The other day here, we reported on a reunion performance of The Ding-a-Ling Sisters from The Dean Martin Show and wondered aloud how it went. Faith Marie sent me the following…

I am with the Endless Summer Band. We performed with the Ding-a-Lings last night at the Vietnam Vet conference. The crowd loved them. We had a blast having them on stage with us at the beginning and at the end of the evening. They stayed the duration and danced with people during the show. Their enthusiasm was infectious. I am glad we got to meet them. I will always keep their autographed picture!

Sounds like a hit to me. I'm told there will soon be video on YouTube and if so, I'll link you all in that direction.

Also, going back a few days, we brought you the opening to the 1967 sitcom, Mr. Terrific, starring Stephen Strimpell as a milquetoast superguy. Several of you reminded me — and I clean forgot — that the pilot for that run was the second Mr. Terrific pilot. The first, which never aired, had some of the same elements but some different ones, as well…and the title role was filled by none other than Alan Young! Reportedly, the folks in charge decided he was too old for the part. He would have been 47 or 48 at the time. Frankly, he's such a good actor that I'd think that would have made up for it…not that I think one better actor would have saved Mr. Terrific.

Gotta go pack. Let me see if I can find a nice Video Link to leave you with…

A few nights ago around 4 AM, I spotted these guys dining at the communal pussycat dish out back. Obviously, it's a "next generation" of neighborhood raccoons. Obviously too, it's a parent and two kids. In the past when I've been watching or photographing parents and their offspring out there, the parent raccoon(s) never took their eyes off me for more than a split-second and the kids almost never looked. For some reason with these guys, it's the other way around. It's like the mother or father — I can't tell which it is — said, "Okay, you two watch the goofy-looking person while I eat."

At the moment — this is for those of you scoring at home — the population of my backyard consists of the two cats we call the Stranger Cats, a dark grey cat that seems to be quite sad and injured, a feisty little kitten that is terrified of humans, the above raccoon brood and intermittent possums. We don't see all of them every night. Then again, I'm not down in the kitchen taking the census very often. Also of course, we have a lot of squirrels and bluebirds and sparrows and starlings and doves and there are still those crows that are the size of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar skulking about. I don't know why more of us aren't alarmed about these giant crows.

So much to do today: A script to be finished. A meeting. My car's in the shop getting a new fan belt and all sorts of other unnecessary things the mechanic decided I'd be gullible enough to pay for…and I am. I'm going to get a haircut so that when I go to San Diego, the zoo keepers down there don't think one of their tenants has made a break for it.

It might be nice if I packed before it's time to leave for the convention, too. This is the inevitable moment when all of us who are attending wish we could call up and say, "Hey, I'm not ready. Any chance of just delaying the con to the following week?" But I guess the Comic-Con operators wouldn't much like that idea. They're already down there, setting things up, printing out badges, putting up "LOT FULL" signs on every place you could conceivably park.

So I guess I'll go this week. If you see me around or about the con, feel free to say hello. Don't be frightened by the fact that I look like I'm hurrying off to something important. I always look like that. It's all part of my scheme to make people think I ever have anything important to do.

I don't know when I'll get back here to post something so I'll leave you with Today's Video Link, which is YouTube footage of a raccoon doing something my patrons have yet to attempt: Stealing a rug. But give 'em time. They'll get to it.

Those of you who've never attended a comic book convention might be wondering what one looks like. In 1972, my buon amigo Sergio Aragonés did a poster of one and Steven Thompson has scanned and posted it to share with us. Go have a look.

This is the opening for the sitcom, I Married Joan, which debuted on NBC in 1952 and lasted three seasons. Obviously conceived to replicate the appeal of I Love Lucy over on CBS, it starred Joan Davis as a dizzy wife who was always getting herself and her husband into trouble. Her long-suffering hubby was a judge played by Jim Backus and he spent a lot of time loving her despite her latest screw-up, whatever it was.

