Here's another Laurel and Hardy clip from the Spanish version of their 1930 feature, Pardon Us. In these scenes, they've escaped from prison and are hiding out in a gang of cotton-pickers by making themselves up in blackface. For obvious reasons, some of this has often been trimmed in English language prints of the film.

The movie had an interesting, patchwork history. This was the first feature in which Stan and Ollie actually starred. Prior to this, they'd made short films and done guest appearances in two other features. Pardon Us actually started life as a two-reel short but things got out of hand.

The Hal Roach Studio, where they worked, released their films through M.G.M. and it was not uncommon for Roach to borrow sets or other resources from the larger studio. M.G.M. had made a prison picture called The Big House and Roach secured a verbal promise that he could have use of the many cells and other penitentiary sets that had been constructed for that film…so Laurel and the team's gag writers started in on a short about The Boys behind bars. Then M.G.M. announced some extra terms. In exchange for the loan of the sets, Stan and Ollie would have to star in a film for M.G.M. Roach said no and decided he'd proceed with his prison comedy by building his own sets. When those sets wound up costing an absurd amount of money, the decision was made to turn Pardon Us into a feature.

The film's disjointed, episodic nature flowed from the fact that it was a big building erected on a small foundation, but also because it was filmed and then refilmed and refilmed. They edited a version of the film, previewed it, then went back and filmed new scenes based on the audience response. Then they edited it, previewed it again and went back and shot more scenes…and so on. The cotton-picking scenes were among the final add-ins. Then after the English version was declared final, they had to go back and shoot the foreign versions.

There were four of them — French, German, Italian and Spanish. The Spanish version, from which the following clip is excerpted, was entitled De Bote en Bote. All four were filmed at the same time. There were four supporting casts and a young Boris Karloff was among those hired for the French version. Stan and Ollie would film a scene in French, then the stage manager would call in the German actors and they'd film the same scene again in German. Then they'd bring in the Italian actors and so on. Shortly after all four were completed and edited, some additional trims were made in the English version. As a result, there are a number of scenes that appear in the foreign versions but not in the English. Then to further complicate matters and give headaches to us Laurel and Hardy fans, more trims were made in Pardon Us before it was released in America but were not made in the film when it was released in England under the name, Jailbirds.

When you add in those TV prints that omit the blackface scenes, you have a movie that may have set some sort of record for different versions. Here's the nine-minute Spanish language YouTube version…

Just got an e-mail from Kim "Howard" Johnson, the world's foremost expert on all things Monty Python. He says he just got an e-mail from Eric Idle who says he's debuting a "new rude song" tonight on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson and wants the word spread. There. I have just spread it as far as I can. Tune in and hear.

And as we wait for the verdict in the Phil Spector Killed Lana Clarkson case and some of us plan our killing sprees just in case, dare we savor the prospect of another O.J. Simpson Trial?

Jonathan Ross offers some background and a teaser to his Steve Ditko documentary which airs this Sunday on BBC4 over in the U.K. No, I don't know how you can get a copy in other countries but I bet it'll be very easy starting next week.

No one of any political viewpoint seems to have been too happy with George W. Bush's speech last night. And Fred Kaplan really, really didn't think much of it. The whole thing sounded to me like another one of those Bush specials that seems to say, "No matter what's happened, it's exactly the way I planned it…and in the interests of America, we need to have a bi-partisan consensus with everyone working together to do everything exactly the way I think best."

Carolyn and I took our friends Paul Dini and Misty Lee to see Corteo, which is a Cirque du Soleil touring show that's currently parked in Los Angeles for a couple of months. We love Cirque du Soleil shows. Yes, the plots are often incomprehensible and unnecessary. Yes, much of the music is pretentious and overripe. Yes, there are all these weird people and creatures who wander on and off the stage for no good reason. You tend to overlook all that because there are moments on the stage — quite a few in your average Cirque du Soleil show — where you see breathtaking beauty, mostly in a human form defying all reality. You just sit there thinking, "I didn't just see a person do that." But you did. The physical feats are always stunning — juggling, tumbling, aerial antics, etc. Our favorite acts this time were a bed-jumping routine using beds like trampolines, a lady who foot-juggled about eight large hoops and somehow had them all going at once, and an aerial act with men literally flinging ladies across the rafters of the tent.

