I've been telling you here that the crows in my area are getting larger and larger…but are you worried? No. Well, maybe this will get you to start worrying about crows. Two dead ones in Southern California have been identified as carrying the West Nile Virus. Now, granted this is in West Covina, which is about thirty miles from me…but that's thirty miles as the crow flies.

Stop worrying about terrorists, people. Worry about the crows. They're going to kill us all. (Thanks to Corey Klemow for calling my attention to the news item and ruining my sleep for the next week or so.)

I'm still a bit jet-lagged from last week's Comic-Con in San Diego…an amazing condition when you consider that I drove there. But I've been operating in a semi-fog for much of the week and was in a particularly dense one last night when I wrote here that I couldn't recall a lasting ad campaign where a cartoon character was selling a product that involved the consumption of his own species. Too many of you to list wrote to throw the hallowed name of Charlie the Tuna in my face, and you're all correct.

On the other hand or fin or whatever, I would point out that the concept behind those commercials was that if you bought the product, you wouldn't be eating the lovable cartoon mascot. The suicidal fish (voiced by Herschel Bernardi until he passed away) would definitely not be in the can of Star-Kist Tuna you purchased and mixed with mayo. So that's a little different from Foghorn Leghorn suggesting you rush out and purchase what could have been his own drumsticks and gizzard, battered and deep-fried.

As many of you know, I have a book coming out later this year called Kirby: King of Comics, an art book about the great comic book creator, Jack Kirby, with a medium-length biography. (A longer bio by me will be along in a couple more years and it will make Bugliosi's tome look like a Big Little Book.) You can advance-order Kirby: King of Comics from Amazon by clicking here.

What you may not know is that the book hasn't gone to press yet. That event is looming large before me and I'm down now to finalizing the contents. I mean, like in the next day or three.

A lot of people have offered me rare, historic Kirby artwork to include in the book…and I must confess and apologize that I was swamped by the response and didn't manage to get back to everyone promptly. I think I've caught up on most contacts but I'm sure I've missed some. Also, at the Comic-Con in San Diego, I spoke to a few folks who were going to e-mail me or I was supposed to e-mail them or…well, whoever's fault it was — probably mine — we haven't connected. And now I have to firm up what's going into the book.

If you have some great piece of Jack Kirby art that might belong in this book, whether we've spoken or not about it, could you send me an e-mail right away? I promise to answer them all promptly. Include your phone number if you're willing to communicate that way. I think we already have an incredible book full of incredible art…but I wouldn't want to miss including some essential treasure because of my sloppy follow-ups. Thanks.

No, I haven't been able to make it all the way through Vincent Bugliosi's new 1600+ page book on the Kennedy assassination and neither have you. The main difference between us is that you were probably smart enough not to try. Not that the text of Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy isn't accurate. From what I can tell — reading as much as I've been able to read and checking out the rather feeble rebuttals around — Bugliosi has made a reasonably airtight case that L.H. Oswald acted alone in offing our thirty-fifth president. I'm just not sure he made it in a way that will convince even the eleven people in this country who might still be persuaded. (Here's an interesting column on some folks who can't be.)

One of the things that helped to break my interest in the case — at one point, a very strong interest — was the realization that most "conspiracy buffs" were intractable in their view that there was a conspiracy. Most were not irrevocably wedded to one theory of Who Killed JFK? A few were irrevocably wedded to more than one but most had their one theory and the view that it was an ongoing investigation; that there was so much that had been withheld or unscrutinized that we didn't have all the facts. They were willing to follow the evidence anywhere as long as it did not lead back to the Warren Commission verdict. Almost anything else was believable but not that.

I came to the conclusion that too many of them — not every person but enough to control the dynamic of that community — had some sort of deep emotional need to deny The Official Version. In some cases, it was a kind of snobbery and status; in others, a distrust of authority that went far beyond a healthy, admirable skepticism. They claimed to live for solid proof of what happened on 11/23/63 but if that solid proof had been than Oswald dunnit by his lonesome, that would have robbed them of something vital in their lives. Some would have lost their incomes and/or their very identities. So it had to be denied at all costs.

