Here's an example of why we love Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. It's the bit they did on Wednesday's program about news channels using question marks in their on-screen lower-thirds…

Take a moment and read this weblog post by Kevin Drum. It offers some evidence that conservation laws in California are succeeding in making us less energy-dependent without in any way harming the economy. The case isn't utterly conclusive but it's encouraging.

I'm probably way too interested in trying to "blog" (There's got to be a better verb for this than that) from interesting places. We're coming to you at this moment from the world famous Farmers Market in Los Angeles, a touristy assemblage of stores, eateries and markets that I've only been visiting since I was around three. Back then, the strict "moral" sensibilities of the Gilmore Family (They own the place) were reportedly what prevented it from selling alcohol or Playboy or even being open on Sundays. But time moves inexorably in a liberal direction and you could almost tell when some elder Gilmore passed away and the rest of the family had the chance to increase profits by easing up on another taboo. One year, they started opening on Sundays but only during the pre-Christmas shopping season. The world did not end and before long, it was every Sunday. At some point, beer and wine and men's magazines quietly appeared…and now there are a couple of full bars and the newsstands carry Hustler.

But not everything's changed. Magee's still carves a great corned beef sandwich, Patsy's Pizza still serves great spaghetti and meat sauce and Bob's Doughnuts can still sell you the best apple fritter in town. This last is a reasonable assumption by someone who no longer eats much sugar. But sometimes, you can look at an apple fritter and you know. You just know.

I'm typing this on a portable keyboard connected to my iPAQ Pocket PC. The Wi-Fi hotspots here are quite unforgiving and sporadic. I couldn't connect on the south side of the Market, near where the Starbucks is supposed to have the best access and couldn't connect for long on the west side. Then I moved over here to a table near the Pampas Grill, fiddled with my settings and — Voila! — I'm in!

The Pampas Grill is a Brazilian churrasco. Skewers of garlicky chicken legs and huge slabs of rare beef rotate over a fire and whisper to you as you walk past. Between paragraphs here, I'm chewing on a thin slice of Alcatra, which is a cut of beef that is somehow different from Picanha, another cut from the same cow. It all tastes the same to me…all great. In an odd way, writing this helps my digestion. Since my surgery, I'm supposed to take longer between bites so the rhythm of writing while I dine agrees with me. It's like blog / eat / blog / eat / blog…

Getting back to how the Market has changed and not changed in half a century: All around are stalls that sell lovely things to eat…but this is not exactly a food court. For one thing, there are no real chains here…no Sbarro's, no Panda Express, no Wendy's, etc. They're almost all one-of-a-kind operations, usually of the mom-and-pop variety. Some have been here as long as I've been around and they're all pretty good. Oh, every now and then, one of the stalls takes a serious nosedive in quality, usually as the result of new management. Because Farmers Market gets so much tourist trade, the lousy eateries have sometimes been able to hang in there and stay in business longer than they deserve. The locals learn to steer clear of certain businesses but the tourists don't know any better.

Eventually though, a rep for serving lousy food will catch up with the bad places and they'll go away, always to be replaced by something wonderful. For years, there was a terrible Japanese stand called Tokyo House where they served a dish I'd swear was Teriyaki Styrofoam. The Pampas Grill is now where Tokyo House used to be. Over on the west side of the market, there was a little seafood broiler where no one ate more than once. Now residing in that retail space is The Gumbo Pot. I don't know from Cajun food but a lot of prominent food mavens say it serves the best creole jambalaya beignets (or whatever that stuff is) in town.

Okay, my lunch is gone and there are people with full trays hovering about, hoping I am soon to vacate this table. It's time I did. Stay tuned for more Farmers Market Blogging the next time I have the opportunity to get over here. Might be a week or so with my schedule.

A great animator and an old friend of mine, Berny Wolf, has just passed away at the age of 95. Berny had a long career in cartoons that included stints with Paramount, Max Fleischer, Ub Iwerks, Disney, Tex Avery and Hanna-Barbera. Historian Mark Kausler lays out the broad strokes of Berny's animating years in this piece over at Cartoon Brew and I don't think it's even close to complete. I seem to recall Berny telling me, for instance, that he worked for Van Beuren and (briefly) for Paul Terry. It would probably take less time to list the great cartoon studios where Berny never worked.

