I've received a batch of e-mails asking me what I think of Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS. I think I agree with Eric Boehlert.

They're now saying the 10-2 vote in the Spector trial was for conviction with two people believing…well, I can't quite understand what they believed. Something about not being sure Spector had his hand on the gun when it was fired. In any event, a 10-2 vote to lock the guy up makes it more likely there'll be a retrial than if the vote had gone the other way. Or so they're saying.

The judge in the Phil Spector case has declared a mistrial. The jury was reportedly deadlocked 10-2 but so far, there's no information as to which way. I'm guessing ten for guilty and two who thought he was guilty but that it would just be fun to watch Nancy Grace's head explode.

A date has been set to discuss if there should be a retrial. Given the evidence and the defendant's history of threatening people with guns, it's obvious that he should be retried. Then again, it was also obvious he should be found guilty on the first ballot. So I think maybe I should get serious about that killing spree I've been planning in case he gets away with this.

In fact, I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't wait until he actually goes free. I mean, if a guy with a long track record for unstable, violent behavior can murder and only wind up with a hung jury then a decent, non-drinking, non-violent fellow like myself should be able to slay without even getting arrested. I should be able to murder someone and then if the police come, they'll check and see that I'm in show business and they'll say, "No point in taking him downtown."

Yeah, this might be the time. If you know what's good for you, you'll stay out of my way.

By the way: I hope that if Spector does get off, he will at least have the decency to announce that he will not rest until he finds the real killers.

The House of Representatives just voted 341-79 to condemn the ad in which MoveOn.org questioned the honesty and patriotism of General Petraeus.

Good for them…because we can't have people going around saying whatever they want about our leaders. I look forward to a similar condemnation of those Swift Boats Veterans ads.

As I've mentioned here a few times, my first memory of liking something I saw performed on the live stage is of a touring production of My Fair Lady that my mother took me to in downtown L.A. to when I was a wee lad. It starred a gentleman named Michael Evans who, I see this morning, has just left us. I don't particularly recall anything about his performance other than that he performed…but that was for me a magical road marker in my life. So I wanted to take note of his passing.

The Los Angeles Times obit mentions two things I found interesting. One is that it quotes a 1961 Times review of his performance. In previous mentions here (like this one), I said that I saw the show in 1959 or 1960. Well, maybe it was 1961, when I would have been nine years old. That sounds right to me.

The second thing is the mention of him appearing in the movie of Bye Bye Birdie, a film I've seen dozens of times. Evans played the classy gent who's competing with Dick Van Dyke for the affections of Janet Leigh…and I guess I knew that the actor who played that role was named Michael Evans. But I somehow never made the connection between that Michael Evans and the guy I saw playing Henry Higgins. I'm not sure why that should matter to a person at all but if I'd made that connection in 1963, it would have meant a lot to me. That was also the first movie musical I can recall ever liking.

Here's a link you won't want to watch all of right now. It's the entirety of the original, black-and-white Little Shop of Horrors starring Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles and a small but famous appearance by Jack Nicholson. I remember a time in the late sixties when this movie was practically unknown. It turned up every now and then on Channel 9, usually commencing at Midnight or later and my friends and I thought we were the only people on the planet who had ever seen it.

It was, of course, infamous not only for its bizarre humor but for the fact that director Roger Corman shot the whole thing in two days of interior shooting and one long night of exteriors. For some reason, that's not impressive enough and I've seen people claim it was shot in two days or even one.

Mr. Corman usually says he decided to shoot a movie in two and a half days as a lark. He'd previously made Bucket of Blood (with many of the same people) in five days and wanted to see if he could halve that time. Others who were involved have suggested that it was just a matter of Roger being cheap. A lot of the films he directed or produced are nice triumphs of creativity over budget.

You don't want to click on it now because it's an hour and thirteen minutes long and you have better things to do at the moment. But it's here if you want to watch it now or you can go to this page and download a copy to your hard disk or iPod. Don't say I never gave you anything.