The turning point for me may have been an all-day conference I attended around 1974 — a gathering of Kennedy assassination "buffs" that was billed as an open forum and discussion. I was stunned at the extent to which the Closed Mind faction controlled the agenda. If you'd gotten up and argued that Kennedy was slain by four-legged Venusians, you'd have been allowed to talk because "all viewpoints must be considered." But stand up and suggest that Oswald actually owned the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle registered to him and you were hooted down, ruled out of order and almost made to stand in the corner. "We've moved past those lies," someone yelled. At the time, I thought there was a conspiracy of some sort — I would later be persuaded otherwise — but I found the stonewalling unacceptable. If you want the truth in this world, you have to be able to accept that it may not turn out to be what you want it to be.

The problem with Bugliosi's volume? In order to even pick up a book that thick about the case, you have to already have a powerful interest in the topic. And if you do, you probably already have an opinion set in plaster if not concrete. I admire Bugliosi's effort but I doubt he's going to change anyone's mind on any topic except maybe the purchase of books by Vince Bugliosi.

Let's discuss cartoon characters and puppets being used in commercials for the eating of their species. But before we do, watch this PARODY commercial from a 1992 episode of Saturday Night Live…

Outrageous idea, huh? A chicken selling flame-broiled chicken. But take a look at this REAL commercial from 1987…

Suddenly, the parody doesn't seem all that outrageous…and there have been other real examples. Every so often, some genius at an advertising agency gets the idea that the way to sell some food product is to have the creature that's being devoured pimp for it. (Another that comes immediately to mind is that Denny's spot where Miss Piggy was hawking the Grand Slam Breakfast, bacon strips and all.) I can't recall when one of these campaigns has lasted for any length of time, which leads me to conclude that it's as uncommercial an idea as it is tasteless. But someone will try one again soon. Count on it.

Joe Conason on where we are with Iraq. This thing could go several ways but none of them are very pretty.

Did you grow up in Los Angeles? If not, skip to the next item. If you did, keep reading.

Fellow Angelenos: There's a great website called L.A. Radio that tracks the local radio personalities of yesteryear with articles and indices. Usually, it's a subscription (pay) site but for this weekend only, you can browse for free. Instructions on how to do this are on the first page, as is a salute to The Real Don Steele, a local legend of Los Angeles radio.

I've read a few pieces on there. The first guy I looked up was "Sweet" Dick Whittington, who I followed fiercely on KABC from 1966 through 1968 and then on KGIL for ten years after that. (He should not be confused with another local broadcaster, Dick Whittinghill, who was on KMPC from about the time Marconi invented the radio until 1979.) Whittington was one of the freshest, funniest talents to ever work a microphone and some of the things I heard him say are still part of my repertoire of silly things to say. If you heard him today, you'd think you were listening to a guy imitating the less controversial, funnier aspects of Howard Stern and Don Imus, but Whittington was doing that kind of thing before either of them. I wonder if anyone has any tapes of vintage Whittington.

We cover many important topics on this site — politics, comics, movies, my cell phone problems — but none more important than Baby Pandas. Baby Pandas, as you well know, are the cutest thing in the world.

There is one more Baby Panda in the world today. Bai Yun, a giant panda at the San Diego Zoo, gave birth this afternoon at 1:31 PM. So far, there are no pictures of the cub and zoo authorities haven't gotten close enough to determine its sex. But it's a Baby Panda and any day now, we should get to see it in all its unparalleled cuteness.

In the meantime, the zoo has some video clips on this page of its website. There's one there entitled "Panda Birth" that shows the announcement and some footage of Bai Yun in labor. There's another one called "Giant Panda Birth Watch" that will show you how she got pregnant. One of the reasons pandas don't mate more often is probably because they never have a minute of privacy.

At a Comic-Con International a few years back, I met a photographer named Greg Preston who had an interesting project. He'd been travelling the country taking photos of comic book and comic strip artists in their studios. The pictures were magnificent. Not only had he gotten shots of some of the best in the field, not only had he gotten some important ones (like Carl Barks and Jack Kirby) before we lost them…but the photographs were good photographs. They looked like the people and in most cases, captured some key aspect of the person's personality. You could just look at one and understand a little more about a favorite cartoonist or illustrator.

Greg was then looking for the right situation to put them in a book…and I'm delighted to say he found it. Dark Horse has recently issued The Artist Within, a handsome hardcover that needs no hard sell from me. If you're not convinced it belongs on your shelf, go look at a few samples of what's in it. Then click here to order a copy from Amazon. I'd gush further but the photos really speak for themselves.

