An author named Rena Fruchter has recently published I'm Chevy Chase And You're Not, a biography of Guess Who, written with his cooperation and participation. I just got a copy and haven't read it yet…but just paging through it, I couldn't help but notice two things. One is that the book is a glowing, flattering portrait of Mr. Chase, who has not exactly been flattered by some books in the past. I also noticed the above photo and caption. What is wrong with this picture?

Getting work done? Want to become less productive? Then close the window containing that important assignment and open a window on WordBreaker, The Game of Guessing Words.

Fred Kaplan on why Rudy Giuliani quit the Iraq Study Group. The press has done a pretty good job of keeping this whole matter secret.

You know what we need? A good Simon & Garfunkel medley performed by Julie Andrews and Mama Cass…

The approval rating of George W. Bush is now down to 26% in one major poll. This is amazingly low. I mean, I think the guy is a terrible president in ways that have long been obvious to all, but I would have bet cash money that he'd have to have been indicted for killing a nun before he'd get down near that level.

But now here's my question…and yes, I know this will bring another rash of e-mails from folks who accuse me of pathological "Bush-bashing." These people obviously haven't surfed the 'net much because there are hundreds of thousands of sites out there that compare Bush to a chimp, fantasize about his imprisonment or execution, etc. I'm one of the more moderate voices. I'm also, at least on this, in sync with Mainstream America.

So here's what I'm wondering. I'm wondering what his approval rating really is…because it's got to be lower than that.

Follow me for a second on this. Pollsters ask their little questions and people answer them, and I can't imagine a reason why someone who thought well of Bush would answer that they disapproved of the job he's doing. But I can think of plenty why people who wish he would just disappear would tell pollsters they approve of the job he's doing.

One is that we're at war, and a lot of people think that in a time of war, you have to back your Commander-in-Chief. I don't buy the idea that it's betraying our troops to suggest that their leaders have sent them on the wrong mission or that the war has been run ineptly. But there are folks who think that way so no matter how much they privately think Bush has botched things and that "mistakes have been made," they'll tell everyone, pollsters included, that they're behind this war effort…and therefore, behind Bush.

We also have folks who may think Bush is a disaster but they like what he stands for…or at least what they thought he stood for when they punched out the chads by his name. To them, the fall of Bush is a victory for those who want to allow gay marriage, keep abortion legal, restrict gun ownership, etc. — so they won't say they disapprove of him even though they do. (I heard a guy on C-Span the other day who seemed to think that if Bush's approval rating gets low enough, John Kerry gets to finish out his term.)

And then you just have people who figure we're stuck with Bush so there's no point in giving up on him now. It's like if you were in a plane and there was reason to suspect the pilot didn't know where he was going. It might be emotionally preferable to tell yourself, "He'll figure it out," rather than admit how bad off you were.

There are probably other reasons to tell pollsters you approve of a president when you don't…and I'm not saying everyone who says they approve of Bush is lying or disingenuous or anything. But I also don't think most people who say they like him really like him. I don't think most of them liked him when they elected him, just as most people who voted for Kerry wished there was someone better to vote for. It always seems to come down to pretending that the lesser of two bad choices is a good choice. Bush's low ratings these days are not because so many people who voted for him have decided he's not a great president. It's because so many of them have decided to stop pretending.

Paul Goebel, AKA "The King of TV," is video-blogging these days and his comments are worthy of your attention. Paul knows TV backwards, forwards and from the inside out.

If you scroll through his page, somewhere you'll find his commentary on who's going to replace Bob Barker on The Price is Right and why it won't be Rosie O'Donnell. I agree it won't be Rosie…or anyone else who might upstage the show itself. But I'm wondering if anyone at CBS has had this thought: Why not make the selection into a reality show? They could call it Who Wants to Replace Bob Barker? or something like that. Let John O'Hurley and George Hamilton and all the other names that have been rumored compete for the job on camera and let America call in and vote. I'm a little more than half-serious about this.

This is another segment from the local (Los Angeles) TV show, Two on the Town, with a profile of some then-popular voiceover announcers. Included are Danny Dark, who cartoon buffs will recognize as the voice of Superman on the Super Friends series. That was the least of his many credits. Also, you'll meet Bill Whitman and Ernie Anderson. In fact, you'll see a good example of how famously cranky Ernie could be. The guy had a great voice but a pretty bad attitude, and to hire him was to put up with that. (I did once…and only once.)

Near the end, you'll see Gene Moss, who had a pretty nice career in voiceover but who will always be remembered, by those of us who were around when you could see him do it, for hosting Shrimpenstein on Channel 9 here in the sixties. We wrote about him and that show back here and that old post still brings the occasional e-mail from folks who were prowling the Internet, searching for info on a favorite program of their childhoods.

The L.A. Times has a nice obit up for Roger Armstrong.

A little over a year ago in this post, we pointed you (with great skepticism) to a press release for a forthcoming musical based on the Jerry Lewis movie, The Nutty Professor. Mr. Lewis was to direct said musical and Jerry, the article said, wanted to have a tryout run of it at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego this month, meaning June of '07.

