I just got the call that Lennie Weinrib, one of the great character actors and cartoon voices (he was H.R. Pufnstuf, among many others) died this morning at his home in Chile. I'll write a longer message later today. Very sad news for those of us who knew him and loved his work.

A few years ago, the Loews Theater chain had the Sesame Street division of the Muppet operation prepare a short film to be shown in theaters. The idea, I guess, was to educate moviegoers — the young ones, especially — how to behave in a movie theater. There was also a sequel which may just be tomorrow's link…but for now, here's the first one…

Here's Dana Milbank on how ridiculous the proposed amendment about flag-burning is.

You know, everyone says this is an attempt by Republicans to play to their "base" and of some Democrats to try to woo that same group. I think if I were part of that constituency, I'd be insulted by my leaders pandering to me over something so far down on my list of what's important.

On this matter of newspapers printing information about secret government programs, the best article I've read — or at least, the one I most agree with — is this piece by Glenn Greenwald. As usual, government officials are screaming "it's anti-American" whenever the press refuses to spin the news their way.

I would also call your attention to an article by Matt Yglesias. It basically says that no matter how much you think the "Global War on Terror" is costing us in terms of dollars, your estimate is way low.

Today, we have a ton of links for you but you'll have to hurry. Over on Google Video, a number of the clips that ordinarily cost a buck or two per download are free "today only." You can, for example, watch eight half-hours of Rocky and Bullwinkle. You can enjoy the adventures of Roger Ramjet, Felix the Cat or The Mighty Hercules.

The non-animated section includes a couple hundred episodes of The Charlie Rose Show. You might enjoy the interview with Stephen Sondheim or the chat with Dick Cavett or the conversation with Jay Leno or the hour with Donald Rumsfeld. In fact, if you scroll through the list of Charlie Rose episodes, you're bound to find a couple you'd like to watch.

I don't know how they're defining "today" so I don't know how long you'll be able to access all this stuff for free. I do know that you probably won't be able to watch it all today but some of you may figure out that you can use KeepVid to download the clips for later viewing. Copy the URL of the clip you crave into the appropriate window and you'll be able to save it to your harddisk as an FLV file. (You'll need an FLV player but there are plenty of free ones around…like this one, for instance.)

(Quick tip: If it doesn't work, go to the URL you pasted in and delete whatever search terms may have been appended to the web address. They usually start with an ampersand. Delete the ampersand and everything to the right of it and see if that works. And if it doesn't, just remember that Google Video has done free days before and may well do them again.)

In the meantime, here's yet another McDonald's commercial. This one is only interesting because it features the great comedy actor Frank Nelson. I was fortunate to work with Mr. Nelson a year or two before he left us and I wrote that story up and posted it here. He's the guy in the conductor outfit in this spot…

Gerard Jones on the new Superman movie.

Lyle Stuart, often described as a "renegade" or "maverick" in the world of book publishing, died on Saturday at the age of 83. As delineated in the New York Times obit, Stuart was a colorful figure in his trade, putting out books that no other publisher would touch and becoming embroiled in controversies and fights. It was said that he actually enjoyed being involved in lawsuits and feuds, and that he would sometimes do things to deliberately fan the flames of a battle.

Unmentioned in that obit is the role he played in comic book history. Stuart was a close friend and advisor to William M. Gaines, publisher of EC Comics and MAD, and he served for a time as EC's business manager. The two men met when Stuart was publishing the tabloid mentioned in the Times piece, a direct assault on the then-powerful New York columnist, Walter Winchell. MAD had only been around for a few months and was just beginning to develop a following. When Stuart ordered some back issues, Gaines recognized the name on the order form and sent them with a note that said how much he admired Stuart's courage in taking on the megalomaniac Winchell.

They soon became friends and then Gaines engaged Stuart to help him on a part-time basis in running the company. This was a mixed blessing because Winchell, who'd been attacking Stuart in his column, then began hammering his foe's connection to a publisher of "filth" (i.e., EC Comics) and predicting that the lot of them would wind up behind bars…and indeed, Stuart did. One day, apparently goaded by Winchell, New York police raided Gaines's office, charging that the comic books he published were indecent. Stuart was aware that the fragile Bill Gaines could not handle going to jail so he told the publisher to hide, then got the police to arrest him, instead. The case was eventually thrown out of court but the incident cemented a lifelong friendship between Gaines and Stuart.

