A couple of folks have written to ask about this morning's B.C. strip with one character turning into another for no visible reason. (I may not recall the players' names accurately but I think that's Peter in the role of I.R.S. agent…and then the other guy is B.C. in the first panel and Clumsy Carp in the second.)

No, I don't get the switcheroo, either. It looks to me like a mistake…or maybe Johnny Hart did it deliberately to see if anyone would notice. At least three people who read my site did.

Today is supposed to be the last day of the TiVo Lifetime Service offer…but my pal Harry McCracken seems to be having a little trouble getting it.

Brad Marshall writes to ask…

Just curious to know if people in Las Vegas, going to these truncated, "road show" versions of Broadway shows, are being charged the same $90 to $120 that they do on Broadway? If so I would say that's a pretty big rip-off.

Well, sort of. As I've noted here before, the price of a show in Vegas has gone up a lot. A few years ago, a number of them decided to try inching prices up and see what impact it had on their sales. A friend there told me, "Some of them were genuinely stunned at how much more they could tack on to the price of a ticket without it affecting the demand." So the going policy now seems to be to price tickets high and then if they start finding themselves with empty seats, they spread around discount coupons and offers, rather than to lower the base price of a ticket. This can make it a bit confusing to figure out how much it will cost to see some of these shows.

Tickets for the 90 minute version of Hairspray start at $71.50 and go up to $110 on the Luxor website. Over at Goldstar Events, which is the only online discount service, they have them for certain performances at $56.10 to $66.00. Tickets may also be available at up to 50% off at the discount booths in Vegas but you won't know unless you're in Vegas and you go to one of these places on the afternoon that you wish to attend the show.

Seats for Mamma Mia — which is performed in full, including an intermission — range from $45 to $100 on the Mandalay Bay website. The Goldstar Events site says that tickets normally go for $82.50 to $110 and they have some for $49.50 to $66. And again, this one is sometimes available at the half-price booths.

You can order tickets for the upcoming 95 minute version of Phantom of the Opera at the Venetian website for a low of $75.64 and a high of $150.64. They probably won't have discounts available for the first few months. No word yet on what The Producers will cost but I'll bet you it'll be the highest priced ticket until Spamalot shows up and tops it.

So I guess the answer is that they're charging Broadway prices or more…but as on Broadway, where you can go to the TKTS booth and maybe get a half-price ticket for that night, you can often score seats for 50% off. If you'd like a guide to show prices in Vegas, including an overview of discounts, The Las Vegas Advisor has a survey up on this page.

We told you back there about the planned demolition of the Hotel San Diego, scene of many a great convention party. Well, this morning they blowed that place up pretty good. This page has the details and an online video. Thank you again, Jackie Estrada.

A motion picture has been announced that will bring the original Captain Marvel (aka Shazam!) to the screen.

I find that I have very little interest in most of these comic book movies. I may have loved the comic books of the characters involved but that love doesn't necessarily transfer to some other interpretation. I mean, I cared about Spider-Man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. I cared about Spider-Man by Stan Lee and John Romita. I've enjoyed some other comic book versions of Spider-Man — though by no means, the majority. I have not been able to generate the interest to see either of the Spider-Man movies. In much the same way, I liked James Bond as written by Ian Fleming in the novels, I enjoyed the films when Sean Connery played him…and my interest in other Bonds, either in print or on film, is highly variable.

That said, when I heard about the possible/probable Shazam! movie, I thought of one thing that might pique my interest to see it. They probably won't hire him but how about Wallace Shawn as Dr. Sivana? Would that be perfect?

It may not work for everyone's browser but if you have Windows Media Player installed, this link oughta bring you a little more than a minute of Monty Python's Spamalot, as seen on Broadway.

In the early seventies, the folks behind Monty Python's Flying Circus did some odd things for money. They hadn't made all that much off the TV show so they grabbed some offers to do industrial-type films. This one is for Harmony Hairspray, it runs seven minutes and I should warn you that the video image is not the best and that much of it is out of sync. I don't create these clips. I just link to them.