That and the theme song are almost all I remember about the content of the show. It hit syndication immediately after exiting NBC and the ABC affiliate in Los Angeles seemed to run it at almost any hour of the day. It was kind of like, "Gee, we don't know what else to put on. Let's run I Married Joan." I recall watching it at 8 AM as I got ready for school and I recall it being on when I got home…and there was one night when I was around eight when I awoke in the middle of the night from a terrible dream. It was so ghastly that I couldn't get it out of my mind and calm down enough to go back to sleep.

I didn't want to wake my parents but I had to start thinking about something else — anything else. For some reason, all I could think to do was to sneak out into the living room and watch a little TV with the sound kept low enough to not roust the folks. I tiptoed out, turned the volume down to zero, turned on the TV and waited as the picture came on, whereupon I planned to dial the audio up to the minimum level possible for me to enjoy whatever was on. As it turned out, what was on was I Married Joan…at 4:00 in the friggin' morning. I stood there in my jammies, staring at the set and thinking, "I must be the only person in the whole world watching this at the moment."

Here's the opening of I Married Joan. Catchy theme song.

Christopher Caldwell gives us a nice overview and history of Ron Paul, a man who won't get any closer to the Republican nomination than you will…but might have some impact on how that party veers.

The administration's war efforts in Iraq have had no more fervent supporter than Christopher "Kit" Bond, the senior senator from the great state of Missouri and the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He's one of the many pols who've been out there for years now, telling us how great it's going over there and how we only have to "stay the course" and continue to do exactly as George W. Bush directs.

So it was a little disconcerting to see him say the following in this letter to The New York Times…

While I agree that we had the wrong plan for three years, we now have the right one, and the right man to lead it.

We had the wrong plan for three years? Three years!!?? How is that possible? I mean, all that time, Kit Bond was telling us we had the right plan and he was impugning the courage, intelligence and/or patriotism of anyone who dared suggest otherwise. And now…here he is, telling us it was the wrong plan. Oh, well. At least, he still has utter confidence in the men who picked all those people who plotted out the wrong plan for us. I wonder how the families of all the soldiers who got killed in the last three years carrying out the wrong plan feel about this.

Since shortly after the dark day of 9/11, to get on an airplane in this country has been to be subjected to more elaborate security procedures. You often have to tote your own luggage around to screening devices and wait while it's inspected by people wearing blue gloves. You have to take off your shoes. You have to throw away your bottles of water and buy new ones once you're past the checkpoint. (I think the folks who have the H2O concessions at the airports suggested that one.) You have to discard things like lighters and medicines and nail clippers and that most lethal of all substances, breast milk. You also have to get there much earlier and wait in long lines to be treated with cold suspicion by officials, some of whom seem to know their jobs and some of whom just seem to enjoy the sensation of power and the joy of ordering others around.

I wouldn't mind any of this if I thought there was the slightest chance that it was lessening the chance of another 9/11. But flying the last few years has convinced me — and I'm hardly the only person who thinks this — that all the new stuff is just for show. The metal detectors can still, I suppose, prevent most folks from bringing weapons onto the planes…but it strikes me that everything that's been added to the ordeal is just so someone can pretend that since that September day, we're doing more to prevent disaster.

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Department of Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend was asked to defend the new decision that lighters on planes pose no threat. Here's a link to a video of her justifying that change. But the question I'd like to see asked is: "What's changed?" If a terrorist could have used a Zippo to bring down a plane last month, why can't he now? The unspoken logical conclusion is that lighters were never dangerous, which leads us to the obvious follow-up question: "How did you come to this conclusion and why didn't someone decide it 5+ years ago?" I find it hard to believe that the C.I.A. has just now monitored some terrorists, overheard them saying they never use lighters in their schemes, and deduced from that exchange that no terrorist could or would.

Make no mistake: I'm all for doing whatever can be done to make our skies safer, especially when I'm flying them. But it seems to me that every dollar and man-hour you spend doing something that doesn't work is a buck and a man-hour not spent on doing something that might. One useful project might be to take the 50% or so of the airport T.S.A. crew that acts like they got promoted that morning out of working behind the Sbarro's counter and teach them to actually look at the passengers and talk to them like human beings. And maybe if they didn't devote so much time to looking for nail files and bottles of Crystal Geyser water, they might notice something that could actually do some harm.

