There are many places you can go on the Internet and see George W. Bush be bashed, ridiculed, attacked, insulted, etc. It's becoming more common on the web than porn. But the most derogatory thing I've seen on the topic of Bush lately is an article by his devout supporter, William Kristol, entitled "Why Bush Will Be A Winner." If this is the best anyone can say for the guy, he's (and therefore, we are) in more trouble than anyone thought. A dead giveaway is this early sentence…

Let's step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration.

Note to my friends: I'm never going to be in a position where if I screw up, thousands of people die. But even if it's just a matter of defending me when I write a lousy comic book, please don't start your defense of me by saying everyone should look past the unnecessary mistakes and self-inflicted wounds that have characterized my work. You won't be helping.

You can find many responses to Mr. Kristol on the web today. Here's one.

Michael Kinsley on his lunch with Ronald Reagan that really didn't happen.

Though battling deadlines and other pressures, I took time out last evening to attend What's My Line? Live on Stage, a local enterprise I've written about before…here, for instance. And here. Oh, and I wrote about it here, too. It's always a lot of fun and last night's installment (their 70th) was the best I've seen.

The panel consisted of Frank DeCaro, who's on Sirius Satellite Radio and who was on the recent revival of I've Got A Secret on GSN; comic actress Annie Wood; Oscar Nunez, who can be seen each week on The Office; and our lovely Matinee Lady, Teresa Ganzel. The first contestant was a woman who made doggie treats. The second contestant was a former Beverly Hills meter maid who'd been on the original What's My Line? back in 1964. (They showed a clip.) The third contesant signed in as "Mr. X" but I had a hunch he was my partner, Sergio Aragonés. DeCaro guessed that occupation — "draws for MAD Magazine" — and then Sergio gave a brief cartooning demonstration to the delight of the crowd.

I was there partly to see Sergio but also because the show's producers had told me that they had a super-spectacular Mystery Guest. They didn't tell me who — they're real good at keeping things secret — but did say I shouldn't miss it. So I didn't. I was there when Peter Falk entered and signed-in, please.

And boy, the place exploded. I was in the front row (with Scott Shaw!) and I could see how baffled the panelists, who of course were blindfolded, were as to what kind of celeb could be getting this incredible welcome. It went on and on…everyone in the house standing and cheering and clapping and just being thrilled to be in the same room with Columbo. Sergio had received a decent ovation when he entered and another, thunderous round when it was revealed to the audience just who he was and what he did. But for Peter Falk, they (we) took the roof off the dump, as it were. What a great moment. And after the panel guessed who it was — another point for Mr. DeCaro — host J. Keith van Straaten conducted a funny and charming interview with the man. Is anyone reading this surprised that Peter Falk was funny and charming? Actually, Keith is a superb emcee who could make any guest funny and charming but in this case, he didn't have to work so hard.

This current series of What's My Line? Live on Stage has two more Sundays to run and they may or may not do more after that. Next week's Mystery Guest probably won't be as wonderful as Peter Falk but the show will have Len Wein on the panel…and yes, I know that's like saying, "Sorry you missed Laurence Olivier but you can still catch George 'Goober' Lindsey," but the show will still be fun. You can get more info over at this website. If you're in or around Los Angeles, I highly recommend the outing. (Thanks to Chris Valada, who took the fine photo above.)

Last week, my friend Carolyn and I were in Pittsburgh for the Anthrocon, a gathering of "furries." This news story will give you a brief sense of what it was like there…though of course, the TV crew sought out the more colorful, bizarre elements of the convention. As Dr. Conway (the head honcho of Anthrocon) notes in this report, only about 10% of the attendees — and it seemed like less to me — dress up in "fursuits." But if you're a TV news operation and you have your choice of showing footage of people dressed like polar bears and people not dressed like polar bears, which are you going to air? Exactly.

Several friends have recommended that I recommend the discussion from the latest Bill Moyers Journal. One of these friends is one of those guys I'd have bet serious money would be outraged at the segment, which is all about the feasibility and perhaps the necessity of impeaching George W. Bush or, preferably, Bush and Dick Cheney. I don't believe this is ever going to happen but I was impressed with some of the arguments, none of which strike me as real partisan manuevering. You can watch the video online or read a transcript from this page.

