Wanna see what Las Vegas looked like on New Year's Eve? There's a video over on this page that may give you some idea. It's a great place to be that night if you like fireworks.

According to Fred Kaplan, Condoleezza Rice is being much nicer to Egypt these days. She'd better. The way things are going, she needs every friend she can get.

For several days now, the rumor has spread through comic book forums on the 'net that Joe Gill, one of the most prolific writers in the history of the medium, passed away last December. I've received many an e-mail asking me if it was true and why I hadn't posted something about it. Easy answer: I didn't know if it was true…and the people I knew who knew Joe Gill didn't seem to know if it was true, either. Mr. Gill had little or no family so there didn't seem to be a simple way to check and find out. Finally, sadly, I think I have sufficient confirmation.

Gill was born in 1919. His earliest known work in comics was for Timely (now Marvel) in the early forties and he was among the many writers who wrote Captain America after the departure of Simon and Kirby. In the late forties when the company switched over to teen comics and westerns, he was one of their busiest writers but he eventually fell into disfavor with the editor there, Stan Lee, and work began to become sporadic. By the early fifties, he was doing most of his writing for a company called Funnies, Inc., which supplied publishers with stories and artwork.

One of those publishers was John Santangelo of Charlton Comics. The comic book business was entering a rocky period with many companies going under and Santangelo decided he wanted to build a stable of writers and artists who'd work primarily in the firm's plant in Derby, Connecticut. For many, this meant relocating to that area but the deal included a certain stability along with very low rates. Someone once described the terms as "We'll pay you a third of what the other houses pay but we'll give you three times as much work." Santangelo was familiar with Gill's work (and legendary speed) via Funnies, Inc., and offered Joe a contract. Joe accepted and for the next three decades — until Charlton shut its doors — he was their star scripter, producing thousands of scripts for every kind of comic they published. In a business where some writers were pressed to write a book a week, Gill often produced a finished manuscript in a day.

His work included westerns (Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickok), war comics (Marine War Heroes, Fightin' Army), romance comics (Love Diary, Teen Confessions), crime comics (Crime and Justice, Vengeance Squad), science-fiction comics (Space Adventures, Doomsday Plus 1), comics based on movies (Konga, 1776), comics based on books (Jungle Tales of Tarzan), comics based on newspaper strips (The Phantom, Popeye), comics based on cartoon shows (Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw), comics based on live-action TV shows (The Bionic Woman, Emergency), comics about martial arts (Yang, House of Yang), ghost comics (Ghostly Tales, Haunted), comics about car racing (Hot Rod Racers, Grand Prix), comics about surfing (Surf Kings) and anything else Charlton put out. He handled (and in some cases, co-created) a number of recurring characters and super-heroes, including Captain Atom, The Blue Beetle, Hercules, Peacemaker, The Fightin' Five, Sarge Steel, Son of Vulcan and Judomaster. In addition to all this, he worked often as a writer and/or editor on Charlton's many non-comic magazines, many of which featured pulp-style romance or crime fiction.

Charlton kept Gill so busy that he rarely had time to work for other publishers. He scripted a number of books for Dell in the sixties…for not much better money than he was receiving from Charlton. In 1968 when former Charlton editor Dick Giordano began working at DC, he brought Gill along and gave him work — at DC rates, which seemed astronomical to Joe at the time — on The Secret Six, Hot Wheels and a few other titles…but Gill's association with DC did not survive Giordano's ouster and it was back to the lousy money in Connecticut. He professed not to mind very much. Charlton's editors accepted whatever he did and rarely, if ever, asked for revisions. After the company shut down in 1986, Gill largely retired. In the company's waning days, he sold a few more scripts to DC for their ghost comics but when Charlton ceased publishing, Joe largely retired…and I'm afraid that's all I know about his later period.

There are a number of debates in the comic book community as to who stands as the most prolific writer in the history of the medium. The Guinness Book of World Records has recognized the late Paul S. Newman for that distinction…and he may well be, although he got in there in part because he was smart enough to submit himself as such. Others have argued for Stan Lee, Robert Kanigher or my personal nominee, Vic Lockman — but if anyone could ever properly calculate the numbers, it sure wouldn't surprise me if the winner turned out to be Joe Gill.

That crazed Liberal, William F. Buckley, comes out against increased U.S. forces in Iraq. But he seems to be saying that a loss of lives by U.S. soldiers is acceptable, whereas a loss of wealth by "corporate" forces is not. And if that's what he's saying, I don't think that idea is acceptable at all.

