A kindly reader of this site sent me a nice Christmas gift — the PC version of the Deal or No Deal game show. At least, I think it was a kind gesture. It may have been one of the half-dozen folks who routinely send me e-mails explaining how I'm wrong not to think George W. Bush is a great president. I wouldn't put it past one of them to think they could keep me busy with the game so I wouldn't post any more articles that make them grind their molars.

If that was the goal, they figured wrong. The computer version of Deal or No Deal wouldn't keep anyone busy for more than about fifteen minutes. You play it a couple of times, ogle the odd graphics and put it away forever. Gamewise, it's a faithful reproduction of the TV show but all the fancy music and dramatic pauses still cause a very simple game to take a lot longer than it should. There are many online versions (including this one on the NBC website) that let you play the same game a lot faster.

The only reason to spring for the twenty bucks and get the PC version is for the graphics…and I might have gone for it if they had the real models in there and you felt Up Close and Personal with them as you played. But all the people — Howie Mandel, the models, even the audience — are CGI animations and the models are all generic, unsexy types. Howie's pretty generic and unsexy, too…and it's a little creepy to watch the computer-animated representation of him gesturing with odd, mechanical gestures and speaking with almost no lip-sync.

Makes you wonder why they went to the trouble to build a computer-animated Howie Mandel. Why didn't they just videotape the real guy? I'm guessing they did the whole thing in CGI because it would have been too expensive to pay all 26 models to actually appear in the game, Too bad…because it might have made you feel like you were actually playing for real. As it was, I almost wanted to take a bad banker's offer just so I could get out and stop looking at the weird computerized people.

I actually never saw this before I spotted it on YouTube. It's the opening to the 1988 Yogi Bear Show and it's made up of clips from classic Yogi cartoons (many of them from the feature, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear) and a pleasant, newly-recorded rendition of Yogi's theme song.

Joe Barbera always resisted when people asked him to name his favorite character. It was the one they were currently working on, he'd say. But I'm convinced that if you'd strapped him down and pumped him full of sodium pentothal, he'd have told you Yogi was his fave. A couple times, we got to talking about that bear and you could always see the man's face light up. It was the only Hanna-Barbera character I ever heard him imitate. Of course, some of that may have been because Yogi was the studio's first superstar.

J.B. and I had an interesting conversation one day about Yogi. In some of his cartoons, Yogi is a real operator, largely in control of the situation, able to con tourists out of their pic-a-nic baskets and to snow the Ranger and not get punished. In others, he's something of a victim, unable to escape from Jellystone Park or getting repeatedly blasted and mauled by the crew of a movie shooting in the park. I generally preferred the competent con artist Yogi and wrote him that way whenever I wrote him…but I had to ask Mr. B. why the inconsistency.

He was startled by the question and admitted he'd never noticed the change. At the same time though, he acknowledged it was a valid observation and he began puzzling it out. After a pause, he said something like, "I think the problem was that we weren't used to doing cartoons for television then. We'd been doing the Tom and Jerrys and you never worried about that kind of thing because no one ever saw the films again. They ran and then they went away so if you had a funny idea, you just did it. Once we got established in television, we learned that these things would be rerun over and over so you had to be consistent from one to another."

That sounded like a good explanation to me…and as I type it here, it occurs to me that it may also be a partial answer to a question I was asked the other day on Shokus Internet Radio. A caller asked why Barney Rubble's voice changed so much from week to week during the first season of The Flintstones even when it was still Mel Blanc doing it.

Anyway, here's the opening to the '88 Yogi Bear program…

This weekend on C-Span 2: Art Buchwald, Too Soon to Say Goodbye. As we all know, the great columnist checked into a hospice in Washington last year with the expectation that he had 2-3 weeks to live. He's still alive and still writing, and this is a little 25 minute show about him. It airs Sunday at 11 AM and 5:30 PM, and on Monday at 6:30 PM and 9 PM, all times Eastern. My thanks to Gordon Kent for alerting me to this and I hereby forgive him for the lousy creamed corn I ate last night.

Meanwhile, here's a Head's Up! On Wednesday, January 10, there's something on Basic Cable that you're going to want to record, at least if you're a fan of great comic actors in very bad movies. I'll write about it here next week but trust Mark on this one. It's a classic and not in the good sense…and no, it's not Skidoo. It's not that awful…but it's close. Check this space in a few days for all the details.

You've all seen this a thousand times but I don't care. I feel like putting up the opening from The Jetsons because I feel like writing about the first time I saw that show.