Speaking of real partisan manuevering, I'll just say I might disagree with one statement in the conversation. It's when one of the gents says that Tom DeLay wanted to use the impeachment process to remove Bill Clinton as president. Maybe. But it always struck me that those who were driving that movement, and DeLay in particular, knew that they'd never have the votes to convict Clinton. Perhaps they didn't know that early-on and they believed/hoped that a more genuine, significant Impeachable Offense would get uncovered. But at some point when they could still have just reprimanded the guy and gotten on with the nation's business, they decided to go all the way with it because (a) they thought they could embarrass folks like Al Gore who they'd be running against and force them into defending the indefensible and (b) they thought it would make a certain part of the Republican "base" very happy and eager to donate and get out the vote to oust Clinton supporters.

I have a special e-mail address that I use when I have to register on political sites…and it's probably signed up with more Liberal sites than Conservative but it's on both. It gets a ton of mail that says, in effect, "Give us money and we'll fix every problem in the world by destroying the Clintons." It also gets a ton that says, in effect, "Give us money and we'll cure every disease and physical ailment in your body." I think all these messages come from the same place.

I have several computers — all of the PC variety — and until recently, my two main computers each had one of these hooked up to it. If you don't want to bother clicking, I'll tell you what those are: They're Maxtor OneTouch™ Turbo Edition External Hard Drives. A quick survey of my computer-savvy amigos told me (and still tells me) that they're pretty good units; that while any piece of hardware can fail, the Maxtor Externals are as reliable as anything else even vaguely in that price range. I asked around and kept hearing, "It's very rare that those crash."

Well, not around here, it isn't. I've bought three of them and two have gone kablooey in the last month. One was about two years old but the other lasted a mere four weeks, during most of one of which it was unused because I was outta town. Shortly after my return, it began emitting the blood-curding, sad "Click of Death" that means Trouble Right Here in River City. Both are under warranty so they will be replaced by…the same thing. That isn't as maddening as it might sound because I really don't know of anything better I can buy. I just need to be more conscientious about backups. I lost some things because I got busy and foolishly postponed my own backup routine.

On the first one that failed, there was one clump of files that I really wanted back. They could be replaced but I'd have to do a load of manual work to get them back to the form in which they were last seen. So I took the Maxtor over to a friend/computer consultant who spent many days and charged me a large fee to recover all the data on the hard drive. And he did…but not one of the "recovered" files was readable. What I got back was 750 gb of files that would no longer open. I then purchased File Scavenger, a piece of software which cost a paltry fifty bucks. It's not a complete life saver but it did enable me to recover about 600 gb of files and they were like new and readable. Alas, the most-desired files were in the absent 150.

So I bit the bullet, did all the work and restored the files the hard way and of course, promptly backed them up to a brand-new Maxtor…and that was the second one that failed. Which was annoying but not fatal because I'd also backed them up to DVDs. I have, for obvious reasons, become Backup Crazy. In fact, this message is taking a beastly long time to write because I have to stop every five words and back it all up to disc.

There's not much else to say about this except to remind you (and especially me) that hardware does fail and you need to always be prepared for it. I also wanted to recommend File Scavenger, which could save you beaucoup bucks if and when you have a crash. Don't bother writing me and telling me of your good experiences with this Seagate or that Western Digital. I no longer want to believe that any brand is highly reliable because that'll just make me complacent and lazy about backups. In fact, I'm even going to get the words "if and when" out of my vocabulary on this topic. I'm going to presume there's no "if," just a "when."

From the 1987 Tony Awards and from the musical, Me and My Girl, here's Robert Lindsay leading the troupe in the infectious number, "The Lambeth Walk."

You can't see him very well but the tall, dignified gent in the tux near the center of the stage in some shots is George S. Irving, a longtime Broadway actor — he's 85 and still performing — whose voice could be heard on about half the cartoon shows that were produced in New York in the sixties. He was the narrator on the Underdog show and he did those Twinkles commercials (like this one). But don't spend a lot of time looking for him. Just enjoy this fine piece of theatrical merriment…

Frank Luntz on what it will take for a Republican to win the White House in 2008. He judiciously omits the topic that few will speak in public: What will happen if there's another big terrorist attack before Election Day. Under normal circumstances, that would further lower the public's faith in Bush and those who've supported him…but who knows? We can only hope we don't find out.

As some of you may recall, since my surgery, a small but significant concern for me has been what to drink. I've never liked coffee or tea or iced tea. I neither like nor trust artificial sweeteners. I need to avoid things that are as heavy in sugar content as most fruit juices. And I have to avoid carbonation.

