Kurt Bodden, who was also there last night at the W.C. Fields celebration, reminds me that there were a couple of brief mentions of alcohol in the panel discussion. I guess I was just amazed there was so little discussion of the man's drinking. Many years ago, as I recounted here, I got to meet and chat with Carlotta Monti, who was Fields's companion or mistress or whatever you want to call her. Obviously, she knew him better than most people and she spoke of his imbibing as akin to his breathing, and couldn't talk about him at all without mentioning it constantly.

Something I'm always wary of is the tendency to extrapolate a full portrait of someone based on a very brief contact with the person. I know a guy who'll tell you Phil Spector is (present-tense) a great and stable human being because that's how he was during their one fifteen minute encounter twenty-some-odd years ago. There are people I worked with and I got one impression of them the first week or two of our association…and a quite different one after a few more weeks or months.

I don't think it's always as easy to say what kind of person someone was…and certainly not via selected anecdotes. On top of that, as Leonard Maltin noted last night and has emphasized elsewhere, a lot of published histories are just plain wrong. People who should know what someone was like have been known to write fiction about them. At times, people even lie or get things horribly awry in autobiographies. A few years ago, a writer I knew quit a job co-writing the autobiography of a Famous Hollywood Figure because the F.H.F. kept insisting on his versions of certain events that were clearly disproven by surviving documentation, up to and including the time and place of his birth. You couldn't even believe what the Famous Hollywood Figure said about himself, let alone what casual acquaintances had to say.

Those of us who never met an important, compelling legend like W.C. Fields have to rely on the researchers and the memories of the dwindling number of folks who knew him. Some of what they say is certainly true and some probably isn't and to sort it all out is probably a better juggling act than even Fields himself ever performed. Which doesn't mean we shouldn't try. We should just recognize that it ain't as easy as we'd like it to be.

Today's clip runs fifteen minutes and probably needs a mild warning of "adult content" for nudity and subject matter. So those of you who are physically or emotionally under eighteen, you're hereby forbidden to click the link…and I just know you won't.

In the early days of cable/pay TV, there was a short-lived but very wonderful series called Likely Stories that gave innovative filmmakers the chance to produce funny films on what sure seemed to be sufficient budgets. I'm not sure how many episodes aired on TV but they were later edited into four, little-seen volumes for home video. Among the famous folks who wrote and/or directed were Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Danny DeVito and David Jablin. Mr. Jablin seems to have been the main driving force behind the whole project…and whatever he did, he did well. The batting average of the films was pretty darn high but they didn't get the attention they deserved. I don't know if it was because cable was still getting its act together or because audiences rarely take to anthology formats…probably both.

Here's one of the segments — a bogus instructional film called "School, Girls and You," that was produced in or around 1983. Among the actors you'll recognize in it are Paul Reubens and Patrick Macnee, and I thought the whole thing was pretty funny. I'm not certain but I believe the film was directed by David Wechter.

This is, let's hope, our last post about that Newsday story on comic strips that was woefully filled with outdated and incorrect information. The online version of the story was posted to the Newsday website on Thursday, May 3. Here is a link to that article which is, as of this moment, uncorrected. A few determined readers posted corrections in a section that's hard to spot and which I doubt many people read.

The gentleman who authored the article — a longtime Newsday editor and writer who's about to retire after forty years there, certainly didn't read the corrections. Or at least, he hadn't as of the following day when I phoned and told him there were problems with the article. He was quite surprised to hear there was anything wrong with the piece which, he said, he researched in a "comic encyclopedia" in the Newsday library. I directed him to this posting on my weblog here where I itemized most (not all) of the mistakes.

On Saturday, the article ran — errors and all — as a major cover story in a Newsday magazine section. I'm going to guess that this section was already printed or irrevocably "off to press" at the time I phoned the reporter the day before, and that he was powerless to change it.

The following Tuesday morning, May 8, this paragraph appeared in the online Newsday "corrections" section. As I explained here, I thought this was quite insufficient, starting with the fact that few people who read the article would ever see those corrections. I further noted that the original article was still online and still uncorrected.

