This is a remarkable clip. It's four minutes and you need to know the following. Jerry Sanders is the Mayor of San Diego. He's a Republican and in the last election, his platform included opposition to gay marriage. He was about to come down to the moment when he would be vetoing a city council resolution in support of same-sex wedlock. Then, as happens an amazing percentage of the time when a prominent Conservative takes a stance against homosexual rights, he found out a little something about his own family and friends…

George W. Bush wants another $200 billion for the Iraq War…and of course, he'll get it because Democrats are terrified of the 25% of America that still ostensibly backs this war and will blame Democrats for losing it.

Back when some members of the Bush Administration were saying how the war would pay for itself, I heard a caller on a talk radio show say, "This war is going to cost twice as much as the most pessimistic estimates." The host, who was for the war, called the guy an idiot and said it would be "chump change." As it turns out, it's going to be more like twenty times the highest estimates…so now we know who the chumps are.

Oh, well. Guess it's better than spending it on stupid things like health care for children. Hey, maybe we can pay more Blackwater contractors to fire indiscriminately and without provocation into crowds of civilians. That sure helps things.

I like Blackjack and I used to like watching Blackjack tournaments on TV. The new season of The Ultimate Blackjack Tour has just begun airing on CBS and I think it'll be airing without me watching. What we have here is almost a textbook example of how to gimmick a show up with fancy lights, music and editing to the point of making it unwatchable.

In any kind of sporting event, you need at least a reasonable sensation of a live game; like you're witnessing something actually occurring before your eyes and anything can happen. Blackjack tourneys on TV do away with that. On the UBT, a single match consists of thirty hands of Blackjack and to get that all in to an hour, they have to skip over a lot of hands, summarizing them in fast forward. Imagine a baseball game where you come back from commercial and the announcer says, "While you were gone, they played the third, fourth and fifth innings and here's what happened."

Of course, they wouldn't do that. They wouldn't even air a baseball game that had been taped weeks earlier. But if you're going to do that, you need to at least try to preserve the sense that it's a real contest with an outcome that's in doubt. The shows they're airing are so tricked up with music and lights and computer graphics and breakneck cutting that they lose all sense of a real event. At times, I can't even follow who's playing who's ahead…or care.

The one nice thing about the UBT broadcasts on CBS is that they're almost wholly sponsored by ClubUBT, an online gaming site. In fact, the shows are like a glorified infomercial for ClubUBT, which I like because one of their spokespersons is my old pal, Carl "The Amazing" Ballantine. It's always nice to see Carl, even when he isn't doing his legendary magic act.

Veteran comic actress Alice Ghostley is dead at the age of 81. Her film and television credits include just about everything.

That's almost not an exaggeration. Here's a link to her page at the Internet Movie Database and I doubt it's a tenth complete. She appeared in dozens of movies including The Graduate, Grease and To Kill a Mockingbird. She was a regular or semi-regular on more than two dozen TV series and guested on hundreds of others. Quite often, she was someone who was brought in when a show wasn't doing so well. One of my former writing partners used to refer to something he called The Alice Ghostley Rule. It was that you know a series is in trouble when they add Alice Ghostley to the cast.

That was no slam at her; quite the opposite. She was called in because she was guaranteed laughs and, they hoped, money in the bank. It usually didn't save the show but that was never her fault. She was always terrific.

And the I.M.D.B. listing doesn't even include her work on the stage. She won a Tony in 1965 and had been nominated before that. But somewhere in the I.M.D.B., they do mention a cartoon series where I directed her. Let me tell you — not that it'll do you any good now — how you "direct" Alice Ghostley. You hand Alice Ghostley the script and then you let her just be Alice Ghostley. It was always fine.

Alice was much-loved by her peers…and imitated. Paul Lynde used to freely admit that he copped much (sometimes, he said all) of his comic delivery from the lovely Ghostley. They both got famous appearing in the legendary revue, Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952. I had the best and easiest time working with her. She was just so good at being Alice Ghostley.

Here's a link to the L.A. Times obit and here's a link to the N.Y. Times obit.

This charming fella was out on the back porch about ten minutes ago, licking the last crumbs of Friskies Seafood Supreme out of the bottom the dish. About two seconds after I snapped this, an obnoxiously loud motorcyclist drove up my street and the noise sent the little possum scurrying for somewhere else.

Last time I posted one of these, my former insurance broker sent me an e-mail that said, "They look like giant rats." Two days later, I got an e-mail from the possum saying the same thing about insurance brokers.

Good night, Internet. I'm turning in early…for me, anyway.

