For reasons I'll explain in the next post, I'm a day behind the comic blogosphere in noting the passing of Alex Toth, who died yesterday morning. Alex was easily one of the most admired artists to ever work in comics and animation, envied by his peers for his ability to capture action and human gesture like no one else. Like a great photographer who can sense the split-second to hit the shutter, Alex had a knack for drawing exactly the right second in any sequence of events. His people moved and acted like people and when he drew a car or airplane, you could sense its speed right on the page.

That he designed many popular Saturday morning shows was the least of it. He invented much of the shorthand necessary to do adventure cartoons for television. Other animation artists hoarded and traded his model sheets and swiped off them. You could see Toth designs, slightly changed, on shows he never worked on. You could see other artists strain for the Toth simplicity.

Simplicity was a constant goal of Toth's. He was known to draw an entire comic book page — I saw him do this — decide it was too cluttered and then rip it to shreds and do it over with fewer lines. There was nothing wrong with the first version other than that Alex thought he could do it better. He usually could.

To be around Alex was to be with the ultimate fan. No one loved great comics like Alex. He collected them, studied them, wrote long essays (usually crammed onto postcards) to friends about them. We spent some long evenings on the phone or in his living room talking about the handiwork of Roy Crane or Frank Robbins. It was always fascinating to hear a Toth analysis because he understood other artists from the inside. I'm not sure he ever understood what he did so well but he could talk for hours about what Milton Caniff did.

He leaves behind a legacy of fine work but you always got the feeling with Alex there could have been more. He worked too often for companies that never seemed to know what to do with him and he got into the habit of quitting when he was wronged…and sometimes even when he wasn't. Tonight, I want to think about how much excellence came off his drawing table…but it's hard to not consider how much more he had to give us, to teach us and to leave us. He really was that good.

To my friends who know what I've been up to this weekend: I'm home and things went well. I'll be posting about the experience later.

When I get a moment, I'll also be posting some thoughts about a great artist named Alex Toth who passed away Saturday morning at the age of 78.

For the first time in over a year, I'm posting a picture of a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. This, as anyone with an I.Q. higher than that of a cocker spaniel can tell you, is an ancient Internet tradition that few besides me carry on. The pic means that the proprietor of the website is too busy to post much of anything for a little while. In this case, it may be a few days and I may not be able to answer a lot of e-mail, either. If you look hard, somewhere on the Internet you may be able to find something else worth reading in my absence.

For some reason, people with no conceivable financial stake in the answers are fascinated with the box office grosses of new motion pictures. I was once in a sports bar near the airport in Hartford, Connecticut — don't ask why I was there; I don't even drink — and one of the lady bartenders asked me what I did for a living. When I said I was a TV writer, she said, "So, how do you think the new Bruce Willis pic will do this weekend?" Though I said I had no idea and that I didn't even know there was a new Bruce Willis movie opening, she persisted in discussing it with an interest that probably exceeded Bruce's.

So in case she's reading this: Here's an article about how the early grosses are tallied for press releases. The process is sloppy but most people accept it as accurate. It's kind of like the way we choose our presidents.

Today, we have an unembedded video clip and an embedded one. First, the unembedded clip. Someone posted it to YouTube with this description…

In 1969, the U.S. Senate had a hearing on funding the newly developed Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The proposed endowment was $20 million but President Nixon wanted it cut in half because of the spending going on in the Vietnam War. This is an video clip of the exchange between Mr. Rogers and Senator Pastore, head of the hearing. Senator Pastore starts out very abrasive and by the time Mr. Rogers is done talking, Senator Pastore's inner child has heard Mr. Rogers and agreed with him. Enjoy.

I can attest that Fred Rogers had that effect on people I met him once (described here) and he had a way of just draining all hostility and irate feelings from people around him. Here's the clip, which runs a little under seven minutes and is well worth the time.