According to some accounts, whenever Gaines had a problem in his life, the first thing he would do was to call Lyle. For example, when MAD's original editor Harvey Kurtzman demanded control of the company, it was Stuart who advised Gaines to get rid of him. Earlier, it was Stuart who'd advised Gaines to be a voluntary witness in front of a Senate subcommittee investigating alleged links between juvenile delinquency and the kind of horror and crime comics that Gaines published. The former advice was probably good, the latter was disastrous.

Among the many books Stuart published was the 1972 The Mad World of William M. Gaines by Frank Jacobs, an official biography. It was perhaps the least controversial book to ever come out of Lyle Stuart Publishing but it was reportedly one of Stuart's favorites — partly because of his friendship with the subject and partly because he was mentioned often in it.

Two minutes of Laurel and Hardy to start your week off right. The deep bass voice you'll hear in this one belonged to actor Chill Wills, who was probably best known for dubbing in the sound of Francis the Talking Mule.

No, I'm not back in the hospital. I'm visiting somebody who is…and in a hospital so fancy that every room has a high-speed Internet connection and the meals are prepared by a Wolfgang Puck kitchen. That is not a joke. It's a private hospital and one that, like the most exclusive of restaurants, you can't get into unless you know somebody…or unless an ambulance brings you here because it's the closest emergency room when you're in trouble. Which is how the person I'm visiting wound up here…in a room so nice, it almost makes you want to be sick. Notice the "almost."

I've stayed in Courtyards by Marriott that weren't as plush as this place. I have some time to kill while tests are being conducted so I couldn't resist trying to blog from the in-room Internet hook-up. (It's a clever little device — an LCD screen and keyboard on a swivel arm so it can be moved into position for someone in the bed or swung over to a nearby chair for a visitor. The screen toggles back and forth between the World Wide Web and a full line-up of cable TV stations, plus you can listen to XM satellite radio, plus it's also a telephone. Wish I had one of these for my house…though I'm not sure the web is ready for me blogging from bed.)

And, oh yeah — they seem to have doctors and nurses who know what they're doing and who aren't overburdened with too many patients. I guess that's impressive, too.

What happened to all those people on the TV series, M*A*S*H? What did they all do after the war? Well apparently, most of them wound up selling computers for IBM.

We may (note the emphasis on the word "may") be looking at an opportunity to end the Iraq War sooner rather than later, and in a way that will enable American prestige to go relatively unsullied in the process. Read this blog post by Kevin Drum.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a fascinating movie. I'm not sure if it's a good fascinating movie or a bad fascinating movie or even if the distinction matters. In some ways, it's so bad it's good and in others, so good it's bad. I do know it's about one-tenth as much fun to watch when you aren't in a hip audience with a great sense of humor…so in a way, the new DVD is disappointing. It doesn't come packaged with a hip audience with a great sense of humor.

The film was, of course, made by the grand lecher, Russ Meyer, with a script by Roger Ebert, who could match him leer for leer. It started out to be a sequel to the original Valley of the Dolls (which also just came out on in a new DVD deluxe edition) and then turned into an unrelated parody, not just of Valley of the Dolls but of everything else that occurred to Meyer and Ebert at the time. Some of the parody is so expertly done that you aren't certain all the actors even knew they were in a spoof, and there have been filmgoers who've watched the entire movie without realizing it.

First time I saw BVD, as everyone calls it, it was on a double feature with Valley of the Dolls at the old Criterion Theater in Santa Monica. It was a matinee and the place was filled with little old ladies and others who didn't "get it." It was one of my strangest moviegoing experiences because I was the only one laughing and others were turning around, telling me to shhh. Like I was ruining this fine dramatic film for the rest of them.

I knew it was funny but I didn't know how funny until I attended a late screening at the NuArt one evening. The place was packed with people who "got it" and Russ was there with a couple of starlets and — to use the kind of descriptive term I usually hate — the NuArt rocked that night. We all had the best time, savoring every little oddment, howling at every cliché and every line of deliberately unnatural dialogue. It was like reading a good Kurtzman MAD comic for the second or third time, noticing things you hadn't noticed the first time through. When folks laughed in the NuArt, others would suddenly get a joke they hadn't realized was there.