Okay, let's play a game. Let's say you're the guy who has to select the entertainment for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. Every year, they bring in some comedian to perform and for the event scheduled for this April 21, you have to pick someone.

Last year, it was Stephen Colbert. The star of TV's The Colbert Report pulled few punches and really let both the assembled members of the press and George W. Bush have it. Many people found him hilarious. Others felt he bombed. Some were angry. (Here's a link to the video of what Colbert did that night, just in case you need any reminding.) A number of people complained, Bush looked unamused and there was much controversy, which is probably not what you want.

So you're in charge of picking someone to perform at this year's dinner. Who do you pick?

Make your decision and then click here to see who's been chosen to headline in April.

Among my favorite shows when I was a kid was Crusader Rabbit, which was more or less the first cartoon series produced for television. The adventures of the plucky hare and his pal, Ragland T. Tiger, were done in two batches. In 1948, Jay Ward and Alex Anderson produced 195 four minute cartoons in black-and-white. In 1957, a company called TV Spots did around 200 more cartoons in color. The photo above is from the opening of the first series and you can see what I believe is the opening episode of that run over at this link.

But let us concern ourselves with the second batch. Among the stations that carried those cartoons was the local NBC affiliate in Los Angeles, which is now called KNBC but was then KRCA. The channel's afternoon programming was all locally-produced and on Monday through Friday, most of it consisted of a gentleman named Tom Frandsen. His show changed formats and lengths from time to time but during the period I'm recalling, he presided over an odd array of elements that really didn't go together.

The main part of his show was an afternoon movie which would be interrupted every three minutes for commercials and so he could interview in-studio guests. Then after the movie, he'd host an old episode of the prime-time TV series, Hennesey, which was a great show…I think. I have one episode here — the only one I've seen in 40+ years — and it isn't very good, but I'm willing to assume it's an exception. It was an "adult" situation comedy, which meant only there was no laugh track and no one got dressed up in funny costumes or hit with pies, but I recall its star (Jackie Cooper) being very funny and his co-star (Abby Dalton) being very lovely.

Hennesey was on in prime-time for three years (1959-1962) but I think the period I'm describing here was around '61, before it went off the network. Frandsen was showing episodes from its first two seasons and after each, he would introduce the day's installment of Crusader Rabbit. (And as if this aggregation of programming wasn't odd enough, the Crusader Rabbit cartoon led into the afternoon newscast. So Channel 4 would segue from the bunny and Rags the Tiger trapped in a mine to a police shootout in the City of Industry.)

The cartoon was, of course, why I watched. I was home from school by that time…or if I was at a friend's house, I made them turn it on. Couldn't miss Crusader Rabbit…though once in a while, I did and it wasn't my fault. Frandsen's movie would occasionally run long because a guest got wordy or because of an interruption for breaking news coverage. When that happened, guess what would get bumped. I was quite unhappy when this occurred, even though Frandsen would promise us that we wouldn't miss an installment; that today's would be run tomorrow. I didn't see why the 5:00 News couldn't start at 5:07.

What I really couldn't miss was Crusader Rabbit on Sunday morning. Like I said, there were approximately 200 of these cartoons produced. I'm not sure of the precise math but I'm guessing there were either 195 or 208 because I do know they formed thirteen separate serialized storylines. The production company made them available in two forms and your local station could air them in either format or both. One was the way Mr. Frandsen ran them Monday through Friday — one standalone chapter per day. The other was how KRCA ran them very early (around 7 AM or 8 AM) on Sunday morning, which was with an entire storyline edited into an hour-long "movie."

Absent was all the recapping, along with the portions where the announcer would tell you to "tune in tomorrow" for another exciting chapter of Crusader Rabbit. The customary main title of Crusader riding up in shining armor on a white horse was gone…which was fine with me since it was just confusing. In the cartoons, he never rode a horse or dressed as a knight. Instead on the quasi-features, there was a new main title with full credits that made what you were about to see look kind of like a theatrical film. Along with the names, you saw still shots of Crusader and Rags posed around an animation studio, acting like they were drawing and photographing their own adventures.

