frank or Dean or Sammy could each have sold out the room appearing solo. You didn't need the three of them to fill all the seats. My luncheon companion informed me that I was missing the point. The idea, he said, was not to fill the seats but to fill them with the highest of the High Rollers. In Vegas, they live by the "drop," which is the total amount of cash that people convert into chips for gaming. How much the house wins is, of course, of vital concern but Casino Management is really two separate and distinct sciences. Configuring the games so they yield a decent return is one. Ratcheting up the drop is another. If you have the odds set properly then the way you maximize profits is to maximize the drop. The power of a Sinatra was not so much that the showroom was packed but that when he played your hotel, your drop went way up. He attracted Big Players.

In terms of selling tickets, booking Sinatra, Martin and Davis plus someone like Joey Bishop was not cost-efficient. Like I said, any one of the first three could have sold out any showroom in town without the others. But, the Vegas guy said, what The Rat Pack did for the drop made them quite worthwhile: "They didn't double the drop. They didn't triple it. It was more like times ten."

"So," I asked. "What did they need Joey Bishop there for? Did he please that many in the audience?"

"No," was the reply. "But he pleased Frank."

I'm sorry to say you can now watch hundreds of clips from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart over at this new site. I'm sorry to say this because you could spend hours over there and never come near my little corner of the Internet again. And also, the site was put up by Comedy Central so it probably won't work that well. I'll try embedding one of my favorite segments from that show, as posted on the new site, and we'll see if it even works…

Michael Kinsley on introducing scummy dictators. Just in case you're ever called upon to bring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad up to the podium.

The reports on comic book legend Marie Severin are encouraging, though it looks like she'll be hospitalized for a while longer. Clifford Meth has this background article on her career and this update on her condition. It goes without saying (or blogging) that we wish her a speedy recovery on account of she's one of the nicest, funniest people ever in the biz.

So what do you do if you're a General and you think the President is ordering something that won't work and which will have disastrous consequences? Fred Kaplan asks and answers that question.

Howard A. Rodman explains the main issues in what may lead to The Great Writers Guild Strike of 2007 and maybe The Great Writers Guild Strike of 2007-2008.

Here is an old article about Hanna-Barbera…

Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera old M.G.M. cartoonists have made five T.V. cartoon shows. Which have all hit the ratings. It started with HUCKLEBERRY HOUND show with HUCK, JINKS AND "THE MEECES" AND YOGI BEAR AND BOO BOO. Later QUICK DRAW McGRAW with Baba Looey, Snooper and Blabber, and Augie and Daddy Doggie. Yogi Bear got his own show then with 2 old characters, SNAGGLEPUSS and IDDY BIDDY BUDDY (NOW CALLED YAKKY DOODLE DUCK) Hokey Wolf and Ding-a-Ling COPIED AND REPLACED YOGI. Jinks and Pixie & Dixie copied M.G.M.'S Tom and Jerry (they look alike). Then the world's first adult cartoon show, FLINTSTONES (NOW IN THE MAKING, TOP CAT, ANOTHER ADULT CARTOON SHOW) El Kabong (QUICK DRAW McGRAW AS ZORRO BUT HE USES A GUITAR INSTEAD OF A SWORD.) Snooper and Blabber was the first detective cartoons. Augie Doggie was a copy of "Wendy and Breezy" (WALTER LANTZ) It is said that WALT DISNEY is jealous.

Hey, that's not a bad little article. The phrasing is awkward in places but the author knows his cartoons.

So…who wrote this article? I did. Why are some of the sentences so odd? Maybe because I was nine years old at the time.

It's amazing. Here it is, 47 years later and I still write articles about Hanna-Barbera and my writing hasn't improved that much. (I still use too many parenthetical phrases.) (Yes, I do.) (I really do.)

Here's what may be the first commercial for Quisp and Quake, two cereals that the Quaker Oats Company introduced in 1965 via a marketing campaign done in tandem with Jay Ward.