Which brings us to our embedded clip. Okay, here's the premise: Let's take the movie The Ten Commandments and make up a movie trailer as if we're trying to market it as a teen comedy. Got it? Go…

We are proud to make the following announcement…

Schwartz, Kurtzman to Receive Second Bill Finger Award

Alvin Schwartz and Harvey Kurtzman have been selected to receive the 2006 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The choice was made unanimously by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer and historian Mark Evanier.

The Bill Finger Award was instituted last year under the supervision of comic book legend Jerry Robinson. The first Finger Awards were presented to veteran writer Arnold Drake, who accepted in person at the 2005 Comic-Con International in San Diego, and to Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman; Siegel's widow Joanne accepted for her late husband.

"There are many fine writers deserving of wider recognition," Evanier notes. "But this year's judges zeroed in on two men whose bodies of work deserve a special salute, just as Bill Finger and his contribution deserve wider recognition."

Alvin Schwartz authored his first comic book script (for Fairy Tale Parade) in 1939 and just three years later began writing Batman, an assignment on which he continued until 1958. In 1944 he also began a long association with Superman as the writer of both the Man of Steel's newspaper strip and many of his comic book appearances. Among Schwartz's many enduring contributions to the Superman mythology, he wrote the first tale of Bizarro, a character who became a part of popular culture, quite apart from comics. Schwartz also worked on Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and many more DC properties before departing the field of comics in 1958. He was since written novels, an autobiography. and motion pictures.

Harvey Kurtzman also began in comics in 1939 and soon became known for his surreal and brilliant work as both writer and artist of humorous fillers and short stories. It was after he joined EC Comics in 1949 that he especially distinguished himself with both humor work, as the editor-creator of MAD and author of its classic early issues, and with war comics as the editor/writer of Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. MAD soon became not only the best-selling American humor periodical of all time but the keystone of an entire style of humor for several generations, while the war titles have been hailed by many as among the best depictions of war and historical material in comics. Kurtzman later worked on other humor magazines, did a long stint on "Little Annie Fanny" for Playboy, and authored several books before his death in 1993.

The Bill Finger Award remembers William Finger (1914-1974), who was the first and, some say, most important writer of Batman. Many have called him the "unsung hero" of the character and have hailed his work not only on that character but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics.

In addition to Evanier, this year's blue-ribbon selection committee included award-winning cartoonist Jerry Robinson, writer/historian (and author of Men of Tomorrow) Gerard Jones, acclaimed writer Marv Wolfman, and Charles Kochman, a senior editor with Abrams Books.

The 2006 awards are being underwritten by DC Comics (the major sponsor), this year joined by Comics Buyer's Guide (CBG), Heritage Auctions, and TwoMorrows Publishing (supporting sponsors).

"Though the focus in comics collecting is usually artwork, it is the stories told with that artwork that have captivated generations of fans," says CBG's Maggie Thompson. "Despite that, the writers in the field's earliest decades often worked in anonymity and even today are frequently overlooked. Comics Buyer's Guide is honored to help pay tribute to giants of the past and present — giants who have provided the words for unforgettable tales of imagination."

And Jim Halperin of Heritage Auction Galleries notes that his company "is proud to support this award, named for one of the foremost pioneers in comics literature. Without the efforts of Bill Finger and his contemporaries, our world would be duller and much less colorful than it is."

Similar sentiments are expressed by John Morrow: "TwoMorrows Publishing is honored to be associated with the Bill Finger Award. A main purpose of all our publications is to document the achievements of great creators throughout comics history. Sadly, Bill Finger's contributions to the medium remained largely uncredited during his lifetime. So an award that recognizes deserving writers — particularly those who are still with us, so we can all express our appreciation to them — is a long time coming, and a natural choice for us to sponsor."

The Finger Award falls under the auspices of Comic-Con International: San Diego and is administered by Jackie Estrada. The awards will be presented during the Eisner Awards ceremony at this summer's Comic-Con on Friday, July 21.

"Your honor…we find the defendants incredibly guilty!"