What does this leave? Not a whole heckuva lot. I drink a lot of tomato juice and I also mix a watery lemonade using Country Time Lemonade mix and bottled lemon juice, and a watery orange drink using a Knudsen sports drink called Orange Recharge which they sell at some (not all) Whole Foods Markets. Those three things and water are about it. I drink an awful lot of water.

More for the change of pace than any other reason, I often vary the water with the flavoring of either True Lemon, True Lime or True Orange — especially the last of these, which is a fairly new product that is just appearing in a few marketplaces. Each is a crystallized citrus powder that contains all natural ingredients and no sugar or calories. They're especially handy to have along in restaurants where the H2O may be of dubious taste and a wedge of real fruit may not be easily obtainable. In some cases, I'm almost ashamed to admit, I like these better than the squeezings of the genuine article.

You can read all about 'em over at the True Lemon website and you can also arrange for them to send you some free samples. I do not own stock in this company. I just like their products.

This is another long one…about seventeen minutes if you watch all three parts. Amazingly, it ran for that entire length (actually, a bit longer) without commercial interruption on NBC in 1967 on The Dean Martin Show. It's Don Rickles insulting a celebrity audience.

At the time, Rickles was well known in Hollywood society and in Las Vegas. He'd done guest shots on sitcoms and a few appearances with Mr. Carson but had yet to really break through on television. Dean's producer-director, Greg Garrison, decided this was because Don had not been seen in his natural surroundings — a night club — doing what he did best.

So Garrison decided to give the insult comic a huge showcase on the show…and apparently he had the idea that it might lead to some sort of Don Rickles TV series that The Greg Garrison Company could produce. He arranged for an all-star audience to show up at NBC one evening and they had Rickles come out and do more than an hour in a club setting. Then they hacked it down to this.

There were probably very few ad-libs during that taping, at least in the edited segment that made it onto the air. Rickles knew in advance who'd be there and where they'd be sitting, and many of the lines he uttered were lines he'd used before on these very people. At the end, Bob Hope makes a "surprise" appearance just so Don can hit him with a great comment…and it's the same comment Rickles had made at a couple of earlier performances when he discovered Hope in the audience.

You'll notice that throughout the piece, the camera is usually on a celeb just as Rickles starts talking about them…or even a few seconds before, meaning that Don was not up there being totally spontaneous. Someone was cueing him to begin addressing Dom DeLuise, to begin on MacDonald Carey, etc. I suspect they even did multiple takes of a fair amount of this. Like most of what Garrison did with Dean, it's allegedly spontaneous material that's been chopped up in the editing room and trimmed to the point of losing the sensation of spontaneity.

Still, the exposure did a lot for the career of Rickles. The following year, he had his own series on ABC — a rather embarrassing flop which did not involve Greg Garrison. The program was originally supposed to be a game show, with Don functioning a la Groucho in a game show format, belittling contestants and then giving them a chance to win a few bucks.

Close to the last minute, the decision was made to abandon that idea and instead do a free-form half-hour variety show…but they still had the game show budget, much of the game show staff and no real concept for the new program. After its swift cancellation, and in later years as other shows starring Rickles came and went, Garrison told everyone that he alone had been able to make Rickles "work" on TV and pointed to the '67 appearance. I'm not sure there was ever a series in what Rickles did on The Dean Martin Show but it sure is nice to have that "record" of what he did when he was in his prime. Here it is…

I rarely agree with Conservative commentator Peggy Noonan and even though she's come around to the view that Bush ain't very good at what he does, I'm not about to start now. In this column, she theorizes that George W. makes some people uneasy because he's so upbeat and cheery. Here's an excerpt…

As I watched the news conference, it occurred to me that one of the things that might leave people feeling somewhat disoriented is the president's seemingly effortless high spirits. He's in a good mood. There was the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn't seem to be suffering, which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn't Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president's since polling began. He's in a good mood. Discuss.

Okay, Peggy, I will. I think you've got it exactly backwards. I think Bush is making people uneasy because his "good mood" seems so forced and driven by panic, and because the guy is stammering and relying on hysterical premises that few now accept, like the idea that the people we're fighting in Iraq are the same people who attacked us on 9/11. I don't think Americans even know anymore who we're fighting in Iraq other than it's now "Al Qeada," an ill-defined group that depending on which report one believes this week, is either stronger than it was back then or weaker or growing or on the ropes. So we don't know who the hell we're fighting there and we're wondering if the current administration does.