Python authority Kim "Howard" Johnson points out to me in an e-mail that these films represent the directorial debut of Terry Jones. The Python TV shows had been directed by John Howard Davies (the first four) and Ian MacNaughton (the rest) and making commercials gave Python the opportunity to bring the director's job into the group and to give Jones some experience. He and Terry Gilliam would soon go on to direct Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I think that's everything I know about this film…and yes, I know it's for hairspray. But how often do you get to see Python work from this era that you haven't seen before? Heck, I'll settle for just about anything I don't know by heart.

No, not the last day to mail your income taxes…you can do that on Monday. But today is the last day to order lifetime service for a TiVo. The $299 price, which covers the life of one machine, goes away after 7PM Pacific time tonight. Let's see how long it is before TiVo announces a price hike for month-to-month service.

I agree with this blog post by Glenn Greenwald. I don't know if all these retired generals criticizing the war effort are right or wrong, but I think their views need to be heard and considered. The Bush administration has scared a lot of Americans — and cost themselves a good deal of support — with the concept that they have a plan and they're going to follow it, no matter what evidence might emerge that it ain't working. I think there'd be a lot more confidence in Bush if he seemed to have the capacity to admit mistakes and move to correct them. And his supporters aren't helping him when they rush to attack the sanity, integrity and motives of anyone who criticizes his policies.

Jonathan Chait on a new attempt to get rid of the Electoral College.

Several folks have written to say that the sketch that was this morning's video link — The Four Yorkshiremen — appeared on At Last, the 1948 Show. In fact, it apparently appears on this DVD which I have here but haven't watched yet.

If that's its point of origin, that helps narrow down the question of its authorship. The writing credits for that program were for its stars: Marty Feldman, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor. Tom Wolper sent an e-mail saying that Eric Idle performed the sketch on his recent Greedy Bastard Tour and identified it as one written by Feldman for At Last, the 1948 Show. Good to know.

Bob Elliott (of Bob and Ray fame) is pretty much retired these days but he recently gave a good interview to my pal Steve Darnall for Nostalgia Digest magazine. If you have some Adobe product installed on your computer, you can read a PDF version of the interview by clicking here.

Or you can do yourself a favor and subscribe to Nostalgia Digest, which routinely features articles this interesting. And while you're at it, loads of great Bob and Ray stuff can be purchased from The Official Bob and Ray Website and it almost doesn't matter which CD you order. I have listened to hundreds and hours of Bob and Ray radio material over the years and have yet to find the weak material. I'm beginning to suspect there isn't any.

Starting today and continuing for I-don't-know-how-long, we'll be linking to Monty Python rarities. Today, we focus on a sketch the Python guys did in a number of different places, though not on their TV show, perhaps because it really isn't a Python sketch. The first place I saw it was on the program I mentioned here, Marty Feldman's Comedy Machine. I don't recall who, apart from Feldman, appeared in it and I suspect it did not originate there. Perhaps it's something done earlier for some other series like At Last, the 1948 Show with John Cleese and Graham Chapman…though when I asked someone to ask Mr. Cleese about it, he had no memory of where it had first appeared. In any case, various British comedians have performed it in a number of settings, especially for charity performances, and I'm curious as to whether Feldman wrote it, or if one or more of the Pythons did or just what the story is. It's awfully funny and back when we first saw it on Mr. Feldman's Comedy Machine, several of my friends and I added lines from it to our repertoire of catch-phrases.

A version of the sketch that runs a little over three minutes appeared in the Python Hollywood Bowl concert. Here's a link to it and as you'll see, it features Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman and Terry Jones. A slightly better, longer version of it appears below. It runs four minutes and features Palin, Jones, John Cleese and non-Python Rowan Atkinson. Ignore the foreign subtitles.

Michael Kinsley asks where we're going to meddle next. Good question. Of greater interest is the capsule history he provides of our shifting relationships with Iran and Iraq.