(Just e-mailed to me by Alan Brennert)

Pat Robertson is selling a protein shake that, he claims, is what has enabled him to be able to leg press 2,000 pounds of weight. People are mocking this but I think it's wonderful that a 76-year-old guy can easily top all the records set by much younger men. Why are people so cynical about such things? If he says he can do it, he can do it.

I have no idea where this is from. It's a montage of home movies of cats doing silly things. Runs a minute and a half.

My pal Earl Kress is putting up a series of interesting posts over on his weblog. They're about the making of "Little Go Beep," which he wrote and which is probably the best Looney Tunes short made in a couple of decades. It's also one which almost no one saw. Start with this post and then read forward.

Earlier today in this report, ABC News announced that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was involved in the Congressional bribery investigation. Hastert's people have denied that he is a target of the investigation and they are demanding a retraction. The Department of Justice has issued a statement stating flatly that "Speaker Hastert is not under investigation by the Justice Department." ABC has since issued this item which in essence stands by its story but suggests that people are reading more into it than is there.

In other maybe-it's-true news, Truthout (an online left-wing news journal) is standing by its story that Karl Rove has already been indicted…this, despite the fact that the timetable in the original story has already been proven wrong, that no one else seems to have any information to this effect, and that it has been categorically denied by Rove's lawyers.

I have no idea what truth (if any) there is to either story. Perhaps there is none, perhaps they're essentially true but wrong in some technicality that allows them to be honestly denied. As usual for this kind of questionable report, people who want to see Rove frog-marched and Hastert hopping along beside him are cautiously hoping it's so…and folks whose politics would be set back a few yards if those things happened are sure they're not so. The latter group may be right but I think most of them are wrong about one thing. Most of them are saying these are deliberate, politically-motivated lies on the parts of the reporters and/or their news agencies.

That's a ridiculous assumption. They may be politically-motivated lies on the part of whoever leaked the stories to the media, but the media — even a fringe outfit like Truthout — doesn't make such things up out of the whole cloth. Somebody told them these accounts and it was probably someone they had reason to believe, albeit by a low or flawed standard of faith. If the stories are wrong, the crime is bad journalism, not intentional lying. One reason there's so much inept reporting out there is that it so rarely gets called what it is, which is incompetence.

There are kinda weird. They're Reality Cartoons.

I could try and explain the concept to you but you'll understand as soon as you see 'em.

The latest from Art Buchwald, who may just outlive some of the people who wrote those articles about how Art Buchwald was dying.

Senator Lloyd Bentsen died the other day so we might as well take another look at the only thing most people remember him for — his putdown of Dan Quayle in the 1988 presidential debate. I'm not sure many people even remember that Bentsen was the running mate to Michael Dukakis that year. They just recall the public slapping.

I watched the debate that night with some folks over at Harlan Ellison's while Harlan ignored his guests and (quite properly) devoted himself to a rabid and frothing deadline. Mothra could have descended on the block and it would not have pried the man away from his manual typewriter and the paper whizzing through it. Still, when Bentsen delivered that line, we gave out a whoop — not necessarily in approval — and Harlan poked his head out of his office to ask what the heck had happened. Someone told him, "Bentsen just made Quayle look like an idiot" and he muttered, "This is news?" and went back to work.

Of course, it was mainly Quayle who made Quayle look bad that night. The reporters kept asking him what he'd do if the president was killed or disabled and it became necessary for him to assume the office. He kept responding like you or I would if we were asked how one goes about performing a large bowel resection. He just looked clueless and tried to ad-lib a response to a topic about which he seemed to have no idea, even though it's the most important thing (and darn near the only thing) a Vice-President of the United States of America might have to do.

He especially looked bad when he had no real answer to Bentsen's unclassy remark. I always thought he wouldn't have become quite the laughingstock he became if he'd fired back with something like, "People underestimated Jack Kennedy when he was in the Senate. I hope someday to have you say the same of me, Senator." Instead, his deer-in-the-headlights response may not have cost his ticket any states but it and a few public gaffes sure cost him any political future after his one term as veep.