As you can see, it still is. However, some time last week, another version of the same article popped up on the Newsday site with corrections inserted. Here it is. As with the paragraph in the "corrections" section, we still have the error of saying that Alex Raymond took over the Blondie strip after Chic Young died. I mentioned that in my posting but apparently if the reporter looked at what I wrote to get the other facts, he missed that one or simply decided not to correct it. There is also nothing to contradict the impression that Dan DeCarlo, Bill Ziegler, Allen Saunders and Stan Drake are still alive.

There were a few other things wrong with the original article but I've already spent too much time on this. I only spent any because I wanted to make this point. This is not unique and it's not a rare exception and it's not even the work of an intern with no experience. This is the way too many news sources in this country are. They get it all wrong and then grudgingly do a minimalist, almost covert correction if someone applies a little pressure and/or shame. Some papers these days don't even do that much. (Go ahead. Find me the online "corrections" section for The Washington Times.)

True, there's nothing earth-shattering about citing two dead guys as the current makers of Mary Worth…but this is pretty much the same level of accuracy that The New York Times managed for its coverage of the Whitewater scandal and its early reporting on the Iraq invasion. They did a partial mea culpa on the latter but the record in "The Newspaper of Record" is still scratched.

Lately, a lot of "real journalists" have been decrying bloggers because, among other insults, bloggers don't fact-check and aren't answerable to anyone. That's all true. There's at least as much nonsense and erroneous info in the blogs, probably more. But there's a lot less excuse.

I'm back from a nice evening at the Motion Picture Academy and a program all about W.C. Fields. The Academy has been hosting what I hear is an extraordinary exhibit of Fields artifacts and memorabilia, most of which was donated by the late comedian's family. I haven't seen it yet and if I'm going to, I'm gonna have to hustle. Sunday is the final day to view it.

Last night, the auditorium was about 60% packed for an entry in a series they call The Jack Oakie Celebration of Comedy in Film, which spotlights great funny folks. Leonard Maltin hosted the program which consisted of a series of Fields trailers, a clip from his 1927 silent film Running Wild, a panel discussion with folks who'd either worked with Fields or studied him, and a Fields feature film. The members of the panel were Jane Withers (who appeared briefly with W.C. in It's a Gift), Delmar Watson (who had a small role in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man), Jean Rouverol Butler (who played Fields's daughter in It's a Gift), Hal Kanter (who wrote briefly for some of Fields's radio appearances), film historian Joe Adamson and Fields's grandson, Ronald Fields.

The overriding theme of the discussion was that W.C. was a much nicer human being — especially towards children — than some histories have made him out to be. Three people on the panel worked with him when they were much younger…although Watson admitted he had almost no contact with the man. All reported good experiences with the man, which was nice to hear, though hardly definitive. Interestingly, in a half hour discussion of what kind of person W.C. Fields was, there was no mention whatsoever of alcohol.

The feature shown was The Old-Fashioned Way, a film Fields made in 1934 and — I think — one of his weaker efforts. In it, he plays The Great McGonigle, the con-artist head of a theatrical troupe that likes to skip out of town without paying its boarding house fees. The storyline doesn't make a whole lot of sense but it was still a joy to watch Fields go through his paces and, near the end, to do his juggling act as a semi-grand finale. I had a fine time but I came away wishing they'd run It's a Gift or The Bank Dick or You Can't Cheat An Honest Man instead. One of the folks involved in planning the program told me they'd selected The Old-Fashioned Way because it isn't seen as often as the others. That's true…but you almost never get to see any W.C. Fields movie these days on a big screen with a large, responsive audience. Back in the late sixties/early seventies, there were such screenings around town and I enjoyed them very much. Tonight made me really miss those opportunities.

Once again, we present Three Unrelated Points. For those of you who aren't aware of what this means, it means these are Three Unrelated Points…