His credits are, of course, amazing. Just having animated on Pinocchio, Fantasia and Dumbo puts you up there in a rarefied strata of cartoon history. But you'll notice Mark's quick bio jumps from the fifties to the eighties and I can fill in a few of the missing years there. For instance, Bern worked closely with Walt Disney designing attractions for Disneyland, most notably some of the first walkaround character costumes. Through a series of companies he set up, Berny made those and produced industrial cartoons and educational materials for a wide array of clients.

In the seventies, his firm was called Animedia and it was located over on Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake, doing art services — some, animation-related, some not. Among many other projects, he produced hundreds of employee training films for the Toyota company and also handled all the graphics and design work for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. When I edited and wrote Tarzan comic books back then, I did so through Berny's company. I also worked with him on some cartoon mascots for the Olympics, some educational materials involving the Woodsy Owl character, and a couple of animated commercials. He couldn't find anyone else to storyboard one of the commercials before the deadline so, though admittedly rusty, he sat down and drew it himself. It showed he still had it. Even though he'd been away from the drawing board for years, he was still a terrific cartoonist.

He proved it again a decade later when he folded Animedia and went back to animation where (he said) he was happier in every way except financial. Along with the shows Kausler mentions, Berny produced a series for Hanna-Barbera called The Paw-Paws. In the nineties, when he himself was in his eighties, he did some directing work on Garfield and Friends and other shows for Film Roman.

We had a brief e-mail correspondence a few years back and then he suddenly stopped writing. Soon after, his website disappeared and I heard no more from him. The last message he wrote me said he was "…working on some drawings and limited-edition cels." I hope he got some of them done for he really was a great artist. He told me more than once that he'd always regretted he couldn't make the same kind of living as a cartoonist that he made when he produced those training films for Toyota.

Here's a classic cartoon Berny worked on in 1933, when he was a mere lad of 22. In fact, you'll even see his name in the opening credits. It's "The Old Man of the Mountain," one of the Betty Boop cartoons made at the Max Fleischer Studios that utilized the skills of the great Cab Calloway. As you watch it, please think of Berny Wolf…a helluva talent and a true gentleman.

I mentioned someplace here — I forget where — that my taste for sugar and all things sweet has declined since my big weight loss. (And by the way, for those of you who have money riding on this: I am within ounces — ounces! — of being 100 pounds below my highest-ever weight.) Recently, I told you that I'd tried a few of my favorite cookies and found the sensation pleasing but nowhere near as wonderful as it once was.

This prompted several of you to write and ask, "So what is your favorite kind of cookie, Mark?" Well, one of you asked but I decided to seize the opportunity to, at long last, discuss something substantive on this weblog. Above is a photo I just took of an example of my favorite cookie. I have been eating these — not continually, despite what my need for Gastric Bypass Surgery might indicate — since I was about four years old. And you know something? I have no idea what they're called. I've never known.

They're sold in practically every delicatessen in the galaxy. The above specimen — which met its happy demise only seconds after the above photo was taken — was purchased at Canter's Delicatessen on Fairfax and maybe even baked there. For more than fifty years — half a freaking century — I've been buying these all over, mainly by pointing into a display case and saying, "The ones with the colored balls on top." There must be a better name for them than that…and yes, I've tried asking the employees of the various delicatessens. No one has ever given me a genuine answer. They usually say something like, "Oh, those are the ones with the colored balls on them."

Big help, lady. Tell me something I don't already know.

Once, in a deli that didn't look like it did any baking, I asked the woman who waited on me (who turned out to be the owner) if they made them on the premises. She said no. I said, "Great. Now, when you order them from your supplier, what is it you order? What is the name you give them that results in them delivering those cookies to you?" I was excited because I thought I was on the verge of a breakthrough…a revelation for the ages…the best-kept secret of one or more centuries…

She said, "I don't know…I ask them to send more of those cookies with the colored balls on top."

I'm not even sure what the colored balls are called. They aren't "jimmies." Those are long, not round. Some people seem to call the colored balls "nonpareils" or, in this case, "rainbow nonpareils." However, "nonpareil" is also the name of a cookie that is usually chocolate with white balls all over it so I'm guessing that isn't a popular name for the colored balls themselves. I've seen the colored balls sold in the cake decorating section of the market as "rainbow sprinkles" or "confetti" or even just "cake decorations," the last of these suggesting that even the people making them didn't know what to call them. But I've also seen all those terms applied to pastry adornments of other shapes and sizes.