Turner Classic Movies is currently running a "salute" to Joan Crawford. I put in the quote marks because they're running all of her best movies and then, in the wee small hours of tomorrow morning, they're running Trog, a 1970 film that pretty much suggests the following scenario. Someone approached Ms. Crawford and said, "Joan, dear, you're getting along in years and your health isn't great. You may have only enough time left on this planet to appear in one more movie. Have you given any thought to what you'd like to do as your final project?"

To which Joan Crawford replied, "Yes. I've been thinking…I've appeared in so many great movies, so many true classics, that I think I ought to cap my career with the worst movie ever made. I think it would be a wonderful trick to play on my many fans. I want them to all rush to see a film because I'm in it and then just sit there in the theater, thoroughly appalled — and hopefully drinking Pepsi-Cola — at the most tasteless, uninteresting, crummy, low budget horror film I can find. Ideally, they will all stumble from the theater, go home and start petitions to revoke my Oscar for Mildred Pierce."

To which her friend must have said, "You can't possibly mean you're thinking of appearing in…"

"That's right," Ms. Crawford replied. "I'm thinking of appearing in Trog."

It's the only possible explanation.

We've written here before about Castle Films, which were those 8mm condensations of full-length movies. I collected them as a kid — they were the home video of that era — and marvelled at the way they could often abridge a 90-minute flick down to ten minutes or even four. Here we have the 8mm sound version of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. It runs eight and a half minutes and it works pretty well at that length. Have a look…

Bill Lund was among the founders of the massive entity we now know as the Comic-Con International. He writes…

Regarding your mention of the con being too big and not concentrating solely on comics, well, I had this very discussion with several con attendees last week. From its inception, the con had always focused on comics, science fiction and films. In fact, if anyone has the earlier program books — which, sadly, I no longer have, myself — when the con was known as Golden State Comic Con or West Coast Comic Con, there were three circles in the logo that featured each subject as mentioned. Our featured guests in those earlier years, besides such luminaries from the comics world like Jack Kirby, Mike Royer, Russell Myers, Russ Manning, and Neal Adams, included Ray Bradbury, A.E. van Vogt, Forry Ackerman, Kirk Alyn, George Pal, Bob Clampett, June Foray, Edmund Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, and Frank Capra. We even had Chuck Norris demonstrating martial arts. Therefore, San Diego's convention, under whatever name it used at the time, featured various artists from each field of interest.

It was George Lucas and Charles Lipincott who had the foresight to showcase Star Wars at the con that showed the rest of Hollywood — eventually — how important the Comic Con could be to their films and tv shows.

I have all those program books and Bill's right. I don't know what the mission statement says (nor do I know anyone who ever reads mission statements) but a key concept of the San Diego Con was always that comics intersected with other media…and were perhaps in some ways legitimized by those intersections.

The other point I should make is that it isn't just that the convention caters to Hollywood and other non-comic concerns. So does almost every major news site that purports to cover the world of comics. Most were more interested in that stuff than in the programming and presences that were comic-specific. That's kind of the way the whole comic fan community has skewed the last few years. Whether we like it or not.

Rudy Giuliani recently "unveiled" (sort of) a health plan proposal (sort of) and it's really perfect, insofar as a Republican presidential candidate is concerned. Given the mood of the country these days, you kind of have to have a proposal of some sort. If you don't, you look uninterested and naïve about an issue that a majority of Americans think is important and which will probably get even more important to them as time passes. But if you want to get the hardcore Republican right behind you, to say nothing of the pharmaceutical companies and insurers, you have to make sure you come up with health care ideas that don't fix anything.

I have the feeling we're going to see a lot of these.

Matthew Yglesias tries to pinpoint the real trouble with what's going on in Iraq. Apparently, the problem isn't that things are going wrong. They are…but what's awful is that some people are pointing this out.

Here's a computer question that seems so simple that I can't believe I can't solve it or find a solution online. This applies to computers running Windows XP.

Moe, Larry and Curly each have a computer and all three computers are networked. Each uses the others' computers from time to time. Each has an account on each computer so Moe, for instance, can log into the Moe account on any of the three computers and work. What they want to do is to keep their Documents Folders in sync. Moe would like to be able to click one command on his Desktop and have all three computers automatically sync themselves up. The trouble is that no program seems to want to sync up files that are in three separate Documents and Settings folders.

There must be a simple way to handle this. What is it?