I already told you about the lovely birthday party for June Foray last Friday night. Harry McCracken did me one better. He shot video of her gracious speech, posted it to YouTube and put a link on his website. You can go over there and read what he had to say, and you can watch the video either here or there.

Every time I mention Chuck McCann on the ol' blog here, I get a ton of e-mails from folks who are immense fans of him and everything he does. So I'll mention that he plays a "crazy judge" (that's how he described it) on Boston Legal tomorrow night and next week. And I'll mention that Chuck has a website which includes some terrific video clips of him in action. Hunt around and you may even find the commercial he did for Right Guard deodorant with Groucho Marx.

Conservative (sort of) columnist Andrew Sullivan discusses The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. I think Sullivan (sort of) misses a key point, which is that the humor of those programs is largely about the people and not their politics. A President who stumbles over every sentence, a Vice-President who shoots people in the face, a Senator caught in a men's room scandal…that stuff is the mother lode of current events comedy writing, no matter which party the players represent. And both Comedy Central shows are more about the pundits and the press than the elected officials, anyway. When he says, "…but the bipartisan guest list cannot disguise the anti-establishment, liberal bent of the show," he seems unaware that comedy, by its very nature, is usually anti-establishment. If you're going to laugh at someone slipping on a banana peel — and I never have but it's a metaphor — it's funnier if it's a rich fat cat and not a poor or powerless individual. Comedy doesn't have to be liberal but it's probably easier that way.

This is a commercial for one of the dullest toys I can recall from my childhood. I didn't have one but Johanna Preuss down the block did. I think she got it second-hand and I think we played with it for a whole ten minutes before it went into the closet forever. One can only imagine the meeting at the Remco Toy Company when someone said, "Hey, you know what kids really like? Pretending they own and operate a drive-in movie theater!" You'll notice they tell you the projected images are great but don't show you an example. I think it was just a cheap slide projector that put up a few fuzzy still shots.

I don't know who the boy is but the girl is apparently Patty Duke, who at the time — around '58, I'd say — was twelve years old and working constantly in live TV and commercials. Shortly after this, she appeared on Broadway in The Miracle Worker, playing a young girl who was deaf and blind — in other words, exactly the target audience for this toy.

After 9/11, the FBI managed to wring a confession from an Egyptian national named Abdallah Higazy. He confessed that he'd participated in the horrible plot. But he didn't. Even the FBI no longer considers him a suspect. So how did they get the confession out of him? Steve Bergstein has the whole story on his weblog.

David Jobe writes to ask little ol' me…

I've been following your entries on the (potentially) upcoming WGA strike with great interest. I'd be curious to know your thoughts on what Nikki Finke is reporting on her blog about the likelihood of and timing for the strike, especially with regards to how accurate you think her information is. Her blog purports to represent the studios' point of view, and I'm wondering how accurate you think it is.

Fairly accurate, I think, if you take it as what the studio heads want us to believe. In labor wars, one's public posture is always calibrated for effect. That applies to all sides in all negotiations. I don't buy that anyone running a network really "welcome[s] a strike because they believe the 2007/2008 TV season is dead on arrival anyway" or that they'd say that even if it was true. If you think your schedule's a catastrophe, the more prudent position is to moan, "We had some potential hits but that %@#&% Writers Guild Strike (or the threat, thereof) killed us."

The most interesting line in that piece is where Les Moonves said, "I'm not concerned about the state of CBS. I'm a bit concerned about the state of network television generally." Some others in comparable positions to his might not be that perturbed if the major networks lost still more market share to HBO, Showtime and Basic Cable, as well as home video and gaming. That's because those people may not figure to be in the network teevee business much longer. But Mooves just reupped his contract and ain't goin' nowhere, so he may be sitting there, thinking of how those other forms of entertainment got a huge boost from the '88 WGA Strike. No one can ever calculate what the studios lost that year but it was probably greater than any dollar estimate you've seen. Not meeting the WGA's rather modest demands that year was far from cost-effective. It actually wounded the networks' entire business because a lot of loyal network TV viewers found other interests in life and never returned…at least not with the same loyalty.