There must be a word that denotes just the round variety. And there must be a name that you could use if you wanted to call a baker and tell him to whip up a batch of cookies like the one in the picture above. Someone…please…tell me what it is and don't toy with me. Not about this. If you write me that it's "the cookies with the colored balls on top," so help me, I'm going to add you to my Spam list and bounce all your e-mails from now on.

Today, we discuss what I think is one of the most gloriously illogical scenes ever in movie history. It's from the 1931 Marx Brothers movie, Monkey Business. Watch it and then let's unpack what happens in it…

Let us review. The boys are stowaways on an ocean liner. They have no passports so they can't get off the ship. Zeppo gets hold of the passport of the great French entertainer Maurice Chevalier and somehow knows that the bearer of it can prove it's his by singing one of Chevalier's songs. Well, that's an obvious assumption now, isn't it? I mean, how else would the customs guys verify that the holder of a passport was indeed that person? They'd expect him to perform his big hit tune, right? So to get off the boat, all four Marxes are going to have to pretend to be someone they're not.

This is not quite ridiculous enough so let's make it worse: Since they have only the one passport, they'll all pretend to be the same person. Not only that but they're all going to pretend to be a well-known celebrity that none of them resembles in any way.

The Italian guy's going to tell them he's Maurice Chevalier. And after that doesn't work, the rude guy with the mustache and no French accent whatsoever is going to tell them he's Maurice Chevalier. Even the guy who doesn't talk is going to claim to be Maurice Chevalier…and he's really got a surefire plan. First, he'll bolster his chances of getting through by throwing around all the papers on the Customs Agents' table like a maniac. That will surely make the officials more likely to believe he's Maurice Chevalier. Then he'll mime to a record, assuming they won't notice the phonograph under his coat, nor wonder about the sudden appearance of musical accompaniment from nowhere. And then to really convince them, he'll mess up all their papers again and rubber stamp the customs agent's bald head. If that doesn't prove he's Maurice Chevalier, nothing will.

(And that's really the point of the whole scene: Nothing will. Harpo's chances of getting through aren't all that much worse than what Zeppo tried, which was to actually impersonate Maurice Chevalier.)

It's the perfect summary of what was wonderful about the Marxes. After spending the first half of the movie doing everything possible to avoid the security personnel on the liner, not one of the four brothers pauses to wonder if it's a good idea to go up to the ship's police and all claim to be someone that none of them could possibly be. Even after the plan has completely failed three times, Harpo doesn't hesitate to try it…and I think it yields one of the most beautiful, wonderful scenes anyone ever put into a movie. Because you can go through life doing things the logical way or you can do them the illogical way. Should you decide to do something the illogical way, the way that is almost certain not to work, you might as well make it all as illogical as humanly possible. If that isn't the best advice in the world then my name isn't Maurice Chevalier.

Jonathan Alter offers an alternative history to 9/11.

I received a number of e-mails this morn from serial buffs who take me to task for suggesting that thirty chapters of Superman serial is anything less than thirty glorious viewing experiences…assuming one has the good sense to watch but one per day. Okay, fine, whatever. They're right that this material wasn't meant to be watched all at once. That's one of the problems of DVD sets.

I also wouldn't suggest watching the three films on the new Laurel and Hardy set back-to-back. As noted here, Stan and Ollie made six films for Twentieth-Century Fox in the forties after leaving their home at the Hal Roach Studios. Some are better than others and all have moments that remind you how brilliant they could be…but when I think of their great movies, none of these come to mind.

A-Haunting We Will Go, despite its title, contains no ghosts or haunting. It has a silly gangster plot and a showy guest role by the famous magician, Dante. There's nothing really wrong with it except that there's nothing really right with it. The Dancing Masters doesn't make a lot of sense and Stan was getting a little old to be parading around in a ballerina costume. The Bullfighters is, I think, the worst movie they ever made. It's actually the only Laurel and Hardy movie in which they're the villains and it has a contrived plot and an ugly, inane end gag. In it, Stan is mistaken for a world famous matador and forced to parade about in stock footage, wearing a matador suit.