Around or about "late summer of 2006," a production of The Producers (the Broadway show) will open at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas. No word yet on who will star or if Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick will play the first few weeks, then hand off to others.

They might not want to because if early announcements are true, this Producers will run 90 minutes with no intermission. The version in New York clocks in at 2 hours and 40 minutes, fifteen of which is the intermission. So the Vegas Producers will need to lose close to an hour…and I have no idea how they'll do that without ruining the show. The recent motion picture version cut two numbers and it still runs 134 minutes.

Not all that long ago, some (including the guy who runs this weblog) were predicting that the new Vegas trend would be to import Broadway shows and perform them in full, instead of the cut-down "tab" versions that had been the norm for such transplants. A lot of Broadway shows have made it to Vegas but only a few haven't lost their intermissions and a few numbers. Then in 1999, an uncut production of Chicago did good business at the Mandalay Bay, followed in 2003 by Mamma Mia, also performed in full, which is still running and still successful.

Then last September, the Broadway smash Avenue Q opened a production at the new Wynn Hotel in Vegas. Although on a ten-a-week schedule, they performed the entire show as it runs in New York — about two hours plus a fifteen minute intermission. Ticket sales were disappointing and in an attempt to boost business, they lost the intermission and cut about a half-hour from the show. The cuts didn't help sales (the production closes in May, well ahead of when anyone hoped) but they seem to have marked the end of the full-length Broadway show in Vegas, at least for now.

One suspects the running time was not the problem. Avenue Q is an adult puppet show and a satire of Sesame Street that at any length seems out of tune with Vegas audiences. It has also been suggested that the producers simply had unrealistic expectations, opening what is basically a "small" musical in a 1,200 seat theater. With a ten show schedule, that means there are 12,000 tickets available each week so a lot of empty seats were inevitable. In New York, Avenue Q plays at the John Golden, which seats 804. With eight performances a week, that's about half as many seats to fill…and folks who've seen Avenue Q in both venues say it simply plays much better in the more intimate theater.

Still, those who are bringing Broadway shows to Nevada are looking at its failure and ordering trims. Hairspray — which opened two months ago at the Luxor in Vegas — was cut down from 2 hours and 40 minutes to 90. And a condensed version of The Phantom of the Opera is soon to be mounted at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Unlike the others, this one is not being marketed as a replica of what's playing in New York. It will be called Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular and will run 95 minutes with all-new staging by Hal Prince, who directed the original. (The New York Phantom runs around two hours and fifteen minutes. The Vegas incarnation is being advertised as having "all the songs" of the original, though no one is suggesting they'll be performed in full.) There will be ten performances a week so the primary roles are being double-cast. Two different actors will take turns playing The Phantom, two actresses will rotate as Christine, etc.

That may be the new trend: Less show, more performances. Once Avenue Q vacates its space at the Wynn Las Vegas, the showroom will be remodelled and renamed The Grail Theater and in 2007, it will be home to a production of Monty Python's Spamalot. The New York production runs two hours and twenty minutes, fifteen of which is intermission. The Vegas version will reportedly run ninety with all roles double-cast to allow for an unprecedented twelve performances a week. I don't think any show that ever originated on Broadway has gone on to do twelve performances a week in any theater anywhere…and that's not the end of it. There will also be something called (tentatively) "The Spamalot Experience," which will cost $70 million to build. One presumes it will be not unlike "The Star Trek Experience" at the Vegas Hilton, which is like a mini-theme park allowing tourists to become a part of the show.

Personally, I don't want to become a part of the show. I just want to see the whole thing, especially since they're going to be charging New York prices…or more. The problem with Avenue Q isn't that it was too long. It was just the wrong show in the wrong town in the wrong showroom. My suspicion is that Vegas entrepreneurs are seizing on its failure as an excuse to not do shows in their entirety. They like the idea of 10-12 performances a week, and of 90 minute shows that get the tourists back out into the casino in a hurry so they can resume gambling. I'll bet The Producers, performed in full, would sell just as many tickets per performance, if not more. It's just that if they do the whole show, they can't do it twice a night.