In any case, I don't believe the Producers are confident that they can get through a long WGA strike on "reality" shows and games. They'll say they are but they've got to be terrified of more viewers discovering they can amuse themselves without the likes of CSI:Wherever and Two and a Half Men.

The intriguing thing touched upon in that article is the question of when we'd strike if we strike. The WGA Leadership could call a walkout at any time after November 1 if no deal is in place then. Some people have suggested that we'd continue working, sans contract, until such time as the Screen Actors Guild pact was up, at which time we'd link arms with them, sing a few choruses of "Kumbaya" and present a united front. I consider that scenario highly unlikely. The SAG deal isn't up until June 30, 2008 and that's a long time from now, plus the Producers would have to be suicidal to allow such a marriage to occur…or even to seem possible since it would embolden both sides. Besides, a WGA-SAG partnership could ultimately be a rocky one, anyway. It would be very easy for the AMPTP to float proposals that would screw one union at the expense of the other, thereby driving a wedge.

I'm thinking that if we're working without a deal into December, Management will set a lockout deadline and say, "If the WGA doesn't accept our current proposal by X date, we withdraw it and your work and paychecks stop." Everyone hopes, of course, it will not come to that.

I have no idea what's on the minds of the WGA leadership in terms of timetable, nor do I know their thinking about Interim Deals. What those are are "favored nations" deals we make during a strike with studios (mostly independents) who are willing to sign. Writers can go back to work at those companies and then, when the final big contract is signed, the studios that signed interim agreements can opt for its terms. These deals are generally controversial from our side, both for strategic reasons and because some writers like the idea of everyone hanging together. They're generally frowned upon by the majors and they pressure the smaller producers not to go for them.

Will that be part of our battle plan? I have no idea. But you're going to hear a lot about them as a strike grows more likely. And it will grow more likely.

I'm kind of a sucker for the show, Forever Plaid, which is always playing somewhere near you, no matter where you are. I first saw it at the Canon Theater in Beverly Hills, a few days after my father passed away. It was a rough time in my life, obviously because of that but also because of some other problems. Still, I had tickets for the show — ordered long before — and I decided to go, regardless. I was glad I did. Even though it's (sort of) about people dying, it's such a happy, entertaining show that it did a lot for my sense of well-being that night. In fact, on the way out, I purchased tickets to come back and see it again a few days later, and have since seen it perhaps another half-dozen times. The casts are not always as good as the material but the show always works.

This is a spot from a TV morning show. The guys then starring in Forever Plaid in El Cajon (that's near San Diego) appeared to plug the show and perform a number from it. Here are the four of them for four minutes…

It's too early to set your TiVo but don't worry. I'll remind you when we get closer to the date.

That date is January 4, 2008. That's when Turner Classic Movies is running the film that you cannot watch without wondering, "What the hell were they thinking?"

That's right. They're running Skidoo.

Wow. It doesn't get any better than that.

Okay, I've watched a few episodes of The Price is Right as hosted by Drew Carey and I can't help but commit heresy: I think he's a much better host than Bob Barker ever was…or at least, he will be if he gets a wee bit more comfortable in the role. He still has the look of a guy who can't believe he got the job but that will pass. He's also still trying to do Barker's show, as opposed to Drew Carey's, which is probably wise. Carey is a much funnier guy than the format requires and my sense is that he's been advised, or perhaps has decided on his own, not to change things too much his first few weeks. Devout Price is Right fans first have to accept that he's worthy of their favorite show before they'll be ready to tolerate anything different. So he's suppressing his urges to be a little looser and to not do everything the way Bob did.

I already like him more than Barker. He doesn't have that smarmy self-adoration. He actually seems to like the contestants and not because they're fawning over him — which so far, thankfully, they're not. Carey's "nice guy" image doesn't appear to be a mask that he dons when the cameras are on. I never felt that way about his predecessor. I'll bet the people who work on that stage over at CBS are a lot happier now, too.