Laurel and Hardy fans may argue over my ranking of best-to-worst but few would insist this is the kind of work that made Stan and Ollie perhaps the most beloved screen comedians of all time. Nevertheless, I have ordered this new DVD. Why? Because even weak Laurel and Hardy is better than no Laurel and Hardy. In addition, the DVD set also has commentary tracks by Randy Skretvedt and Scott MacGillivray, two learned scholars of The Boys, plus there are bonus featurettes and trailers and other goodies. If you'd like to order one, here's a link to get it from Amazon. And while you're clicking that mouse of yours, here's a link to get the earlier set with the other three Fox films.

Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy also made two very weak films for M.G.M. in the forties — Air Raid Wardens and Nothing But Trouble. These are due out in November on a low-priced DVD you can order here. Again, weak Laurel and Hardy is better than no Laurel and Hardy…but these movies make it a wee bit harder to believe that statement.

The best Laurel and Hardy work is only slowly making it to DVD with releases like this one that came out last April. More have been rumored but nothing's been announced yet. What we're really waiting for is something deluxe and complete like the set that came out in 2004 in Great Britain, which is unfortunately unplayable on most U.S. DVD machines. Here's a link to the Amazon UK page where you can see what they got over there. It sent American Laurel and Hardy fans into spasms of Brit envy…and out to buy region-free DVD players.

This article in The New Republic says that our military has been mismanaged, both in terms of manpower and equipment, to the point where it's unable to do its job properly. When neo-cons say that we need to send more troops into Iraq or send troops into some other sinkhole of a country, someone oughta ask them just which "more troops" they have in mind.

I have to get this post up before I go to bed. Otherwise, I'll get up in the morning and find seven thousand messages in my inbox saying what ten or eleven have so far: "Hey, Evanier! Don't you know that Warner Home Video is bringing out a DVD of the two Kirk Alyn Superman serials on November 28?"

No, I didn't know…and when I searched Amazon earlier to see if it was out on DVD, I somehow missed the relevant page. Here's a link to it in case you'd like to get in an advance order. Before you click, just remember: Between the two serials, you'll be getting thirty chapters that run a total of 518 minutes. There's some wonderful material in there, especially in the interplay 'twixt Alyn and Noel "Lois Lane" Neill…but it's 518 minutes. That's more than eight and a half hours of Superman serial.

If I were Warner Home Video, I'd make it like one of those restaurant deals where they serve you a twelve pound hamburger and it's free if you can eat the whole thing in one sitting.

Jerry Beck, co-Brewmaster of Cartoon Brew, informs me that Turner Classic Movies will be running the Kirk Alyn Superman serial in a few weeks. It's fifteen chapters long and they'll be running five on Saturday, October 28, five more on the following Saturday and the last five on the Saturday after that. I'll try and remember to remind you when we get closer to the date.

Matthew Yglesias discusses the torture that is now being committed on our behalf. He makes an interesting point. This administration has blamed a number of wrong moves on faulty intelligence. A lot of that faulty intelligence was obtained by torture.

Here's the history on this one: The Marx Brothers made their Broadway debut in a 1924 revue called I'll Say She Is. The show was never filmed or recorded and much about it is lost. In fact, I'm not even sure anyone alive can explain the title. (In interviews, even when he was lucid, Groucho couldn't.) One of the big comedy scenes was the opener, which involved the four brothers going to a talent agent to audition. The sketch had rhymed dialogue and in it, each of them did an impression of Joe Frisco, a famous stuttering comedian of the day who was also known for his distinctive style of dancing. (The entire script for I'll Say She Is has been pieced together from various sources and is available on this website.)

Got all that? Good. Now, flash forward to 1931 when the Brothers Marx were making movies for Paramount and the studio was staging a big publicity campaign to promote its wares. This involved producing a documentary called The House That Shadows Built, detailing the (then) brief history of the studio and showing clips from upcoming films. It was considered desirable to include a preview of the next Marx movie, Monkey Business. Problem: Filming had not yet commenced on Monkey Business so there was no clip. Solution: Make one.

Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo went onto a Paramount soundstage one day and filmed a scene that could be passed off as an excerpt from their upcoming feature. It was the talent agent sketch from I'll Say She Is with a couple of modifications. One was that since Joe Frisco was not a major Paramount star and Maurice Chevalier was, the impressions were changed from Frisco to Frenchman. In doing this, they created the only recorded remnant, such as it is, from I'll Say She Is. Take a look…

The filmed bit was included in the infomercial, then discarded. Neither the footage nor the routine was used in Monkey Business, although — perhaps to justify the bogus preview scene — there was a point in the storyline where the brothers all did Chevalier impressions in order to get past a customs agent. We'll discuss that scene here tomorrow.

Washington Monthly, which is a pretty Liberal magazine, is featuring articles by several prominent Conservatives in its new issue. They're in there, of course, because they think George W. Bush is a disaster for their political label and/or America and are willing to say so. It's one thing for Democrats and known Liberals to criticize this administration. The swing votes in this country can dismiss them as Democrats and known Liberals. What's amazing is that you could now put together a pretty damning critique of Bush-Cheney just by quoting established Conservative pundits and elected Republicans.

Tonight on Mr. Leno's show, Diane Lane was promoting her new movie, Hollywoodland, and she said something about George Reeves being the first Superman. She wasn't intending to slight the other gents who played the character before Reeves but she did get me to thinking about the late Kirk Alyn.

Kirk was an actor who had a fairly unspectacular career, primarily in the forties and primarily in serials. He played Superman in the 1948 serial of that character and again in a 1950 sequel. In 1952, he portrayed another comic book hero, Blackhawk, in one of the last serials made…and when the serials went away, so did the jobs for Kirk Alyn. Thereafter, it was mostly bit parts and not a lot of them. At some point, he simply gave up and moved to Arizona.

But that was not the end of Mr. Alyn's celebrity. In a way, he was ahead of his time.

These days, when you go to a comic convention, you're as likely to see famous TV and movie actors as you are to see folks who write and draw comics. There's a thriving autographed photo industry out there. A lot of celebs who aren't working at the moment — and even some who are — are now descending on cons to sell eight-by-ten glossies and — in some cases — autobiographies, many of them self-published. I won't cite any names but check out the guest lists for upcoming fan gatherings. You might see some pretty big stars there…and Kirk Alyn sort of pioneered the practice.

He was the first actor I can recall ever turning up at a comic book convention. At almost every West Coast con for years, you could find him sitting behind a table, selling autographed pix and his self-published autobiography, A Job for Superman. Easily approachable, he would talk to anyone for hours, answering what I gathered were around ten questions, over and over, usually including the painful one: "Why did George Reeves do the TV show instead of you?" Usually immaculate in suit and tie, he looked like a movie star, even if it had been a long time since he'd been one.

I don't recall when he first appeared on the convention circuit…around '73 or so, I'd guess. But at the time, almost no one in the fan community had seen him on film. He was the first film Superman, we all knew, but his two serials were long unseen and unavailable. Around '78 or so — I'm really guessing at these years — someone came up with a 16mm print of an edited version of the first Superman serial. I remember a wonderful evening at a small, local con where they screened it and I played emcee, interrogating Kirk before and after, and even during reel changes.

He had a wonderful twinkle in his eyes that evening. It was just about the first time in close to a quarter of a century that an audience had seen him starring in something, and it was an audience of folks who'd become his friends. The film was long and filled with laughingly-awful dialogue, amateurish supporting actors and the cheapest-possible sets and special effects…but Kirk was good in it and at the end, he received a much-deserved standing ovation — as much for sharing his history with us as for his performance. That evening and the subsequent availability of his Superman films completed his super-stardom in our circle. The next day, he told me that con-goers were treating him with more respect. No one had been disrespectful before but now, they'd seen him actually be Superman and it made a difference.

His two Superman serials — Superman and Atom Man Vs. Superman — came out on VHS some time ago to scant notice, which is not surprising. Each is over four hours long and like most serials, there's a lot of repetition and recapping and padding. You've got to really love that kind of material to make it all the way through. But like everything else that's ever been on film, it will someday be available on DVD and when it is, you might want to take a peek. I don't know that you'll enjoy it but I like the idea of people remembering who Kirk Alyn was. (He passed away in 1999 at the age of 89.)

'Til then, there's another way to remember Kirk. If you go to a comic convention and see some past or present-day actor selling photos of himself, think about Kirk Alyn for a second or two. He invented that.