I loved those Crusader Rabbit "movies." The animation looked like it was done on shirt cardboards but the stories, many of which were written by the late Chris Hayward, were very clever and engrossing, especially in that edited/tightened format…though (again) it's been a long time since I've seen them. One of the reasons for this post is to ask if anyone out there has copies or even if the "feature" versions still exist. In all my travels in and around the animation community, I've never seen one or even heard anyone besides me mention them. There have been some legit video releases and a lot of free-floating bootlegs of the serial versions of Crusader Rabbit but I've never seen the longform versions. Has anyone else?

Anyway, here at long last is today's video link. It is, appropriately, the opening of the color Crusader Rabbit series, complete with the bunny who never dressed in armor or rode a horse in the body of the cartoons dressing in armor and riding a horse. I still don't understand that or why he was dressed that way in the opening and also on the covers of the Dell comic books. Just another one of those mysteries of childhood.

This is about the ninth time in the last twenty years we've been told Fidel Castro was on the verge of death. They're bound to be right eventually.

If you're interested in this matter of O.J. Simpson's "confession" in his ghostwritten book, you'll want to read this piece by Timothy Noah. He says, and I suspect he's right and I was wrong, that the ghostwriter, Pablo Fenjves, extensively interviewed Simpson. Noah also suggests that the construction of the "confession" sounds like something a guilty Simpson would dictate, filling in some details and punting on others. Makes sense to me.

Has no one told George W. Bush that every time he makes a "major policy address" to the nation, his popularity goes down?

That's what I wanna know.

A couple of readers have sent me info on books that argue that O.J. Simpson was innocent of the double murder. They're pretty obscure, small press books that received no attention because their conclusions (most pinned the killing on Mark Fuhrman or on Simpson's son Jason) were so inane and poorly supported. The point is that O.J. Simpson never got behind any alternate theory of the killings, nor did F. Lee Bailey or any of Simpson's other attorneys, nor did any prominent journalist or anyone with a smidgen of credibility. If one of them had crafted even a semi-logical case, they could have cleaned up. But no one could.

Regarding the movie Stop! Look! And Laugh!, a person who wishes to remain anonymous sends the following…

Is it possible there are two versions? I had never seen the movie until one Saturday afternoon, around 1984, when it was being broadcast on the old WNEW Metromedia station, in New York. I was paying special attention to the Winchell-Mahoney-Knucklehead Smiff scenes, as I had fallen in love with the performer, and his characters, nearly two decades earlier. But in the movie, when Winch left the kitchen, I was stunned, as the Jerry Mahoney puppet got up from the breakfast table, and walked to the sink, in full view of the camera…

Obviously, it was a little person, or child, in a Jerry Mahoney wardrobe, and rubber mask, but it was still almost kind of chilling, if only because of the surprise. When the movie was next broadcast, a couple of years later, I set the VCR to record it — more for the wonderful Winchell scenes, than anything else. I had the Stooges shorts, and really wanted a copy of the amazing — to me, at least — Jerry walks sequence. But when I checked the tape, WNEW had shortened the dining room material, cutting the scene out.

Years later, when I encountered a bunch of hard-core Stooges fans on the internet, they told me they had never seen the scene I described. And when I bought Stop! Look! And Laugh!'s prerecord, the sequence was also gone. Do you, or any of your readers, recall any such scene?

I don't, at least in that movie. I do recall an episode of The Jack Benny Program that creeped me out when I was a small boy. Jack visited Edgar Bergen at his home and saw Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd walking about. (They were both reportedly played by Billy Barty in masks.) It was very bizarre.

I have a vague memory of Winchell doing something similar on some show, though I have the feeling it may have been not a small person in a mask but a marionette. Perhaps someone with better info will write in and tell us.

Lots and lots of messages this morning telling me I'm lunkheaded (or other, politer terms) to believe that California does not have a Statute of Limitations on the crime of murder. Sorry, I mistyped. I thought I was typing, "…a Statute of Limitations on being an accessory to murder." Apparently, we do have one of those and it's three years. So if O.J. Simpson did have an accomplice in the grisly double killings, that person can't be charged. Come to think of it, even if he could, how do you charge Man #2 with helping Man #1 commit a murder even though Man #1 was acquitted?

Aah. It's all moot because of the three year limit and also because you couldn't prove Man #2 was even there. The evidence is non-existent and Simpson isn't about to take the stand and say, "Yeah…if I did it, that's the guy who got rid of the knife and bloody clothes for me." This is even assuming there was such an accomplice and that authorities could identify him, both of which I doubt.