If I've configured this properly — and I'd say there's about a one in ten chance of that — the player below will show you the entire documentary by Jonathan Ross, In Search of Steve Ditko. I enjoyed it, in part because Jonathan's perceptive and involved narrative is so irresistible. I'd quibble with a few facts and a lot of judgments…but that's to be expected and some of what's in here has caused me to reconsider some of my own views of the material and the folks who did it. That's always good, even if that consideration takes you back close to where you were before. I also admire the style via which Ross takes us on a quest to find Ditko…and then at the end, he "finds" Ditko (right where he could have found him at the outset) and basically keeps him for himself, informing us that he will respect Ditko's desire for privacy and not share what he learned. (Of course, he does tell us this right after a shot which gives away the address of Ditko's office…)

Anyway, I enjoyed it and will write more about it when I have more time. Here's your chance to enjoy it now…

UPDATE: A lot of folks seem to be puzzled so let me explain: The whole documentary runs 58 minutes and 56 seconds. It's been uploaded to YouTube by someone in chunks of under ten minutes because YouTube only allows longer clips in special circumstances. I've configured a player that should run one part after another in sequence if you click on the arrow at the center. The little arrows on the left and right of the screen will let you jump to the previous part or the following part. And if you place your cursor in the screen, it should show you a little menu of all the parts. But if you just want to watch the thing from start to finish, click the center arrow, sit back and watch for an hour.

I'm finishing up my book on Jack Kirby and I need a couple more things. One is to find someone who has (a) a good scanner and (b) a great condition copy of Fantastic Four #1. Oh, and it would also help if you knew how to use the scanner, had a willingness to help me with my book in exchange for a "thank you" in it, and didn't have your F.F. #1 sealed in a slab of plastic. Drop me an e-mail if this applies to you.

And while we're at it, I could also use decent scans of the covers of Silver Star #1, Captain Glory #1 and Young Romance #1. I either can't find my copies or they're not in perfect condition. But drop me a note before you spend any time scanning so I can tell you the specifications. Thanks.

Michael Kinsley writes about the silly fuss over the "General Betray Us" ad.

My pal Aaron Barnhart has a great story up on his TV Barn blog. In the time it would take me to summarize it here, you can just go read it.

A brief interview with me all about our upcoming Groo mini-series.

Hey, I finally watched most of the Emmy Awards telecast…and by "most," I mean that I TiVoed the sucker and fast-forwarded through it, which brought the three hours down to about thirty-five minutes. This is the new technology, people, and it was designed to get us through long awards programs. If you watch without it and you're bored for three hours, you have no one to blame but yourself.

People complain it's three hours. This, to me, is like bitching that an episode of 60 Minutes lasts an entire hour. The Emmy Awards telecast is all about handing out a very long list of awards. If you give out X number of statuettes and each presentation — introducing the presenters, a bit of banter, reading the nominees, opening the envelope, bringing the winner(s) to the stage, acceptance speech — takes Y minutes…well, just do the math. The show's going to be X times Y minutes long, plus there will also be musical numbers, comedy spots, monologues, The Death Montage, etc.

What do you want them to cut? The entertainment interludes? That would be like PBS cancelling the show you want to watch but retaining the pledge breaks…or something like that.

They've already cut the majority of the Emmy Awards from the Emmy Awards broadcast. They don't reduce the total number. In fact, every year they give out more of them than ever before. They never cut the number because the Academy, let's remember, is made up of people who want to win Emmys. The more they give out, the better your chance of snagging one. So to streamline the telecast, they give out more and more of the awards at the non-televised event a few days earlier. The problem with that is as follows: As they move more and more of the "less important" awards to the other ceremony, the televised one becomes more and more about the biggest stars and the biggest shows. This makes that telecast all the more about Big Multi-Millionaire Stars congratulating one another.

To me, if there's anything interesting about an awards show, it's about when the award alters someone's life or career. Lorne Michaels winning his eleventh Emmy isn't going to make him any richer or more successful or powerful or anything. The Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction For a Multi-Camera Series is probably life-changing for its recipient. It's a shame that the show is no longer about any of that.

Leaving that aside, what was right and wrong with the broadcast? Well, I seem to be the only one on the Internet but I really liked the "in the round" set…and admired the technical expertise that must have been necessary to pull that one off. I wasn't at the Shrine Auditorium (I think that's where they did it) but I wonder if that format caused more celebs to stay in their seats and feel involved in the show. Usually, a lot of your biggies are out in the lobby schmoozing for most of the show because…well, I wouldn't want to sit there for three hours, either. It certainly felt like the audience wasn't all out in the lobby.

What I didn't like: I felt sorry for Ryan Seacrest. He's probably fine on his own show (which I don't watch) but he lacked the sense of importance to preside over the Emmy Awards. He was not capable of coming out and doing a decent monologue so they hustled Ray Romano out there to do one. Romano can do a decent monologue but unfortunately, he didn't have one that had anything to do with television so it further knocked things off-kilter. What Lewis Black did later in the show would have worked up front. In fact, Lewis Black would have been a fine host but the Emmys were on Fox and he isn't the star of a series on Fox so forget that idea. Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Steve Carrell were all very good too, but they aren't on Fox, either. Too bad the Emmys will never be on Comedy Central.

In case you missed it, here's a video of Lewis Black. I liked this a lot and it seems like the audience did, too…

The Senate just voted a symbolic vote to condemn an ad placed by MoveOn.org that attacked General Petraeus. This is wrong in so many ways.