At this moment, the Vietnam Veterans of America is winding down its annual convention in Springfield, Illinois. Last evening, they had their big banquet, complete with entertainment. Among the performers scheduled to appear at the convention were country-rock singers Big and Rich, recording artists Lee Greenwood and Nancy Sinatra, and a historic reunion of — wait for it — The Ding-a-Ling Sisters.

You remember the Ding-a-Ling Sisters. Back in the days of the Dean Martin TV shows, there was a chorus line of 8-10 comely singer-dancers called The Golddiggers. They often appeared with Dean and also fronted their own series from time to time, including a terrific summer replacement show done in England that starred Marty Feldman. Golddiggers came in many permutations with ladies constantly being added and dropped from the ensemble. At times, they'd also take four of the more gifted Golddiggers and bill them as The Ding-a-Ling Sisters.

In 1970, when Bob Hope was doing his reknowned Christmas show tours, he took along the current Golddiggers group to entertain our soldiers. If I'm recalling this correctly from my research a few years later — back in my days of hard-hitting journalism, I did a couple of articles for magazines about Golddiggers and Ding-a-Ling Sisters — the whole troupe would do a couple of numbers and then the four who comprised the Ding-a-Lings would perform as a separate act. Or something like that. In the photo above, which is from one of those Hope excursions, the ladies are — left to right — Michelle Della Fave, Tara Leigh, Wanda Bailey and Susan Lund.  Susan Lund now goes by the name Susan McIver.

Last night in Springfield, three of them — Susan, Michelle and Wanda — reunited and performed together for the first time in thirty-seven years. (The word is that Tara declined but sent along her good wishes. Tara was the one with the operatic voice whose solos always caused Dean to do a cross-eyed take to camera.) I have no report on how the show went but I'll wager the audience loved them. If anyone was there or hears from someone who was, let me know. I'm fascinated by "second careers" and how someone who was on a series in the sixties or seventies can now make money off it — sometimes, decent and much-needed money — working the nostalgia circuit and conventions.

It's another Paul Winchell clip. Here's the first six minutes of an episode of one of his many TV programs. In fact, I think it's the same episode that yesterday's clip came from. In any case, it includes a jazzy little musical number with Knucklehead. Click and enjoy.

Most of the presidential hopefuls are including in their campaign swings, a visit to the Google headquarters in Northern California. I've linked to videos of some of these appearances and will try to get around to linking to all of them because I find them generally more honest and candid than what you see when the same folks are on CNN, Fox News or MSNBC. Here's an article about them.

Unfortunately placed advertising.

I feel a little better about the probable length of my long-range Jack Kirby bio now that I've received R.C. Harvey's new book on the life of Milton Caniff. A full-scale biography of the great comic strip writer-artist was long overdue (so is my Kirby book) and I can't imagine anyone doing a better, more thorough job than Bob Harvey did on Caniff. It runs 800 pages and even the official title is long. For the record, it's Meanwhile…: A Biography of Milton Caniff, Creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon.

Is it too long? Maybe the title is but the book sure isn't. Caniff's incredible career demanded that kind of detail, and I found myself wishing Harvey had written more, not less, about some aspects of the man's life. Of particular interest is how Bob nails down the life of a working strip artist — the relentless schedule, the dealings with editors and syndicates, etc. One forgets that Caniff's achievement was not merely in producing serialized graphic novels of great excellence for so many decades. Just sitting at the board and doing that would have been impressive enough but Milton Caniff also had to be a spokesperson for his strips and profession, and deal with so many aspects of the business. The portrait of the gentleman himself — as smart and determined as any of his heroes — is fascinating and, from what I can tell, quite accurate.