The supporters Bush has lost needed to hear an articulate explanation of what precise objectives will constitute Victory and allow us to say we won and bring the troops home. Instead, they've been getting catch phrases about fighting "them" there so we don't have to fight "them" here, uttered by a guy doing at least a darn good impression of an alcoholic who's sneaking quick beers now and then.

Does anyone think what we're seeing lately from Bush is "effortless high spirits?" He looks more and more to me like a poker player who thought he had a royal flush, bet everything he had and then peeked again and saw that what he'd thought was the Ace of Spades is actually a Four of Clubs. It isn't Bush's good mood that unnerves people. It's all that flop sweat they're smelling.

In case you haven't heard, the four-day memberships for Comic-Con International are sold out. They still have individual days, as well as a "three-day" pass that gives you Wednesday evening and all day Thursday, Friday and Sunday. That's not as horrendous a situation as it might seem because I know a few people who opt to skip the Saturday mobs and sight-see that day. In any case, I would suggest that if you're going to the con you either register in advance or don't go.

For what it's worth — and this far in advance, it isn't worth much — the weather folks are predicting sunny skies, highs in the low seventies and lows in the mid-sixties.

In one of those periodic revelations that seems to occur in order to juice up the monologues of Leno and Letterman, Senator David Vitter has been revealed as a patron of prostitutes. Obviously, there's a certain entertainment value in the embarrassment of the rich and powerful, especially when they've been so sanctimonious in scolding others for lesser offenses…but there's also something sad about it. In this case, I think the sadness has to do with Vitter viewing his actions as excusable (or at least forgivable) in a way he would never allow with regard to someone else, especially a political opponent.

I was going to write a longer piece about this but I stumbled across a comment on the weblog of Matthew Yglesias. He articulates my feelings here better than I could.

Down near U.S.C. in Los Angeles, there's a car dealership known as Felix Chevrolet, although they also sell other makes there. Its lineage dates back to 1922 when an entrepreneur named Winslow Felix opened a car lot in downtown Los Angeles. Mr. Felix was a friend of Pat Sullivan, the entrepreneur whose studio made the Felix the Cat cartoons…and there are many stories about how he granted what was apparently permanent permission to use the cat as the dealership's mascot. One tale has Sullivan getting a free car out of the deal. Others have him getting new cars at dealer cost or less for the rest of his life. Sullivan lived in New York for most of this period so I'm not sure how that would have worked.

In any case, Winslow Felix had the name in perpetuity and the proprietors of Felix have received not one car or dime for over a half-century. A new Felix neon sign went up in 1958 when the dealership moved to its present location at Figueroa and Jefferson Boulevard…and it became something of a local landmark.

The business has gone through many hands and that area has changed a lot. There are developers who want it to change further. The current owners of Felix Chevrolet have no plans to close the place or even take down the sign…but the rumblings are there. So lately, folks who are out to preserve L.A. heritage have been rallying to protect Felix from any future threats to his survival. As this article in the L.A. Times notes, the city's Cultural Heritage Commission has just voted to declare it a historic-cultural monument.

That's not the final word but it's a defeat for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa…like he needs more bad news these days.

I love Felix and I love Los Angeles history…but I'm not sure this one's worth a fight. It's a nice looking sign but historic? Cultural? I don't know about this one.

Here's an unsold pilot that Paul Winchell did in the sixties for a kids' game show called Quick on the Draw. I've seen it listed as 1962, 1963 and 1964, and beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.

I think Paul did about nine hundred pilots for kids' game shows and one or two of them — like Runaround in 1972 — even sold. You can kind of tell why Quick on the Draw didn't make it. The contestants don't even look like they want to be there and the only good moments come from Winchell doing his old bits with Jerry Mahoney. The show was directed by Gilbert Cates, who directed about half of all TV shows done in the sixties.

One interesting thing (to me) about this is the part where Paul, as he occasionally did, is supplying the voice while someone else is operating Jerry. A lot of it seems to be ad-lib and whoever's working Jerry is darn good to keep up…but as a devout Winchell fan, I could always tell when someone else was at the controls. Paul had a certain way of shaking a dummy's head when it was "talking" to add a little extra animation to the figure and also to distract from the fact that the lip sync could never be too precise. His assistants learned it too but no one did it quite like Winch.

The two parts of this run a little over 22 minutes and the second cuts off before the show ends. I doubt you'll make it all the way through but you might enjoy the Paul/Jerry opening chat, which was one of Paul's oft-performed routines. That cuff link gag was the close to the first joke I ever learned. If you do want to watch both parts, I've made up a little YouTube playlist so you can go right from one to the other.