First of all, the Senate (or the House or any government institution) has no business voting en masse — and using the bully pulpit that we entrust to them — to criticize how Americans exercise their Freedom of Speech. Everyone can all say whatever they want on their own time but it isn't the job of our deliberative bodies to pass judgment on how tasteful or accurate a political ad may be.

Secondly, the whole thing's a cheap political stunt. You introduce a resolution like this to try and put your opponents on the spot and force them to vote. If they vote to condemn it, they pretty much have to condemn the whole thing, including portions with which they might agree had those sentiments been more graciously expressed. If they don't vote to condemn it, then their opponents will try to hold them as responsible for it as if they'd written it themselves…which is another distortion of reality. Just because you don't condemn something doesn't mean you agree with every word of it. It's all a trick to move the debate off of whatever legitimate issues the ad raises and make it instead about the manners and ethics of people you're running against.

Thirdly, our Senate has a large pile of issues to deal with that are causing people to lose their lives, their homes, their health insurance, their jobs, etc. Why the hell are they spending time on a symbolic vote about anything?

Lastly, if they're serious that it's the job of our government to scold people for smear campaigns, they're setting themselves up for quite a workload. I'll bet every member of Congress can cite a hundred ads or editorials that they think are as lacking in decorum and truth as the backers of today's symbolic vote claimed the MoveOn ad was. If they're not hypocrites, they'll introduce resolutions calling for symbolic condemnations of all of them…but they won't because there's no political mileage in most cases. Frankly, I think there should just be a symbolic vote to condemn today's symbolic vote…and then they should (to borrow an appropriate phrase in this instance) move on.

One of my favorite things to listen to are the CDs recorded by a band from Holland called The Beau Hunks. They named themselves after a Laurel and Hardy movie because their specialty is re-creating the great background music from the Hal Roach comedy shorts. It was primarily composed by a man named Leroy Shield and it's best known from the underscoring for the films of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

This article describes the extraordinary effort that went into reconstructing these tunes. Getting together an orchestra to play them was the easy part. The hard part was painstakingly re-creating the sheet music, which meant studying the films in minute detail. The output is utterly faithful to the originals except it's without the hisses and scratchiness and actors talking over it. Great stuff. If you'd like to try a CD, I'd recommend this one, which is mostly tunes from the Our Gang comedies but many of the same cues were used in the films of Stan and Ollie.

Here's two minutes of the Beau Hunks rehearsing for a live appearance…

Another damn obit for a friend: Writer-producer Bob Sabaroff passed away early this morning following an ugly bout with leukemia. Among the many, many TV shows he wrote for were Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Bonanza, The Equalizer, High Chaparall, The Invaders and Tarzan. He was the co-creator of Then Came Bronson, a series that I remember fondly. I'll also remember Bob fondly. He was an intense person who'd been everywhere and knew everyone, often speaking of hush-hush government assignments and offering first-hand knowledge of world affairs. We had some interesting discussions and debates, and I regret that we didn't have more of them.

Okay, so here's how I'm figuring this Spector case. Forget what I said earlier.

The prosecution and the defense both agreed to go for broke: Either he's guilty of second-degree murder or he's innocent. The judge agreed. The jury was not allowed to come back with any other verdict. They could not, say, decide for involuntary manslaughter.

Now, let's say you're on the jury. I'm going to use you as an example because if it were me, I'd probably just declare the guy guilty and go shopping. But you have a more open mind than I do on this.

I don't think you think he's innocent and should just go free. He has serious mental problems and he likes to threaten people with guns and one of those people is dead from one of those guns.

But maybe this one going off was an accident. I don't think you buy the idea that poor Lana Clarkson was so suicidal that she grabbed the gun, stuck it in her own mouth and pulled the trigger…but maybe you think that the way the law is written, Spector shooting her by accident does not quite meet the definition of murder in the second degree. You can't vote for manslaughter so you vote the only other way you can…to acquit. You can do that because others in the jury room are going to vote to convict. That means you can vote to acquit without worrying that Spector's going to waltz away from this with no punishment, free to point guns at others.

I'm not saying your idea is, "Let's create a deadlock." Just that you've been given two possible votes and you decide the one that means "guilty as charged" doesn't exactly apply. There are five or maybe seven of you in the jury room who feel that way.

The judge says he may send the jury back to deliberate but give them the option of voting for manslaughter or some other slightly-lesser charge. He may order the lawyers to argue this or other salient points before deliberations resume…and it's always possible that the prosecutors and Spector's lawyers will cut a deal where Phil will plead "no contest" to a reduced charge. There's no telling what (if anything) is on Spector's mind but his attorneys have to be thinking that being able to vote the lesser crime is only going to drive acquittal votes towards that choice. It will not cause those who voted to convict to suddenly decide the guy should receive a "get out of jail free" card.

So that's my prediction: One way or another, he'll wind up with a reduced but still serious conviction. That will suffice for me and my murder spree will not be necessary.

But if I'm wrong and Spector does go free…watch out!