It was the first night that show was on: Sunday evening, September 23, 1962…which means I would have been ten years of age. A great age to watch the first episode of The Jetsons.

I wonder if kids today get as excited about a new cartoon show as my friends and I did back then. We all loved what had emerged so far from the Hanna-Barbera studio and this was their new series. What's more, it was announced as the first series to be broadcast in color on ABC. My family and I did not then own a color set but Mrs. Hollingsworth down the street did. She was an elderly widow who was cranky about everything except me because I was so adorable. And if you think I'm adorable now, you should have seen me when I was ten. She invited me to come down and watch the new cartoon show on her set.

(Trivial Aside, of the kind that appears often on this website: We all agree, I'm sure, that H-B TV cartoons never had the visual richness and depth of Disney animation or any good Warner Brothers cartoon…or even the theatrical animation that Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had produced for MGM. But something to consider is that they may have worked better on television then. The simple graphics, thick outlines and bold colors came across well on the primitive TV screens of the day. We didn't have 50" High Def Plasmas then, remember. My middle-class family watched its shows on a black-and-white 17" Zenith with reception via a cheap roof antenna. Even when new and tuned properly, it wasn't all that clear. Huckleberry Hound looked pretty good on that set, probably better than Fantasia would have fared.)

The Jetsons went on at 7:00 that first, fateful evening. I was at Mrs. Hollingsworth's, parked in front of the set in her den, by 6:30. Didn't want to miss a second. My mother had cooked a brisket for our dinner and as she sometimes did, she served up a plate of it — with potato pancakes and carrots and the works — and had me take it down to Mrs. Hollingsworth. We did that for her on holidays and special occasions, and this seemed like a special occasion. Mrs. Hollingsworth left me with the TV while she went into her dining room to dine.

She was back in time to watch the show with me, and I'm not sure she enjoyed it but she sure enjoyed how much I enjoyed it. I took an instant liking to The Jetsons. I even liked it more than The Flintstones and I liked The Flintstones a lot. The futuristic show seemed to me to have even more likeable characters doing even neater things. I also liked that I recognized the voice of Daws Butler as "his boy, Elroy." It wasn't a Hanna-Barbera cartoon without Daws.

When the story was over, Mrs. Hollingsworth made a move to turn off the TV before the end credits. I probably said something rude when I stopped her. The credits were almost the best part…in two ways. Something funny always happened under them…and I also wanted to read the names to see how many I recognized from other H-B shows I followed. Dutifully, not wanting to be hurt, Mrs. Hollingsworth waited for the show to be utterly and totally over before she snapped off her RCA. I ran back to my home, half a block away, and asked my father why we didn't have a color TV. I think within two or three years, we did.

By that time, of course, The Jetsons was gone from the ABC prime-time lineup, consigned for all eternity to daytime and syndicated reruns. It only lasted one season because, I suspect, the time slot was too competitive and much of America was set in its Sunday night viewing habits. When I first met Mr. Barbera, one of the things we talked about was how that show (and Top Cat) should have lasted a lot longer than they did.

He agreed. Those were two of his favorite shows and he said that in both cases, there were offers to continue production immediately for syndication but they were deficit offers, meaning the studio would have had to go way in the hole to produce them and hope they could recoup and turn a profit by the shows rerunning for a long time. They had not been in a position to take that gamble at the time, he said, but in hindsight, he wished they had.

Years later, his studio produced another batch of Jetsons episodes for syndication with the original voice cast but (largely) a new creative team. It wasn't the same, of course. The momentum was gone, the spirit was gone…and even Mrs. Hollingsworth wasn't around anymore.

Here's the first three minutes of an episode just as you remember it…

Two articles in Slate you might want to give a look-see…

John Dickerson assesses how George W. Bush answers the repeated question about what he's learned. When we get around to tallying lists of why the country turned against the Iraq War, a biggie will have to be the truly awful job Bush has done of instilling confidence in people…and I don't even mean in Democrats and others predisposed to oppose him. I mean people who voted for him and believed in him and his word.

And Fred Kaplan explains in pretty good detail why the latest "surge" proposal is doomed to failure. The whole thing looks like an attempt to postpone the losing until it can occur on the next president's watch.

Jack Burnley spent his last years in Charlottesville, Virginia…not in Charlottesville, North Carolina as I said. We regret the error. We regret all errors. We especially regret ordering the creamed corn last night at dinner.