Do I have quibbles? Little ones, not enough to tarnish this enthusiastic recommendation. The main one is probably that next time I see Bob, which I hope will be at the looming Comic-Con International, I want to discuss his view of Al Capp's troubles and scandals in the sixties and seventies. But that's minor and the important thing is that he seems to get Milton Caniff exactly right. Click here and order a copy.

Boy, they didn't make this much fuss when I had my colonoscopy.

Some of you may recall it. I also transferred power to Dick Cheney while I was under the anesthetic.

Every year, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce selects an average of twenty famous show biz people (or groups) to have their names embedded in the Walk of Fame. As you stroll up and down Hollywood Boulevard and many of the intersecting avenues in that area, you can see the various past selections. And if you go to Hollywood on the day they're unveiling a new star, you can often see the recipient in person, down on his knees with Johnny Grant, the honorary mayor of the area.

The selection process makes it seem like a little less of an honor. You have to be nominated for it…and in most cases, people are nominated by their agents or publicists or producers. People have been known to nominate themselves. One star per year is awarded posthumously but if you're alive, you have to agree to be there for the unveiling ceremony before they'll consider your nomination…and it also helps if you can bring along a few other well-known folks to lend their glamour to the event. (A number of stars who oughta have their names in the concrete — like David Letterman — don't because they've never indicated a willingness to show up for any ceremony or have made it clear that they wouldn't.)

You also have to pay for it. Or if you don't, somebody has to pay for it. In most cases, the fee (currently $25,000) is paid for by someone doing business with the celebrity. For example, you're starring in a new movie that's coming out next August. The studio publicists decide that it wouldn't hurt the film if you were to receive a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame next August. So they coordinate with your fan club (or set one up if you don't have one) and they throw the clout of the studio behind your nomination and promise the presence of other celebs. The 25 Grand comes out of the film's promotional budget.

But you know what? Even if you're aware of all the machinations involved, it's still an honor. They've just announced the names that tourists will be walking on soon…the stars that will be installed and unveiled over the next twelve months…

In the category of Motion Pictures, they'll be honoring Angela Bassett, Cate Blanchett, Stan Lee, The Munchkins, Tim Robbins and The Westmores of Hollywood.

Under the classification of Television, we have Bill Geist, Kate Linder, Howie Mandel, Sherwood Schwartz, Vince McMahon, Susan St. James, and a posthumous recognition of Brian Keith.

In the Recording Artist group, stars will go to Christina Aguilera, Brooks and Dunn, Ricky Martin, Red Hot Chili Peppers and, posthumously, George Harrison. (You'd think George Harrison would already have one but he doesn't, probably because he wouldn't agree to be there. Neither do Paul or Ringo, probably for the same reason. There's a star for John Lennon but I'm guessing that was awarded after he died. There's a five year waiting period for posthumous stars so this was probably the first opportunity to give one to Harrison.)

Lastly, in the category of Live Theater/Live Performance, there's one star being awarded and it goes to Stephen Schwartz. It's kind of interesting that —

Wait a minute! Scroll up a second and see if I just typed what I think I typed. Stan Lee? Stan Lee's getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? All right! Congrats, Stan! They haven't announced dates for any of these unveilings yet but I'm going to try to make it to Stan's event. The only other one of these I ever attended was the one for June Foray.

And I may try to make it to the ceremony when they honor The Munchkins. Meinhardt Raabe is scheduled to attend. He's the gent who played the Coroner of Munchkin City, and I imagine they'll have other surviving Munchkins in attendance, such as Jerry Maren. It is kind of a Yellow Brick Road up there on Hollywood Boulevard these days. That is, if you ignore the derelicts and drug dealers. Wonder if they're going to make all those Munchkins get down on their knees for the unveiling. They're already pretty close to the ground.

I have a mess of negatives and slides I want to turn into JPG files. Flying back from Pittsburgh recently, I was flipping through the SkyMall catalog and I saw this thing advertised. It's a Digital Picture Converter from Hammacher Schlemmer. I thought I'd ask if anyone reading this has ever tried one of these…or anything else they thought worked well. I don't need editing software. I just need to turn slides and negatives into digital images. Any recommendations?