Jack Kirby was involved in a number of odd projects in his life, especially in the eighties when he was more or less out of conventional comic books. One was a motion picture proposal called The Lord of Light, based on Roger Zelazny's book of the same name. For it, he did a pile of concept sketches as well as some designs for a proposed theme park related to the proposed movie. Above is one drawing of what the theme park might have looked like. (The odd part is that as wild and untethered to reality as Jack's imagination was, it might have been fairly simple to build buildings that looked like his did. His world had balance and mass and structure.)

The film never got made but it was apparently helpful in the freeing of six Americans who were trapped in Iran. This article tells the whole bizarre story.

Ed McMahon, you may be interested to know, has been intermittently touring the U.S. with a one-man show called "Tonight Show Memories." Here, we have a link to a piece about him in Chicago with it, including a video interview. Thanks to Jeff Abraham for the tip.

Wanna hear a radio show discussing animation history? Better still, wanna hear one that doesn't feature me (although I may call in and be part of the discussion)? Well, two eminent cartoon scholars will be the guests this Wednesday on Stu's Show, which is heard only on Shokus Internet Radio. Each week, my pal Stu Shostak welcomes either someone prominent in entertainment history or me to his microphones and this Wednesday, he has two terrific guests.

One is Jerry Beck, who's one of the brewmasters of Cartoon Brew, maybe the best animation weblog on the 'net. Any time you see a great DVD collection of cartoons these days, the odds are good that it exists and is as good as it is because Jerry talked the appropriate folks into doing it and doing it right. He's too humble to say this so I will.

The other is Keith Scott, who's one of the top announcers and voiceover guys in Australia, along with being the world class expert on animation voice history and on the Jay Ward studio. Keith not only knows everything there is to know about Bullwinkle J. Moose, he is Bullwinkle J. Moose. After the passing of the character's original voice, Bill Scott, Keith (no relation) took over the role and now they fly him in from Down Under when they need the eminent moose to speak. It's an uncanny replica…as I'm sure you'll hear for yourself if you tune in Stu's Show.

I suggest you do this on Wednesday. An awful lot of folks who've listened to Stu on my recommendation have told me they really enjoyed it. The show airs on the Internet for two hours, beginning at 4 PM on the West Coast, which is 7 PM on the East Coast. To hear it, click over to Shokus Internet Radio, select an audio browser and then listen. The show repeats at that time for several days after but you'll enjoy it more if you listen live. Trust Mark on this.

Here's five minutes from a 1950 Burns & Allen TV show. It's a dance spot featuring George Burns, someone named Harrison Muller…and the legendary Bob Fosse. Mr. Muller was a Broadway dancer at the time and his son (of the same name) has achieved some success as a star in action movies. For some reason, I just like watching Fosse dance, even though this isn't Fosse-style dancing. George ain't so bad, either.

The 2008 Presidential Race…as explained by the eminent scholar of such things, Yogi Berra.

For reasons that escape me, I'm booked for a batch of comic-type conventions in the next few months…

• June 2 and 3, I'll be at the Super-Con, which used to be in Oakland, California but is now in San Jose. They have a pretty good lineup of guests so we may have some interesting panels and program items. I'll tell you all about them when things get firmed up.
• July 5 through 8, the lovely Carolyn Kelly and the lovely I (to say nothing of the lovely Rob Paulsen) will be Guests of Honor at Anthrocon, which is an annual convention in Pittsburgh to celebrate funny animals and the anthropomorphic arts. Again, there will be panels and talks. I'll talk about the silly cartoons I write. Carolyn will talk about the work of her father, Walt Kelly, on Pogo…which was only, like, the best newspaper strip ever. And I imagine Rob will talk about doing some of the best cartoon voice work done today.
• And then of course, July 26-29, we and everyone who could get a hotel room will be at the Comic-Con International in San Diego. Usually, I go there and run twelve or thirteen panels. This year, they've made me a Guest of Honor so I guess I'm going to go there and run twelve or thirteen panels. It's way too early to say what they might be but they'd better be good. If they aren't, there's a good chance no one will show up for the convention.

