Have you heard about the scandals in the Student Loan business? Michael Kinsley has.

As you all know by now, I feed a steady stream of cats, possums and raccoons in my backyard…but mostly cats. About an hour ago, I was downstairs and I heard a symphony of Friskies-crunching that told me not only was a raccoon out there but probably a herd of them. When I went to look though, I saw evidence that such a group had just been there — a lot of wet coonprints around a near-empty supper dish…but I saw no raccoons. I stepped outside to refill the dish and suddenly noticed a tree near the dish was swaying a bit.

I looked up and there, clinging to the highest branch of the tree (about twelve feet up) were four small raccoons…or maybe five. Guess they heard me coming and fled to up there. I ran in, grabbed the camera, snapped some pics, replenished the dish and then went back inside so they could climb down and eat. They looked pretty scared up there so I didn't take a lot of photos but this one, I thought, gave a good idea of the scene. I know how they feel. There have been days when I've felt like hiding up there.

Around 1960, a company called National Telepix acquired the rights to the silent Our Gang comedies and released them to television. These were the pre-Spanky and Alfalfa ones and the National Telepix folks sliced them all down — without a lot of care — into short segments to which they added funny music and sound effects and inane narration. They then sent these chopped-up, hoked-up comedies into the world under two series names. One, which was briefly on Los Angeles television, was called The Mischief Makers. The other one I don't recall ever seeing but it had the catchy title, Those Lovable Scallawags with Their Gangs. Both series also included some segments from an ancient series of short comedies called The Dippy Doo-Dads which featured monkeys in odd costuming.

The Mischief Makers at least had a catchy animated title sequence — created by the great animation director, Gene Deitch — and this is it. Or rather, this is one of them. I am quite certain there was another version of this opening in which they sang the same tune but the lyrics mentioned Our Gang. I vividly recall the kids chorus singing, "Skiddely, skiddely, bang bang bang / Don't forget to watch Our Gang."

And what occurs to me — and this is theory on my part — is that the films aired initially with that song and that whoever then owned the rights to Our Gang (M.G.M., I believe) made them change those lyrics to the ones in our clip today. What is certain though is that at one point, the 22 year body of work that was Our Gang was being marketed to television in four packages: National Telepix had the silents in their two series, Hal Roach's company was selling the 1927-1938 talkies under the title, The Little Rascals and M.G.M. was hawking the 1938-1944 films under the Our Gang title.

Here's the opening and closing to The Mischief Makers…

I will be a guest at The National, which is a big comic book convention being held at Penn Plaza Pavilion in the city of New York, November 16-18. Click on that link for more details and when we get closer to the date, I'll try to tell you here just what I'll be doing there.

And then the following weekend will find me in Columbus, Ohio for Roger Price's wonderful Mid-Ohio Con, a two-day extravaganza (November 24 and 25) at Battelle Hall in the Columbus Convention Center. Again, watch here for more details.

Unfortunately, it looks like Kirby: King of Comics, my book on Jack Kirby, will not be out in time for either con. We're still finding new treasures to include and it's now scheduled to come out in February of '08…I think. However, I expect to be signing it at Wondercon in San Francisco at the end of that month and I've tentatively accepted invites to a half-dozen other conventions next year. So I'll be around.

A little while ago, I posted an e-mail address here to submit letters for the letter column of Groo, the comic book I do with that guy with the fake mustache. I'm now hearing that letters sent to it have been bouncing. This is apparently because I just activated the domain it's on and the activation has yet to propagate to servers all across the Internet. I've taken down the item and will repost it in a day or two, at which time that address should work fine. If you sent a message, send it again when I post the address again. Sorry for the confusion.

Over on his weblog, my pal Doug Pratt links to a video of the opening credits of Spider-Man 2 and notes…

Spider-Man was not created solely by writer Stan Lee. As correctly credited in all three movies, artist Steve Ditko co-created the character.

Doug is a smart guy but he, like many, has missed a key distinction in those credits. They do not say "Spider-Man created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko," which is the form DC has used for Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster on the Superman movies, Bob Kane on the Batman movies and others. What it says on the Spider-Man movies is, "Based on the comic book by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko." Unless something has changed — and I don't think it has — Marvel's recent position is that Stan Lee created Spider-Man. What they are acknowledging with the credit is that Steve Ditko worked on issues of the comic from which the movie drew material.

Because things don't look quite bad enough for the Republican Party. Let's get him into the race so Ron Paul can stop being the weirdo candidate.

Bill Marx is an accomplished musician who — oh, by the way — is the son of a pretty famous musician named Harpo. Based on the few times I've been able to speak with Bill, I'd say he's also a pretty nice, sharp guy…and he has a keen understanding that, as the kid of someone like Harpo Marx, he should not only indulge folks' curiosities about his papa but enjoy sharing him with the world. To that end, he's recently authored a book about what it was like to grow up in that particular family. Harpo's autobiography was entitled Harpo Speaks so Bill's book is, fittingly, Son of Harpo Speaks.

I recommend this book. In fact, I'll tell you how much I recommend it. If you were to click this link, you could buy it from Amazon and I would get a small cut of the proceeds. I will suggest instead that you go to Bill's website, browse some of the wonderful online photos he has there of himself and his father, and then order the book from him and have him autograph it. That will cost you about eight bucks more (and cost me my commission) but hey, the money goes to the author and you'll get his signature on your copy.

However, I have an even better recommendation for those of you who live in or around Los Angeles. This coming Wednesday evening, September 19, Bill will be signing copies at the Barnes & Noble Shop in The Grove beginning at 7:30. The Grove is that big, trendy mall that they built onto the ass end of Farmers Market at 3rd Street and Fairfax, and it's really a great place to browse and eat and shop and see movies. (One of the places I like to eat there is a branch of Maggiano's, and they sometimes have Gregg Marx performing there. Gregg is the grandson of Gummo and a fine singer of romantic tunes.)

Anyway, see if you can get over there and meet Bill and buy a book. You'll enjoy both those things.

After 1,300 years, China is ending a policy of giving giant pandas to foreign countries as a way of improving international relations. Shucks. I was hoping to start my own nation and score a free panda.

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.