Now that the New York Times has done away with its subscription-only section (assuring us that it was a great success even as they doled out pro-rated refunds to subscribers), it's possible to go back and read stuff you missed. Most of us missed Dick Cavett's column/blog. They call it a blog but it's really a column. Here's the link and if you go there now, you can read Cavett telling how everyone's favorite disgraced president Richard Nixon didn't like Cavett's shows of the time.

See that guy's picture up above? That's the late Jerry Juhl, one of the grand geniuses behind The Muppets. Today is the first anniversary of his passing and the reason I put his photo upside-down is because it's silly. Today is Jerry Juhl Day, a day that his friends have designated to remember the man…and the way they suggest to best honor him is to do something silly. I didn't know Jerry but I loved his work and if his friends say that's the way to honor his memory, I'm there. You can learn a little more about Jerry Juhl Day by clicking on the banner below. And use your feet when you do. It's sillier that way.

From some sort of entertainment news show of the past comes this little segment on how cartoons are/were made at Hanna-Barbera. It's most interesting for the glimpse of Jean Vander Pyl and Henry Corden recording voices for a Flintstones cartoon. (Actually, this is almost certainly a "pretend" session staged just for the news crew's camera.) Henry was the second voice of Fred and Jean was the only voice of Wilma during her lifetime. Nice to see them again for a moment. I could never talk to either of them without feeling like Barney Rubble.

Thanks to Paul Belanger for letting me know about this.

Fred Kaplan on the cost of the Iraq War and how no one seems to care how we spend the money, just so long as we spent it. I'm always amazed that to some people who favor high defense spending, the issue of how the money is used is a minor point. The fact that the contractors deliver a shoddy, unusable product — or that they don't deliver at all — is picky, picky, picky. You'd think we could all at least be on the same page that whatever we spend, we oughta demand the best possible equipment and service for it. Yeah, you'd think that, wouldn't you?

In which I finally, after all these years, become a cartoon character…

This is fifteen seconds that a talented gentleman named Alexandre Ramos Mastrella did of a scene from a comic book I did with Sergio. The week we did it, we couldn't think of any interesting characters so we used ourselves.

Bill Clinton was on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart the other night. As we've noted here before, interviews on that show are often edited. This version of their conversation is six minutes longer than what was aired. Even if you don't like Clinton's politics — and I don't like all of them, myself — isn't it nice to remember a time when presidents could speak in complete sentences? The second half of this chat is more interesting than the first.

We haven't done one of these for a while but I thought I'd note (and provide ordering links) for three upcoming DVD collections of the work of very amusing men.

I've always loved Robert Klein and I sure wish he'd do standup again on a more regular basis. He was the guy who showed everyone else how to "perform" on a stage, keeping your oft-repeated lines sounding fresh and making the audience just plain enjoy being with you. With his HBO specials, of which this new release is a collection, he pretty much invented the idea of doing one's standup act on cable TV. So I've ordered Robert Klein: The HBO Specials 1975-2005 and you might want to, as well.

And then, coming out in a week or so, we have a complete collection of the cable specials by the other great standup guy, George Carlin. It's called George Carlin: All My Stuff and it's also, one can be certain, great stuff. At $170.99, however, it seems a bit pricey even though you get fourteen specials on fourteen discs. That's $12.21 per special, whereas the Robert Klein collection gives you eight specials on four discs for $29.99, which works out to $3.74 each. (Both collections feature extras. The Klein one has an interview of him by Alan Colmes. The Carlin one has two long interviews, one of which is 75 minutes.)

The other notable thing about the Robert Klein collection is that it's all pretty much material that hasn't been available on home video…or hasn't been available for quite some time. (I have two of these specials on Beta.) Most of the Carlin material is available on DVD…so if you're a fan of George's specials and have been buying them in that format, you have to buy those specials again to get the full collection plus the extras. We always get annoyed when they do this to us.

Lastly, I know nothing about The Best of Jack Benny, other than that it promises us 41 episodes of his TV show on four discs and that it sells at Amazon for $13.49. One assumes these are old, public domain prints mastered at a very slow speed. Then again, Jack Benny operated at a very slow speed…and it's hard to imagine that in 1,260 minutes of Jack Benny, you won't find thirteen and a half bucks worth of goodies. I've ordered a copy and I'll let you know if there's a catch. There's something poetic about a Jack Benny collection being cheap.