If you can make it to any of these, please come by and say howdy. I get a lot of e-mail here but I somehow don't believe people are reading this website until they tell me in person.

Also, if you see me, look around. You may just spot John Lithgow lurking close by. (As a couple of you have written to me, it could be worse. I could be stalked by Robert Blake.)

One of my big peeves, apart from John Lithgow following me around, is that so many people who purport to care about comic book history don't seem to know how to spell the names of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman. These are important men with not-difficult names but just take a moment and Google some aberrant spellings. You'll find countless hits for Siegal and Shuster, Seigel and Schuster, Seigle and Shusster, etc. Sometimes, they get one wrong, sometimes both. This probably bugs me more than it should.

Well, here's a bit of comic book history. Above left is an ad that appeared in New Comics #11, which came out in 1936 from the company we now know as DC Comics. It's a promo for a new book the company was then launching called Detective Comics. That's the cover of #1, which was drawn by Vince Sullivan, the book's associate editor. The ad touts the folks who created the interior of that historic publication — Tom Hickey, Sven Elven, Bill Patrick, Creig Flessel (who recently celebrated his 94th birthday), Seigel & Shuster [sic], Homer Fleming and Alger. Not listed is Fred Schwab, who also did a story in that first issue.

That's right. In what may be the first ad to ever mention Jerry and Joe, Jerry's name was misspelled. So maybe it's a time-honored tradition.

As some of you may recall, I've had some concern about the size of the crows in my neighborhood lately. They're now about the size of Lincoln Continentals.

But I have something new to worry about. I think I'm being stalked. What's more, I think I'm being stalked by John Lithgow.

Today, I went into a Bristol Farms market and as I was waiting to check out, I noticed that the man standing behind me in line was John Lithgow. This is the third time in thirty days I've encountered Mr. Lithgow. The first, which I didn't tell you about, was in a restaurant almost a month ago. He acted like he was there to eat with someone else but I wasn't fooled. He was there to keep an eye on me.

The second time was at the Billy Connelly performance mentioned here. Again, Lithgow feigned like he was there for some innocent reason like seeing the show…and he had me almost convinced. He's that good an actor. I was prepared to just consider the two run-ins a coincidence.

But today at Bristol Farms, I caught on. There he was with his little basket, pretending to be out grocery shopping, supposedly more interested in his purchases than he was in me. Nice try, Lithgow, but I'm on to you. I don't know what you're up to but it won't work.

Stay tuned to this weblog for more sightings of John Lithgow. And don't think there won't be plenty.

Ezra Klein debunks the myth that Americans have better health care than Canada, France, Great Britain and Germany. When people say otherwise, I'm never quite sure if it's just the old "we're the best at everything" reflex kicking in or if they actually believe this.

Regis Philbin returns on Thursday to Live With Regis and Kelly following his bypass operation. One of his guests that morning will be David Letterman.

Earlier this morning, GSN ran two episodes of To Tell the Truth in tribute to its longtime panelist, Kitty Carlisle. One was an episode I described here…from memory since I don't think I've seen it since it first aired back in the seventies. Just for the record, I remembered what happened but I remembered them in reverse. The "reveal" of Ms. Carlisle's son preceded the unmasking of Joe Garagiola's son. Either way, it was still a funny segment.

Good night, Internet. I'll see you in the morning.

The career of Bob Fosse. In a little over three minutes.

And after you bail on the Rich Little video, go watch something clever. This is a link to Robert Smigel's cartoon on last night's Saturday Night Live, "Torboto."

I've embedded too many videos today so I won't put this one up here. But here's a link to a YouTube video of Rich Little's appearance at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. It runs about twenty minutes.

Slightly off-topic: I noticed that one weblog (this one) that picked up a link from me on this described me as "a Leno apologist who obviously doesn't care for some aspects of Letterman's comedy." I think "apologist" is the wrong word there but just for the record, I like both Dave and Jay…though I watch them with generous fast-forwarding because I don't think either guy has been at his best for quite a while. And speaking of not being at your best for a long time, go watch Rich Little.

Courtesy of the Trader Joe's market chain, here's a simple PDF file on how to read the Nutrition Facts box on any food product you might pick up.