But I have to say: There's one more thing you have to ignore if you're going to enjoy Cirque du Soleil. I don't mind paying a steep price for a great show but there are moments when the way they're getting it from you makes you feel like someone has turned you upside down by the ankles and is shaking you to make sure they got every cent. Decent seats are $80-$90 each and no matter how you buy them, there seem to be extra handling charges. (One of the oddities of buying tickets on the Internet is the underlying principle of Handling Charges. It seems the less they handle anything, the more they get to charge you for Handling Charges.)

Then when you get there, it's $19 to park. Popcorn is five bucks. A bottle of water is $3.75 and so on. And everywhere, people are hustling you to buy CDs and t-shirts and special "Tapis Rouge" and "Club Cirque" package deals. Plus, while the Cirque du Soleil shows in Vegas have lovely, comfy seating in permanent theaters, the touring shows are in portable tents that cram people in like a really, really cheap airline. Hey, folks…I know it costs money to teach a guy from the Ukraine how to spin on his head but come on.

It's a great show and if you can afford it, catch it.

In 1979, comedian-filmmaker Albert Brooks made a very funny (I thought) movie called Real Life, which may have been a bit ahead of its time in addressing the way film and television can corrupt "reality" when they attempt to market it. What we have here today is the trailer for Real Life which, of course, has almost nothing to do with that movie. But it's also pretty funny.

According to CourtTV's VerdictClock, the jurors in the Phil Spector trial have been out for almost four days now. As some of you may know, I've made a decision that if that man is acquitted, I'm going on a killing spree. You've got a guy here who's a known looney, who's repeatedly threatened people — especially women who wanted to leave his house — with guns. A woman who was apparently trying to leave his house was shot and Spector staggered outside with the smoking pistol and said, "I think I killed someone." Add to that the fact that the best his side can come up with as a defense is that the lady was (they say) unhappy with her life so she took the opportunity of a visit to Spector's house to kill herself there. And oh, yeah — the chauffeur who heard Spector say that may have misheard because there was the sound of a water fountain nearby.

There's actually more evidence of Spector's guilt than that but that's plenty. So I figure if he doesn't get convicted, no one who's in show business will ever be convicted and I might as well go on a little killing spree…nothing major. I may just off the kid at the Whole Foods Market who doesn't understand what "no mayonnaisse on the sandwich" means, the guy who keeps repainting the house number on my curb without being asked and demanding money, and maybe the network guy who told me the show with the two Japanese ladies couldn't miss. As you can see, I'm not big on Enemies Lists.

But here's the problem. If there's no verdict today, there might be one tomorrow…which would mean the ideal time to start my killing spree would be Saturday. Trouble is, I have plans for the weekend. I can't spare the time to murder three people. I could maybe squeeze in one but what kind of killing spree is that? Wouldn't even make the tabloids. And then Monday and Tuesday, I have meetings all day so that won't work.

This is very annoying. Just what do these people have to discuss in that jury room? Spector's ongoing campaign to top each stupid hairstyle or wig with a stupider one? If they're going to give us a totally illogical, stupid verdict, the first O.J. jury came in with one of those in three hours. If they're going to arrive at an intelligent verdict, they could have done that in half the time. In the words of the eminent philosopher, Larry the Cable Guy, git-r-done! For God's sake.

The late/great comic book artist Wally Wood was an amazing creative talent who didn't always work on material worthy of him. His friend and collaborator Bhob Stewart has a weblog that sometimes remembers Woody and on it, he's posted a piece about an Alka-Seltzer print ad that Wood did to much acclaim. He also has a link to a video of a TV commercial based on that ad. Go read it…but also read Stewart's comments on how Wood wasted so much of his talent on unimportant, quick-money jobs. The guy was so much better than so much of what he produced.

A couple of you have written to me, aghast at my remark that "…the Oscars oughta be hosted by a movie star." They are horrified that I seem not to be aware that Johnny Carson, who was not a movie star, was one of the most successful of all Oscar hosts.

Yes, I know. In fact, I thought he did a very good job when he hosted. I still think the Academy Awards ought to be emceed by someone in the motion picture community.