It's not playing there now, nor is it scheduled in the next year. In fact, even with all the theater and show biz news I read, I haven't seen one word about any Nutty Professor musical since the initial announcement. And I have a hunch nobody else has, either…

Two on the Town was a local TV show in the eighties hosted by Steve Edwards — who's still a fixture of Los Angeles television — and Melody Rogers. Here's a spot from 1982 on Rocky and Bullwinkle, complete with nice voice demos by Bill Scott, June Foray and William Conrad. I think this may be the only time I've ever seen footage of Mr. Conrad reading copy in character as the narrator of the Rocky cartoons.

Contrary to the impression conveyed in this segment, the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons had been out of production for some time by '82. What was more relevant was that Jay Ward had scaled back the size and ambition of his studio, partly due to network disinterest but partly due to his own desire not to work as hard. Bill Scott wanted to do more and did a lot of interviews that he thought might generate enthusiasm out there to do more with the characters, and it wouldn't surprise me if this piece came about because Bill called up Two on the Town and suggested it. Alas, the moose and squirrel never made much of a comeback, at least while Bill was still with us.

Thanks to Shane Shellenbarger for letting me know about this.

The debates this year have had a lot of "raise your hand" questions — like "Raise your hand if you believe in evolution" or "Raise your hand if you agree that the U.S. should use military force to stop genocide in Darfur." Here's the "raise your hand" question I'd like to see asked of both the Democratic and Republican candidates…

Raise your hand if there's a candidate on this stage who you would not enthusiastically endorse and support if they won the nomination of your party.

No, I don't think it would be fair, either. But it sure might make things interesting.

Part of me would like to see the Democratic presidential nomination go to Hillary Clinton and the Republican nomination to Rudy Giuliani.

I don't really want either of them to win. I'm not even of the mind that either would make a good president. I just think it would be great to have a debate where she was wearing one of her pants suits and he was wearing one of his dresses.

Glenn Greenwald on how George W. Bush believes he is immersed in a war of Good versus Evil, and since he represents the Good, any damn thing he thinks he should do is therefore presumed to be Good.

One of the superstars of Los Angeles radio and TV in the fifties was a very funny, witty man named Jim Hawthorne, who hosted a wide array of programs in both venues. His work is treasured today by many who followed him back then, back when he was often mentioned in sentences that included the names of Ernie Kovacs and Steve Allen. Mr. Allen was a special fan of Hawthorne's work and sometimes credited him for inspiring certain bits that turned up on The Tonight Show during its Allen years.

Hawthorne's radio style, which you'll see him employing to less advantage on TV in today's presentation, involved a steady stream of odd audio clips interrupting him or sometimes acting as punctuation marks to his monologues. I don't think he invented this but an awful lot of radio personalities picked it up from him and used the idea on their shows. They also used a lot of his comedy material. He was like Bob and Ray on the East Coast, doing great comedy for a local audience…so radio guys in other cities felt it was relatively safe to pilfer his routines and jokes.

Hawthorne had various TV shows, including one where he just gave the weather report. He also had a brief film career, mostly in the form of an early and unsuccessful attempt to make a new star comedy team out of him and Joe Besser. But mostly, he did radio and he did it very well…or so I remember. Vaguely. I'm just barely old enough to have experienced his later work.

Our clip today is not him at his best. It's a piece of a TV pilot he did in the early seventies, for some reason foregoing most of the visual humor of his earlier TV shows to do what is basically a televised version of his radio format. Still, it may be the only Hawthorne clip you'll ever see since, as he laments on his website (yes, he's still around), almost none of his radio or TV work still exists today…which may be the reason more people haven't heard of him. Here's Hawthorne…

Today's Bitch 'n' Moan™ is software you need that — automatically and without so much as an "If you don't mind…" — installs software you don't want. We all need Adobe Reader on our little computers to read all those PDF files that people send us or which we encounter on Ye Olde Internet. We want to upgrade to the latest Adobe Reader, which is version 8, because as we all know in this world, if you don't have the current version of something, you might as well be Fred Friggin' Flintstone, using a pointy-billed bird to play your phonograph records.

So we need Adobe Reader 8. What we don't need — or at least what I don't need — is something called Adobe Photoshop Album, which is now the eighty-third piece of software this year that has forced its way onto my harddisk and demanded that I let it index all the photos on my computer and build me a library. Everyone wants to build me a library. I'm not sure anyone will ever build George W. Bush a library. That would be contingent on the guy ever reading a book. But half the software made on this planet wants to build me a library.

Thank you, Adobe Photoshop Album, but I don't need you to build me a library of my photos. I have a library of my photos. I didn't install you on my computer, either. You came magically when I upgraded to Adobe Reader 8 and then you were rude enough to install a couple of entries in my start-up group so that whenever I turn on my computer, you're loaded and there in my tray where I don't want you. This is all awfully presumptious of you, which is why I just took you out and uninstalled you and next time, maybe you'll wait for a damn invitation before you move in and set yourself up on my Seagate.

This concludes today's edition of Bitch 'n' Moan™. Bitch 'n' Moan™ is brought to you by the makers of Midol for Men — the only medicine that can alleviate cramping, bloating and that general feeling of crabiness that males get when they have their periods.