It is the sad but frequent duty of this weblog to report the passing of another veteran comic book creator. Jack Burnley died Tuesday at the age of 95. He was only active in comics from 1940 until 1947 but during that time, he drew some of the most memorable covers and co-created the popular super-hero, Starman. His renditions of Superman and Batman were among the first, if not the first, to be done outside the control of those characters' creators and his slick, professional approach did much to shape the image of those classic heroes.

Hardin "Jack" Burnley was born in 1911 and unlike many of the early illustrators of comic books, came to the field as an established professional. During the thirties, he worked as a sports cartoonist and illustrator in newspapers, and in the area of advertising specialties. In 1940, he was hired to do material for the World's Fair comic book that DC Comics was producing that year. The cover he drew (seen above) was the first time Superman and Batman ever appeared together in print. He soon began drawing covers for all the DC books, as well as frequent Superman stories to supplement the material being prepared by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. For a time, he penciled both the Batman and Superman syndicated newspaper strips, and he and writer Gardner Fox also launched their own feature, Starman, who appeared in Adventure Comics.

In 1947, Burnley decided a better living could be made back in newspapers and he returned to that field, working for The Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph and subsequently for The San Francisco News. He retired from that job in 1976 and moved with his wife Dolores, a former dancer, to Charlottesville, North Carolina Virginia [Correction] in 1981. Jack and Dolores were said to be inseparable in life and their passings showed a similar sense of togetherness. Dolores died in 2003 from complications relating to a broken hip and Jack just died in the same retirement home from the same thing.

I'm afraid I have no personal anecdotes or insights into Mr. Burnley as I never met the man. Always admired his work, though. The guy could really draw and it's a shame that comics lost his talents when they did.

You missed it! But don't worry…Stu's Show, featuring Stu Shostak and Yours Truly discussing Hanna-Barbera and the late Joe Barbera, reruns throughout the next week. Consult this schedule to get the time in your zone when you can listen in.

At this very moment, I'm on Shokus Internet Radio discussing Joe Barbera with my pal, Stu Shostak. If you read this in the next hour, click here to come over and listen in on our conversation.

I'm going to take my life into my hands now and attempt to embed a video from last night's Daily Show With Jon Stewart. This is dangerous because the Comedy Central website was designed by someone who apparently thought it would be hilarious to configure the most confusingly-designed website on the 'net and to include all sorts of complex animations and scripts to muck up our browsers. I always have the feeling when I'm there that I could click on the wrong thing and take the entire network completely off the air.

But it's worth the gamble to make sure you've seen Jon Stewart's interview with William Kristol, perhaps the punditry's leading advocate of the following Foreign Policy: Whenever something's wrong somewhere in the world, we should go in, show everyone that we possess awesome power, reduce them to subservience, make them have free elections ("free" in the sense that they have to elect only the leaders we want them to elect) and then allow American business to go in and exploit the situation. This actually may not be a bad strategy for some nations but Kristol and his crew seem to think it's a universal solution for everything and everywhere…and the fact that it keeps failing and creating more problems for us is a minor quibble.

Somehow, he reminds me of a guy I encountered years ago who thought he was a doctor (the A.M.A. did not) and that there was no ailment in the world that couldn't be cured by eating fish. Some who heeded his advice got better but most got worse and some died. And of course, if they got worse or died, the explanation always was that they simply hadn't eaten enough fish.

You almost have to admire Bill Kristol. If I'd been as utterly wrong as he's been — if I had people on my own side saying we'd screwed up big time — I don't think I'd be rushing onto every TV show that would have me to try and shore up my position. I certainly wouldn't go on with Jon Stewart, in front of his studio audience. I mean, even if there is a defense possible of the Bush plan, that's not the place to make your argument. Still, Kristol shows up on programs like this, smiling the same frozen smile, no matter how he gets slapped around. As you'll see, Stewart slaps him pretty hard. Or at least, you'll see it if the video link works…

My friends Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin are currently in New York, appearing in their musical play, The Big Voice: God or Merman? It's at the Actors' Temple Theatre and it's probably quite wonderful. I haven't seen it but it's won a lot of awards and Jim and Steve are brilliant and I even got an e-mail from a reader of this weblog who went to see it strictly because he recognized Jim's name from previous mentions on this weblog. This reader is a self-admitted homophobe and didn't realize until he got there that the play was about two gay men who sing a lot about their relationship. But he stayed for it and enjoyed it, and that's probably the best review Jim and Steve will ever get.