When I first heard it was going to be Carey, I thought that was a poor fit. Now, I'm thinking not. The Price is Right formula has gotten very stale over the years. Everything that could possibly happen in a game of Plinko or The Money Game has happened a thousand times, and even adding new games won't reduce the sensation of déjà vu because they won't be that different from the old games. CBS, I gather, first went looking for someone who could replicate the Barker style, then realized that was exactly what they didn't want. The one thing that could keep that show going for a while is a host who breaks away from that and makes it his own. Drew Carey has the capacity to do that. I think I'll wait a couple of months and then tune in and see him doing it.

Ben Schwartz, who has written some of the best mainstream press articles about comics, writes about the new biographies of comic book and strip artists, including my upcoming book on Jack Kirby. The piece contains some awkward phrasing that I assume occurred in the editing stages: One section makes it seem like The Complete Dick Tracy is a reprinting of Kirby's work. Also, I'm usually pretty diligent about referring to partners as co-creators so I can't believe I said that Jack created Captain America and didn't say he co-created it with Joe Simon. And lastly, I'm not supervising the reprinting of Jack's Fourth World material at DC…just contributing advice and afterwords. Other than those minor quibbles, it's a great piece.

This runs a little over six minutes but you'll love it. One of the cleverest, funniest men I know is Chuck McCann, who is an actor and a puppeteer and a voiceover artist and an inventor and if I ever needed a liver transplant, it wouldn't surprise me if Chuck couldn't do it and still be very funny at the same time. We have here a sketch that he did on one of his TV shows. Chuck is the man on the right and he's also the narrator. The gentleman on the left is our pal, the late Bob Ridgely. Ridgely was also a voiceover artist and an actor and an announcer and the possessor of the wickedest, filthiest sense of humor I've ever encountered. Here is one of the cleanest things he ever did…

Michael Kinsley defends the Alternative Minimum Tax.

Is there anyone out there these days who thinks that taxes should be lower for all? Everyone I see these days who advocates the cutting of taxes seems quite uninterested in trimming what our government spends and sometimes — as Kinsley notes — even hostile to the idea that new expenditures should be linked to some funding source. Unless I hear someone get realistic about how to pay for cuts or new expenditures, I figure it's all just another way of saying, "Spend as much as possible on the stuff I care about. Just make sure someone else pays for it."

June Foray is, of course, the First Lady of Cartoons. Last evening, ASIFA — the International Animated Film Society — hosted a lovely birthday party for her out in Burbank, despite the fact that her birthday was a month ago. In any case, a whole bunch of her fans and friends turned out to eat cake, toast her and have a good time.

There's not much else to say beyond that but since we all love June, I couldn't let the event pass without mentioning it. I'll also mention that June's long-awaited autobiography is nearing completion (Earl Kress and I are helping her with it) and I'll announce here when there's an actual publication date.

Can Stephen Colbert get the Colbert Bump?

The vote total is in on the Writers Guild Strike Authorization Vote. A record (for the Guild) 5,507 members cast ballots with 90.3% voting for authorization. No one is surprised it passed but I think a lot of folks are surprised by that percentage. As I noted in this post, the WGA membership includes a lot of people who regard writing as a secondary or tertiary career and could perhaps be expected to vote in the interests of their other, main careers. I would have expected something more in the 80% range.

The more impressive number is the total number of members who cared enough to vote. There are around 12,000 members in the Writers Guild but many times when we're asked to vote on something, it's in the 30% range. Again, at any given time a lot of our members are simply not involved in TV or movie work and don't pay a lot of attention to Guild matters.

So does this mean no strike? Nope. At last report, the two sides were a hair closer to common ground and this may get them a few hairs closer…but we still want a number of things that the Producers seem determined to not give up. Not to us, not to the directors and not to the actors. The issues and determination are all still there for a nice, long, nasty work stoppage. The one hopeful thing here is that in the past, some of the worst strikes have resulted because the Producers grossly underestimated the Writers' resolve. Thanks to this vote, maybe they have a little better sense of what they're up against.