What I always thought was interesting about these cereals was that — at least for the initial campaign — they never told you what the cereals actually were. They told you they were sweet and vitamin-charged and that they tasted great and were packed with energy…but they didn't tell you if each contained corn or rice or oats or wheat or styrofoam or what it was about them that might tickle your tastebuds. Apple Jacks tasted like apples (they claimed) and Cocoa Krispies were a chocolate-flavored rice cereal and Trix were fruit-flavored something…but they really didn't tell you anything about what you'd be eating if you bought Quisp or Quake. You were supposed to try a box or two just because they had neat characters on the packaging and in their commercials, and those neat characters were feuding so you had to take sides.

I guess it worked…at least for a while. Reportedly, both sold decently for a few years but even though the two cereals were (I'm told) almost identical, their sales were not. Quisp's eventually went up and Quake's went down — just like the characters, themselves. Quake was discontinued and so was Quisp for a while, but in 1999, they began making it again, pushing it as the first "Internet Cereal." They still make it but it receives limited distribution and is promoted largely on the Quisp website. I am amused that nowhere on that site, from what I can tell, do they tell you what the cereal actually is. If you hunt around the Quaker Oats site, you can find out that it's a "saucer-shaped, crunchy corn cereal…but that's about it. They're still selling the mascot and not the product.

Here's the ad. Daws Butler was the voice of Quisp, William Conrad was the voice of Quake, and Paul Frees was the voice of the host in this spot, which was probably written and directed by Bill Scott.

Scott Dunbier, who used to be in charge of Wildstorm Comics, tells a funny story about working with comics legend Gil Kane. Everyone in the world who edits or publishes comics has had this kind of thing happen to them and it's not funny at the time but it's part of the process.

Animation expert Jerry Beck will be a guest this afternoon on Stu's Show, the oft-plugged (on this site) signature program of Shokus Internet Radio. I'll be tuning in at 4 PM Pacific Time and you can figure out where to tune in where you are. It's live, he'll be taking questions and I'm going to call in and try to ask one that I know he can't answer. Just to be mean.

And tomorrow, the Time Travel radio show will be having as its guest, The Great Sidekick, himself. That's right…hosts Dan Hollis and Jeff O'Boyle will be interviewing Ed McMahon, commencing at 3 PM Eastern Time — and since I've been Grooing much of the night, I'm way too stupid to figure out when that is where I am. Listen live or download the show later from their website which, I must caution you, plays loud music when you go anywhere near it.

Everyone is saying that our new Attorney General designate, Michael Mukasey, will have to prove his independence and integrity once he is confirmed. Which is as it should be.

And hey, I can even think of a great way he could do this. He could prosecute the guy he's replacing!

The Oscar given to Orson Welles for Citizen Kane. Expected auction selling price: A million bucks, give or take $200,000. Too bad William Randolph Hearst isn't around to bid.

An article about the 25th anniversary of the comic book series I've been up most of the night writing.

In 1958, actor Dean Fredericks had the title role in an NBC TV series, Steve Canyon, based on the comic strip by Milton Caniff. It was, like the syndicated feature on which it was based, a fun and fast-moving effort with some fine guest appearances by character actors of the day who later became famous. (Jerry Paris, later of The Dick Van Dyke Show, had a recurring role. And for that matter, Mary Tyler Moore turned up in an episode playing, of all things, a Hispanic lady.)

For years, it was a "lost" series that went largely unsyndicated. It's still not airing anywhere on TV but the Milton Caniff Estate, which seems to own the series, is trying to change that. The problem is that they don't have a full set of airable prints and the shows need to be undergo costly restoration work. You can help finance this and sample the programs. They're restored the first four and are selling a DVD of them, and whatever they make off that will go into resurrecting the other thirty episodes. (You can also help financially by purchasing a neat-looking Steve Canyon cap they're selling and/or by just making a donation.)

All the info is over here, along with facts and a clip or two from the show. We wish them well.