Hey, you think you know the lyrics to the song, "God Bless America"? Apparently not. At the "Values Voters" candidates' debate the other night — a gathering of super-right-wing folks — a choir sang a rewritten version. I don't know if Mr. Berlin would have been outraged at the message inserted into his song but I have a hunch he'd have been apoplectic that it was put there by someone who has no concept of meter or rhyme and who couldn't even do the amateur lyricist's trick of just counting syllables.

One can just imagine the outrage that this same group would have mustered if anyone else had changed so much as a note of that song. Here's a link to the lyrics and a video.

And let us have a moment of noise in memory of the great artist of pantomime, Marcel Marceau, who has left us at the age of 84. (Better get used to that joke…you'll be hearing it a lot in the days to come. In fact, we're probably also in for a lot of jokes about him dying because he called for help and no one heard him.) He taught or inspired countless other actors and also folks in related creative fields such as dance, painting and even cartooning. He was, as a friend of mine used to put it, the one mime people loved, not to be confused with all the rest, whom they hated.

Ordinarily here in one of my R.I.P. postings, I would insert some anecdote about meeting the deceased but I never had the pleasure — I assume it would have been a pleasure — of meeting Marceau. I did (I thought) harm one of his performances once as I recounted in an article elsewhere on this site. Here — I'll quote it to you. This occurred around 1965 or so…

…someone gave us tickets to The Red Skelton Show and we went over to CBS Television City, an austere black-and-white building not far from where I now live. We waited in line for what seemed like several weeks before being admitted to the stage and seated in the third row of the studio where they now do The Price is Right and where, decades later, I got to meet and work with Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan when I wrote for and he hosted CBS Storybreak.

That week's Skelton show was "A Concert in Pantomime" starring Red and his guest, the great French mime, Marcel Marceau. The taping began with a twenty-second sequence that merely called for Skelton and Marceau to walk to center stage and shake hands. They walked to center stage, shook hands, the Stage Manager yelled "Cut" and Skelton turned to the audience and said, "Wasn't that good?"

That may not sound like much here but, at the moment, it was hysterical. In fact, the audience was still chuckling as Mssr. Marceau took stage to begin taping several pantomime spots. He was in the middle of the fifth when my mind suddenly decided to be mean to me and replay Skelton's line.

Now, you have to imagine the scene: There is absolute silence in the room. On stage, one of the great artists of the world — the legendary Marcel Marceau — is miming some topic of dread seriousness and unbounded pathos. It was the moment of a baby duckling finding his mother dead from a hunter's rifle or something equally cheery. Not one person in the room is making a sound, but for the few fighting back tears at this moving, dramatic moment…

And I suddenly laughed. Out loud.

I tried not to. I held it in until it was leaking out my nostrils and ears but it escaped. I kept remembering Red Skelton going, "Wasn't that good?" and, finally, I couldn't hold it in any longer. I laughed right in the middle of Marcel Marceau's most dramatic, tragic stage moment.

As laughs go, it wasn't a loud one, actually…but it was loud enough for the illustrious Frenchman to hear. Ever the professional, he did not react to it with his body — but I could see the his eyes nail the third row with the slightest, tiniest gleam of "Who the hell is the idiot laughing at this?"

I looked around, as if I too was wondering who'd laughed. But I know I didn't fool him.

The look was so microscopic, I was the only one who saw it…but see it, I did. I saw it again, weeks later, when the show aired. My laugh wasn't heard and no one else in America saw Marceau throw that look, now past the third row and all the way to my home Zenith, just for me. But I saw it again. And every time since then — when I've seen Marceau on a movie screen or on TV — I've seen him subtly but carefully scanning the third row. Just in case I'm back.

Here's a link to an online obit. The man's achievement is perhaps best measured by the fact that everyone referred to him as "the world's greatest mime"…and almost no one could name a single other contender for that honor.