To the seeming contradiction, I would point out a couple of things. One was that Johnny was a TV star in a way that no one else is or perhaps ever will be. He was such a big TV star that it transcended the fact that he was not a movie person. No one around today is on that level. He was also Johnny Carson, a position in show business that remains sadly unfilled since his retirement, despite hollow claims that Dave or Jay or someone else was The New Johnny Carson.

To put it another way: I thought Johnny was wrong for the position but he did it so well that it didn't matter. He did a lot of things that you can't honestly expect anyone else in show business to be able to do these days.

And this is not one of those issues that I feel so strongly about that I'm prepared to defend it to the death. It's just a feeling and no big deal.

Back in January, that Bush guy in the White House promised us The Surge would achieve a lot of things. So, uh, what did he promise and how much of that has come to pass? Answer: He promised a lot and almost none of it has happened. As this article explains.

But maybe we have to give it another six months. And then another six months. And then another six months…

When Amos 'n' Andy was a radio show, the main roles were played by the program's creators, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll. For more than thirty years, these two white guys played beloved black guys on the radio.

In 1951 when it came time to turn it into a TV show, Gosden and Correll stepped aside — what else could they do? — and cast the series with black actors — or "colored people," as they were then called. This was quite a big deal at the time because America loved Amos, Andy and their cronies on the radio, which meant that Gosden and Correll had to convince the viewers that the characters wouldn't be ruined; that they'd still be the same, popular folks. (Another reason that the characters couldn't change is that Gosden and Correll were continuing to do them on the radio, though for a declining audience.)

To this end, the first TV episode started like this. It runs about five minutes and it's Gosden and Correll introducing the actors to an audience that came in to watch the first show and to have their laughs recorded. (This is all explained in a graphic at the beginning.) The casting was actually quite good…especially Tim Moore, who played the Kingfish and stole every single scene in which he appeared. So changing actors wasn't a problem and the show did rather well in the ratings. The problem, which caused it to be yanked off the air after two years, was that the nation was changing in its attitude about minorities, and a lot of folks weren't happy with how the show depicted blacks. The series stopped production at the end of its second season and had a checkered presence in off-network reruns for a short time before disappearing completely.

Here's the film of Gosden and Correll introducing their players. Unfortunately, it doesn't include the explanation that they gave the audience about why they were recasting the parts. We all know why they did it but it would be interesting to hear the phrasing and the rhetoric they used.

As I think I may have predicted here, Jon Stewart has been invited to host the Academy Awards next year for what will be his second time. A few webloggers are asking why, noting that the ratings for the year he hosted were not huge. I suspect the answer is that the folks behind the Oscars don't see a lot of connection between the host and the ratings. Much more relevant to the numbers is how much viewers of a given telecast care about who wins and/or anticipate dramatic, memorable moments. In a very real sense, faulting the host when the Oscars don't get a huge rating is like blaming the sportcaster when he has to call a dull game that no one cares about.

I still think Stewart isn't a great choice but only because he isn't a movie star, and the Oscars oughta be hosted by a movie star. If one doesn't care about that, he's probably the best pick they could have made. Actually, based on his performance at that Mort Sahl Tribute, I'm convinced that Jay Leno would amaze everyone with how well he could handle the job. But Leno has reportedly turned down the gig several times and they probably don't even bother asking him anymore.

On the way home from my appearance on Shokus Internet Radio, I stopped off at a supermarket for a few items and I was shocked at what I saw there. It's bad enough that they're selling Dry Cat…but they're even selling Canned Cat. In fact, they had a whole aisle for it. This is just barbaric. I suppose the mini-marts are selling small packages of Kitten.

Hey, take a look at what time it is right now. If it's between 4 PM and 6 PM Pacific Time (7 PM and 9 PM Eastern), then I'm live on Shokus Internet Radio right this minute, talking animation with my fellow cartoon buff Earl Kress and our cheery host, Stu Shostak. You can hear us if you tune in to Stu's Show, which you can do by going to this page and selecting an audio browser. Log in, listen…you can even call in and ask a question. Don't miss this golden opportunity. I may not be back on the radio for quite some time if I wind up going on my killing spree.