I did predict that Simpson would disavow the contents of the book and especially that chapter as being wholly the work of the ghostwriter. Apparently, as David Seidman and others are noting in e-mails to me, he already has.

But while I'm back on this topic I wish I could get out of my head, let me mention one of the eight thousand things that helped convince me of Simpson's utter guilt in the whole matter. Usually in this world, when there's any sort of belief that is disseminated, there's an opening for the opposite belief, even if (maybe especially if) it's totally counter-intuitive. If the official version of how Kennedy was shot is "X," there's an audience for "Not X." Some part of the population is naturally drawn to any position that is framed as "Everything the general public believes is wrong." Maybe it's cynicism, maybe it's curiosity, maybe it's a desire to not want to believe what the masses believe. Maybe there's even truth to be found by tackling the issue from that viewpoint. But it's always there, that yearning for the other, "real" story.

There was a wide-open market and money to be made with a serious book that argued, with any kind of coherent arrangement of known facts plus a lot of speculation, that Simpson didn't commit the murders. The Geraldo-like talk shows would have booked its author with sufficient gusto to promote such a book onto the Best Seller list. True, whoever wrote it would have taken a lot of personal abuse and looked like an idiot to much of the population…but you do that if you write a book these days arguing that George W. Bush knows what he's doing, and people are still coming out with those. The Ann Coulters of the world make tons of money and receive other perks, advancing positions that cause much of America to hate them.

Just before and for a year or three after the Simpson acquittal, you did have prominent folks around asserting that he didn't do it, that he couldn't have done it, that the real killers would soon be found, etc. They could maintain this position for a few minutes on Larry King Live because they could say "The proof is coming." But none of them could write the book that included that proof. The case would not have to have been airtight. It could have leaked like one of those Seal-a-Meal vacuum-containers I once bought off an infomercial…but even then, none of them could come up with even a semi-credible alternate theory of who did knife those two people if O.J. didn't. I think F. Lee Bailey and one or two other members of the so-called "Dream Team" even announced tentative publication dates for such a book — and of course, Simpson announced his intention to clear his name with one —

— but there was no book. Even though there was money to be made, no one made that case.

Simpson says he went along with this If I Did It project because he needed the money. I can believe that. What I can't believe is that he wouldn't have made even more if he'd written the book that even came close to proving someone else butchered Nicole and Ron. Gee, I wonder why he didn't write that one.

I don't want to oversell this movie — Stop! Look! And Laugh! — because it's really quite missable. But here's the trailer for it. Notice that someone thought it would be funny to throw a pie at one of the Marquis Chimps.

Newsweek has printed this summary of what was in O.J. Simpson's If I Did It book about the murders. It all sounds reasonably credible up until the part about him having an accomplice who disposed of the bloody clothes and knife.

That's possible, I suppose…and it's a nice, simple explanation to one of the difficult-to-explain parts of the whole case. The trouble is that in none of the testimony, including that of houseguest Kato Kaelin, was there any mention of Simpson hanging around with anyone else that evening. It's a bit difficult to believe that someone just dropped by and Simpson said, "Hey, let's take a ride so I can scare my ex-wife with a knife. And tell you what — if I lose control and kill her and any visitors she has, you can get rid of the evidence for me." I also don't recall investigators finding any physical evidence of another person around.

What's intriguing here, of course, is the notion of Simpson having an accomplice. As I understand it, there's a three year Statute of Limitations on murder in the state of California so the guy who helped him, if there was such a person, is in the legal clear. But I'm not inclined to believe there was such as person. It just sounds too "written."

You know: I read an awful lot about the Simpson case…more than I should have, certainly. If someone came to me and offered enough cash to whore myself out and ghost this book…and if Simpson asked me to work out a possible explanation that he could endorse…I think I'd have written something like that. Much of it is logical conjecture, and I would have skirted the explicit details of the knifework, as the account apparently does, because it would be too difficult to write something that would precisely match the physical evidence. I'd also have made up the accomplice because it would easily explain where the bloody knife and outfit went, and since Simpson might well want a detail or two that would lead researchers away from the truth.

And of course, the next step down the line, after Simpson's wrung every possible dollar out of this book, is for him to disavow it. That's when he might say, "Hell, I didn't even write that chapter. Since I didn't commit the murders, I told this ghostwriter to just put down any silly theory he could come up with. Ask him…he'll tell you." That's how I would have done it if I'd done it…but I didn't.