I've seen it a few other times with good audiences, including a time up at U.C.L.A. maybe a dozen years ago when they brought in Meyer, Ebert and all the major cast members who were willing to show their faces. There was a miserable splice-filled print and that almost added to the fun. The great cartoonist Carol Lay and I were seated behind star Dolly Read and her husband, Dick Martin, who were in hysterics. Their laughter bolstered ours — you know how that works — and for a time there, I thought the Martins, Carol and I were going to have to take turns administering C.P.R. to each other. After nights like that, watching the film alone, as I just did on DVD, is just disappointing.

I purchased the DVD mainly for the special features, which include "making of…" documentaries and two commentary tracks — one by Ebert, one by a bevy of cast members. I thought both tracks were disappointing. Ebert's especially was dry and only occasionally informative. You can learn a lot more about the making of the movie by reading this article that he has up on his website. If you'd like to order a copy of the DVD, you can do so here…but I warn you: This is only a great movie when you see it with a big audience. Viewed alone or with a small group, it can be rough going.

Although I worked a few times for Aaron Spelling — and almost worked for him a few more times — I didn't know him well enough to write anything of real substance about the man. In our brief encounters, he seemed to me like a down-to-earth guy who just happened to have more money than everyone else in his zip code, combined. Like many other TV producers with mega-hits, he was well aware that this was a temporary state; that the day would come sooner or later when no one at the networks would take his calls, so he had to enjoy (and milk) the success while he had it.

It has always struck me that most men in his position — note the word "most" in there — are a little baffled as to why these three of their projects made them zillions whereas these eight over here crashed and burned in spectacular failure. But of course to keep the transitory success alive as long as possible, they don't often admit their puzzlements out loud, at least to potential customers. The one time I had any sort of extended conversation with Mr. Spelling, he had just had a TV-Movie air to disastrous ratings and near-libelous reviews. I don't recall which one it was but I do remember him looking at some Nielsens, shaking his head and muttering, "Gee, I thought that one would work." Fortunately for Spelling, enough of them did work that he made out just fine.

Before we get to today's fun, two of the commercials I linked to in the last few days have been "corrected" by their uploader. He has thoughtfully fixed the sync problems in them and I've replaced my links with the new versions. Click here to go back and see the fixed version of the Speedy Alka-Seltzer spot with Dick Beals and click here to see a more in-sync version of the Post Raisin Bran commercial. (I don't mean 'N Sync is performing it…but isn't that kind of where those guys are headed?)

For today, we have another McDonald's commercial. It's some time in the early eighties and the chain needs an energetic guy who can sing and dance to appear in commercials for their newest concoction, the McDLT — a major scientific breakthrough in hamburger creation. It's a burger with lettuce and tomato on it but they've invented a brilliant way to keep the burger warm and the lettuce and tomato cool: It's a package that keeps them separate until you buy the thing and put the lettuce and tomato onto the hamburger. Must have taken them years to think of that.

Anyway, they need a guy for their commercials so they scout about and come up with a kid named Jason Alexander…

So who are the actors in the McDonald's commercial I posted last night? I asked if the manager was Vern Rowe and several of you (like Eric Tublin and John Nelson) say it's John Wheeler. Marty McKee and Doug Puthoff (and others) seem pretty sure Johnny Haymer — who appeared a few times on M*A*S*H, among other shows — is the guy who sings, "Put a shine on the floor." I've received mixed opinions as to whether the black guy is John Amos. (Tublin thinks it is, Jon Delfin thinks it isn't. I don't think so…but then it still doesn't look like Barney Martin in that raisin bran commercial to me.)

And is that my old pal Bob Ridgely in there, as many people are suggesting? I think so, now that I look at it. He's the guy singing about how clean his burger machine is, and that threw me off. The Ridgely I knew would never sing about cleanliness. Were he alive today, he would have been in The Aristocrats and he would have grossed out everyone in the picture, Bob Saget included.

A couple of folks have asked if that's Anson Williams in there, too. I debated mentioning that because Anson played an employee in at least a couple of McDonald's commercials from this era but I'm not sure he's in this one. I've just sent him an e-mail to ask. Here at news from me, we get to the bottom of the important questions. Never mind the War in Iraq or Global Warming. We want to identify the performers in old commercials.