While in Manhattan, they're keeping a running video diary, excerpts of which are posted on Steve's weblog. They're all interesting and worth your attention but I'll direct you especially to this installment, which finds them taking a tour of Al Hirschfeld's studio. Jim gets overcome by emotion, which is not all that unusual. I mean, Jim cries if you tell him the swallows will be a little late getting back to Capistrano. But it's all quite honest and fascinating and I kinda know how he feels. I had the honor of sitting for a caricature by Mr. Hirschfeld back in 1992 and spent a thrilling afternoon with him in that studio. There's something invigorating about just being in a room where so much great creativity has taken place. You also leave with little NINAs all over your clothes and in your hair.

Len Wein is blogging.

Nate Stewart is the latest of about ten people who've written, asking me to comment on a new "experiment" in the Archie Comics line…drawing the adventures of Betty and Veronica in a slightly more realistic style. Nate's message says, "Maybe you mentioned this already (if so, please point me toward the correct entry on your blog), but I am curious as to your thoughts on the change. I find it strangely unsettling."

I'm not sure what basis I should use for this judgment. Is it sacrilegious? No…this is Archie Comics, not The Bible. The characters have been changed a hundred different ways over the years to make them more merchandisable. They've long since passed out of the realm of creations with any sort of unified vision or concept.

Is it a good idea from the standpoint of moving product? Probably. The line of comics has gotten so generic and easy to overlook that almost anything that generates some interest is likely not a bad idea. Moreover, the revamp — and I'm going just off the one cover drawing above right that's been released so far — may partially correct a certain problem that the comics have long have, which is that they've become unstuck in time. They're not set in today, as the wardrobe and haircuts of certain characters establish, as well as the fifties approach to dating and male-female relationships. But to try and make the stories relevant to a current audience, the writers keep dropping in references to current celebrities and trends…which means the stories don't take place in the fifties, either. At least with this "new look," we have an Archie-line comic that looks like it was drawn in the year 2006. Perhaps some day, they'll let one good writer take the scripts into into this century, too.

It's the opening of one of my favorite Hanna-Barbera shows, Top Cat. I'll point out two things for those of you who love to fixate on minute, trivial details. In the beginning, when the limousine turns around, you can briefly see that the insignia on the front is "HB." Then near the end, the folks in the camera department got the cel levels screwed up. The fancy-dressed waiter manages to walk between the lunch box and the table on which it has been placed. This mistake not only got on the air but no one ever fixed it.

Still, I thought this was a great series. Obviously, it drew inspiration from the Phil Silvers Bilko show. Some of us have a theory that the original notion was to build the show around Daws Butler's conman voice, which had otherwise found its way into the mouth of Hokey Wolf. It wasn't exactly an impression of Mr. Silvers but it did bring him to mind. And the way the theory goes, at some point in the development process, they chickened out, just as they had with The Flintstones. Daws did the voices of both Fred and Barney in the original presentation that led to that series…and what he did, at the request of Mssrs. Hanna and Barbera, was essentially the same dead-on Gleason/Carney impressions that he'd done for the Warner Brothers "Honeymousers" cartoons.

In the case of the Modern Stone Age Family, the lawyers seem to have gotten too worried about a lawsuit from Gleason and/or the producers of The Honeymooners. Daws's impressions were good enough to sell the series but when it came time to go on the air with it, they replaced his voices with ones that sounded a bit less like Gleason and Carney. The same thing may have happened with Top Cat. They feared litigation so they dumped the Daws impression and brought in someone who didn't sound quite as close to the original.

They did retain Maurice Gosfield, who'd played Doberman on the Bilko show, to play Top Cat's not-dissimilar cohort, Benny the Ball, but no one else from the Phil Silvers program was in evidence. Not long after, Allan Melvin — who'd played Bilko's sidekick, Henshaw — became a mainstay of the H-B voice pool…and Harvey Lembeck, who played Bilko's other sidekick, was heard in a couple of uncredited roles in other Hanna-Barbera cartoons soon after that. Makes you wonder if they first came to the studio's attention because someone was thinking of casting more voices from the Bilko series.

Meanwhile, I should mention one other possible source of inspiration for Top Cat: Joe Barbera, himself. There was a fair amount of Joe in Top Cat, always charming the ladies and buttering people up when he wanted something out of them. Both did it with such style and grace that it usually succeeded. After I started working with Mr. B. and seeing him in action, I decided that at least some of the writers of Top Cat must have had him in mind as a model, at least as much as they thought of Bilko. And it was only after I formulated this observation that I learned that in the original presentation, the name of the series was Top Cats (plural, referring to the whole gang) and their leader was named "J.B." A surviving storyboard for the pilot episode clearly has the name "J.B." written in throughout and replaced with "T.C."

Make of that what you will. And now it's time to click and watch the clip…

The latest in a series.