1. The other day, flipping the dial in search of news on the now-thankfully-contained Griffith Park Fire, I happened to find myself watching a little of Montel, the show hosted by Montel Williams. His guest — and I gather he has her on often — was a lady named Sylvia Browne who seems to make a very fine living as a "psychic," telling people…apparently anything. She can tell what messages your dead relatives have for you. She can tell you how they died. She can tell you how your career is going to go in five years. She can answer any question and she can do it instantly, without pausing to feign concentration or a trance or anything. It takes less time to get a report on the current thoughts of your dead uncle via Sylvia then it would take to phone a living relative and find out what he's doing. I'm a pretty hard skeptic on subjects like communicating with the dead or predicting the future this way…but I do understand how some people can believe. What I don't understand is how even the most fervent believer in psychic powers could be so mind-numbingly stupid as to think Ms. Browne has any.
2. Years ago, I made the mistake of buying a Pelouze scale that weighs my outgoing letters and packages and tells me to the penny how much postage to put on them. It's great but every time the rates go up, as they will on Monday, I'm supposed to purchase a new chip from the Pelouze people to upgrade my scale. The new chip is $45 plus postage and handling, which I think is more than the scale cost in the first place. In the past, I've shelled out the new fee almost without thinking. But as my use of e-mail increases, my use of paper mail slides in the other direction…and most of what I do mail is in the category of bills that don't require weighing. So I'm going to wise up this time and not order the new chip. If and when I do have an outgoing piece o' mail that might be over the minimum, I'll put it on the scale, note the weight and look the correct postage amount up here. Either that or I'll phone Sylvia Browne and ask her how many stamps to put on it.
3. Why is it that if you go to Google, type in "search engine" and click "I'm Feeling Lucky," it doesn't take you back to Google?

You've been reading the latest edition of Three Unrelated Points. Tune in some time between now and the end of time for another thrilling installment of Three Unrelated Points.

I've written here about two felines which are among the menagerie I feed at my back door. We call them (left to right in the above pic) The Stranger Cat and The Stranger Stranger Cat. The Stranger Cat comes up and howls for food and demands to be petted. The Stranger Stranger Cat hides or hangs back, waiting for the food dish to be filled and no humans to be present, then creeps up and partakes…although there was one evening The Stranger Stranger Cat was uncommonly friendly and did come up to me while I was serving and he (she?) even tolerated a little petting. That only happened the one time.

This photo was taken at night, which is the only time both come around together. During daylight, The Stranger Cat is sometimes seen. The Stranger Stranger Cat only shows up after dark. There's also a grey cat that's been turning up lately. The other night, I walked into the kitchen, looked out on the back porch and saw the three pussycats all standing around the supper dish, not eating, just slowly hissing at each other. Finally, The Stranger Cat and The Stranger Stranger Cat outhissed him and the grey one fled. You just don't want to mess with Stranger Cats.

When the Beany & Cecil cartoons debuted on TV in 1962, they brought with them a flood of Beany & Cecil toys from Mattel. I had quite a few of them including the one advertised in this commercial…the Official Beany Copter! Some of them — like the Beany & Cecil game that came with a talking Cecil puppet — were pretty good. But the one advertised in today's video offering, the Official Beany Copter, was good for about five minutes of fun.

It was a cap which, since it was formed out of hard plastic, didn't stay on your head at all unless it was an exact fit, which it usually wasn't. You put one of the propellers on the top, then spun it around to "wind" it. Then when you pulled the string, the copter blade was released and it sailed a good eight feet, whereupon the fun was over. I think I fired mine about three times for myself and once for each of maybe four friends…and that was it. Time to go pull out a different toy.

But take a look at this commercial. Those kids are enjoying themselves a lot more than any real kids ever enjoyed their Beany Copters. It wouldn't surprise me if every child actor in this spot became a successful, honored professional in the craft of acting. They sure showed talent to pretend they liked the thing.

The House Armed Services Committee is now run by Democrats. They took the shears to the administration's billion defense budget of $504 billion and wound up with a defense budget of…$504 billion! Fred Kaplan tells how they managed that.

A happy (I think) correction: Irwin Hasen did not have a pacemaker implanted. He's in the hospital, he's being treated for a stroke and I'm told he's responding well. But without a pacemaker in him.