This is from James H. Burns…

Stop! Look! And Laugh! also features a neat opportunity — one of the only, come to think of it — to view "Officer" Joe Bolton, who hosted the Stooges shorts for years on WPIX in New York. He's a customer at the diner with Knucklehead. (He's also featured in The Outlaws is Coming, along with a whole posse of kids' show hosts from around the country — those whose shows screened Howard, Howard and Fine — as, I always thought a bit oddly, famous desperadoes.

By the way, Joe Besser told an interesting story about why he had to leave the Stooges. When the shorts were first released to TV, and met with near instantaneous success, Moe had the bright idea to begin doing live shows again with the act. Dates were planned, with the first booked, I believe, in Pittsburgh…

Moe figured it might be the only way to cash in on their new popularity, as there were — as was, of course, standard for the time — absolutely no residuals from the old Columbia pictures. Besser's wife had been sick, requiring daily care. A film schedule, particularly one where he had only to drive the short distance to the studio for a few days' work, on a two-reeler, was no problem. But there was no way he would leave California, for any amount of time, while his wife remained ill. Contrary to rumor, it was only when Besser told Moe that he couldn't tour, that the chief Stooge decided that he'd have to be replaced…

I know that's the story as it's usually told but I always thought the illness of Mrs. Besser was an excuse. I think Joe Besser just decided that at that point, he'd have more of a career as a solo comedian. If I'd been his agent at the time, that's how I would have advised him…and I'd have been right. Even assuming he'd have received a third of what the Stooges made — perhaps a faulty assumption — I'll bet he made more on his own. He certainly had more potential as a performer on his own.

One of the times I visited Larry Fine out at the Motion Picture Country Home, I asked him if my theory was correct. He said, "Probably," and went on to tell me that Besser — for whom he had nothing but fondness — never really liked being a Stooge. Didn't like the physical demands, didn't like being part of a team, didn't like the money.

Probably because of that, when I later met Mr. Besser, I asked him nothing about his days with the Stooges. We talked about his work with Abbott and Costello and he told me that after Costello died, Abbott was after him to team up for an act. I don't know if that's true or not but I think Abbott and Besser might have worked quite well as a duo, certainly better than Abbott's unsuccessful attempts to form a new team with Candy Candido. (The reason I wonder if Besser's claim is true is that he said nothing of the sort in either version of his autobiography — Not Just a Stooge or Once a Stooge, Always a Stooge. He also made some outlandish claims in them about his salary as a cartoon voice performer.)

Regarding the Stooges having all the local TV hosts in The Outlaws is Coming: One of the folks in there is Don Lamond, who was a personality on KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles, not only hosting the Three Stooges shorts but also at times, an afternoon movie program. He was an odd choice to emcee Stooges films — a guy in a sport coat and tie with no "character" like Skipper Frank or Engineer Bill. (The station eventually replaced him with Billy Barty.)

Lamond was Larry's son-in-law and he turned up in most of the Stooge movies of the sixties. I never knew if he got the job at KTTV because he was related to Larry but I'm assuming that's how he occasionally snagged Larry, Moe and Curly Joe to appear on his show. Every four months or so, they'd come on and explain to the viewing and in-studio audience that they were actors and trained professionals and that we, being stupid children, should never try to do the kinds of things they did in the films like ripping handfuls of hair out of our friends' scalps. Moe would then demonstrate on Joe DeRita how, when it looked like he was poking Joe in the eyes, he was actually hitting his eyebrows. And naturally, after he showed us the secret, we all wanted to try and do it on our buddies.

Anyway, thanks for the message, James. And doesn't it feel nice to be discussing something important here instead of nonsense like our current Iraq policy? (…which, by the way, I think the Stooges were also responsible for…)

Let's set the Waybac Machine for 1960, Sherman. The place is in front of your television set. Get comfy as we watch an old campaign commercial for John F. Kennedy. They don't write 'em like this anymore: No attacks on his opponent, no campaign promises, not even a claim of what J.F.K. would do as president. I think the idea here is that we vote for him because someone wrote a catchy jingle and it's nicely sung. (I doubt it's him but the lead male vocalist sounds to me like Mike Douglas, who did a lot of studio singing gigs before he became a talk show host.) It's not as effective as the recording of "High Hopes" that Sinatra made with the special "vote for Kennedy" lyrics but it's interesting.