Here's the clip. Bentsen, for whom I had little respect, actually made some very good points in that debate and would easily have been hailed as the winner without this line. It was a moment that made me feel both guys deserved to lose.

William T. Bradley, a physician in Texas, adds the following to our discussion of emergency room care…

To expand slightly on the response you already got, the answer is, of course, money: Hospitals are not traditional businesses. The problem with your analogy is that Starbucks expands to bring in more customers who'll pay 5-10 bucks for 39 cents worth of coffee in a paper cup. In the ER, it's often the reverse. The hospital will be paid little or nothing for most of the people who show up, and will spend lots of money treating them. If Starbucks were forced to provide lattes to anyone who showed up, regardless of their ability to pay, they'd obviously have much less impetus for expansion.

There are theoretically supposed to be mechanisms to pay for some of the care of the indigent, but these often require extensive administrative efforts on the part of the hospitals and patients to access, and the reimbursements are quite small. Exacerbating the problem is that much of what the ER sees are not emergencies, but people who don't have or can't afford a doctor, coming in for minor problems, or sometimes just to get medical refills or a doctor's excuse.

The result is that, from a business standpoint, the ER is a hugely money-losing proposition. Many hospitals maintain them only because they are required to. The waiting times are horrendous, but the hospital simply has no financial incentive to shorten them. Even the most altruistic facility would find it hard to keep the doors open if they expand more than is absolutely necessary.

Your best course of action, as a patient, is to have a physician you can call for help, and who can, if necessary, admit you to the hospital without going through the ER. Assuming your mother is on Medicare, that may be easier said than done. Here in Texas, primary care physicians who can afford to take new Medicare patients are extremely difficult to find, and I imagine it's worse in California. Political pressure on your congresspeople to stop cutting Medicare payments to physicians would of course be beneficial, but that leads us into another complex topic.

I'm sure everything you say is right. The Starbuck analogy was one of those comparisons that's good for about a sentence and a half before it collapses under its own weight.

However, let me add a few anecdotal nuggets into this. When I was hospitalized briefly last February, I was admitted (sort of) by my doctor. Though he works with Cedars-Sinai — his primary office is elsewhere — even he couldn't get me directly into a room. He had to send me to the Emergency Department where I spent four hours in the waiting area…and the time is only part of it. Those are awful places to be, surrounded by people in pain, people with coughs and little germ clouds you can almost see hovering about them, people agonizing over what the hospital costs will do to their lives, etc. During my wait, my doctor came over to the hospital to see patients and stopped off in the E.R. where he arranged for me to bypass much of the admissions process and then explained my medical situation to the appropriate people. He also located and briefed the specialist who was going to be supervising my treatment. He and the specialist then came out to find me in the waiting room and we discussed my case there…and it still took many hours after that for me to get to the moment where someone finally began treating my swollen, crimson calves.

I understand the money part of this. But I took up around six minutes of actual attention in that Emergency Room and they billed about eight thousand dollars to my health insurance for that part of my little stay. It would seem to me there's got to be a way the finance part of this can be made to work. That's worse than the markup on the Starbuck Decaf Komodo Dragon Blend®.

I should add to all this that I've had several trips to hospital emergency rooms with my mother when the problem was not agonizing pain in her foot but something that might have turned out to be a heart attack. Some of these times, I drove her there — I also drove my father in twice when he had what turned out to really be heart attacks — and a couple of times, my mother went in via ambulance. In the ambulance cases, she received immediate treatment at the hospital expanding on what the paramedics had already begun. In the non-ambulance visits, we got in relatively fast, though that may have been in part because I'm rather large and when my mother's health is on the line, quite loud. (Remind me some day to tell the story about how when my father had his first heart attack, he got in quickly because one of the physicians in the E.R. turned out to be a friend of mine from high school — someone I didn't even know had become a doctor.)

In those cases, the Emergency Rooms could not have performed much better. I just don't think they work well for people who aren't experiencing chest pains. There are a lot of things that can kill you and/or yield great agony that aren't chest pains. I saw too many of them last night at that hospital.