If I may, I'd like to make Three Unrelated Points. That is, they're unrelated to each other. They may be related to something…

1. Obviously, I am grossly disappointed in John McCain. Do not however assume that because I haven't expressed as much that I have any particular fondness for any other candidate. So far, I don't like anyone very much and am really tired of e-mails from people who assume that because I don't like their guy that I must think the candidate they like least is flawless. I've gotten this so often that I actually went back and did a search on my own blog to make sure I hadn't, in a moment of madness, written something like, "I think Hillary Clinton can solve every problem the world has in twenty minutes and bake a cherry pie at the same time." I hadn't…and for good reason.
2. Recently in a market, I spotted and purchased Tyson Frozen Flat Iron Steaks and attempted to cook one at home. I did this because I had forgotten a prevailing rule of my life: Never assume that food named after an inanimate object won't resemble that inanimate object in taste and texture. I formulated this rule the first time I ate in a Straw Hat Pizza Parlor.
3. Like you, I get a lot of Spam for pornography and sex sites. Actually, I manage to trap about 99% of it before it reaches me but I do get that 1% and about once a month, I take a quick peek in the filter folder to make sure it didn't gobble up something I would have wanted. I know that the Porn Spammers intentionally spell words wrong because they think it'll get their messages past some Spam Monitors…but I prefer to think that these guys are just so illiterate that they can't spell their own body parts correctly.

This has been the latest edition of Three Unrelated Points. Tune in one of these days for another exciting installment of Three Unrelated Points.

Here's a clip from the Garfield and Friends series that needs a bit of explanation. If you ever saw the show when it was on CBS, you may recall that we had episodes of Garfield and we had episodes of a cartoon that was called, in this country, U.S. Acres. In other countries, it was called Orson's Farm. These cartoons ran 6-7 minutes in length. We also had little short cartoon gags that were called "quickies" that ran an average of thirty seconds each. In an hour-long episode of Garfield and Friends, we had four of the longer Garfield cartoons, two of the longer U.S. Acres/Orson's Farm cartoons and some Garfield quickies and some U.S. Acres/Orson's Farm quickies. (We also, for a time, had a segment called "Screaming With Binky" but never mind that now.)

One week, I wrote a Garfield cartoon called The Attack of the Mutant Guppies, which was all about giant, radioactive guppies that lived in the sewers. The cartoon ended with the monsters apparently being swept out to sea. This was then followed by a U.S. Acres/Orson's Farm quickie in which…well, here. See for yourself. Here are the last few seconds of the Garfield episode, followed by the U.S. Acres/Orson's Farm quickie…

See? The Garfield cartoon is continued, sort of, into the Orson's Farm quickie. I thought that was kind of funny. If it was though, it was only funny when that Orson's Farm quickie immediately followed that Garfield cartoon. You have no idea how hard it was to keep them together. The folks editing the shows kept calling to say, "Hey, the show's running a little long. Can we move that U.S. Acres quickie to another show?" And I kept telling them no, they couldn't. I think when the hour was first delivered to the network, they had the quickie before the Garfield cartoon and someone at CBS figured out the problem and made them go back and change it. When the show went into syndication, a number of elements had to be juggled around or trimmed to fit the syndication format and that quickie disappeared. So when the "Guppies" cartoon airs now, it airs without its punch line.

Along the way, I got a lot of people mad at me there because I'd made things too complicated. We also had a complaint from someone over at the studio that made The Muppet Babies because we'd mentioned their show. I still don't know why that bothered them.

Here's how the Griffith Park Fire looked from downtown. Via time lapse video.

We reported here that the Mann National Theater in Westwood was closing down…and it did. Now, we're reporting that the theater is about to reopen, though not as a Mann. The chain's lease on the building has expired and the National will begin showing films again as a private concern. No word on whether the owners expect to keep it going on that basis or if they're just looking to generate some cash while looking for a buyer for the land.

I don't imagine he has Internet access in the hospital but who knows? They just stuck a pacemaker into the legendary comic artist — the guy who gave us the Dondi newspaper strip and some great Golden Age comic book feature, Wildcat. Maybe they embedded a Broadband connection in the guy while they were at it and he can log in on himself and read this.

So, just in case: Get healthy, Irwin. Of all the people we've met in comics and interviewed at conventions, you're one of our favorites. Here's the partial text of one convention conversation with you. We need you around so we can do more of these.

[CORRECTION: Irwin did not receive a pacemaker. He's being treated for a stroke but did not receive a pacemaker.]

Fred Kaplan, who's been ahead of everyone else on telling us what would happen in Iraq, has some (slightly) hopeful thoughts. Basically, he thinks, what the Democratic Congress is now doing may pressure Iraq into getting its act together.