My friends pick up their bad habits from me. Earl Kress, a fellow writer who has been mentioned in this site many a time, has followed my horrid example and started blogging. He's just getting started but if you like this site, you'll like Earl's. In fact, if you hate this site, you'll still like Earl's. Go take a look.

I want to add a couple of thoughts to the discussion about the Gordon Lee case. There are a number of hypocritical things about the way some prosecutors handle cases relating to pornography or adult entertainment. One is that they usually go after the folks who can least afford to fight them. It is possible now to view hardcore porn on satellite or in most major hotels…but you don't see them going after Rupert Murdoch, who owns DirecTV, nor do they try to close down the local Marriott and throw its operators behind bars. They don't even go after Hugh Hefner or Larry Flynt any longer. Those guys have too much money. The reason to go after a Gordon Lee is because he does not have friends in high places, does not have deep pockets, does not have the ability to hire Floyd Abrams or some other top First Amendment lawyer. The hope here is that the little guy will just plea-bargain, admit guilt and give them a "win" that will intimidate others.

Which brings me to another area of hypocrisy in these cases: The efforts made by the prosecution not to give the accused his day in court. Many juries simply will not vote to convict and judges often decide the charges are excessive. The Gordon Lee affair started with him being indicted on two felony charges and five misdemeanors. The felony charges were tossed out and the misdemeanors tossed out or condensed down to two…and then on Monday, the prosecutors dropped those and announced they'd find others. It's like they played by the rules, decided they couldn't win by the rules and now they're changing the rules. And what's really galling about that is that these are their rules.

A lot of prosecutions in this category fall under the general heading of Prosecutorial Tyranny. They don't want to try the case because they know they'll lose…but they also know that they can waste the accused's time and money, keep his life off-balance for years and scare the bejeezus out of him. The idea is to make it less painful to plead guilty to some lesser charge than to incur the cost and uncertainty involved in proving one's innocence. I know why our system of justice works like that but I don't have to like it.

Forgot to mention (sorry) that early this morning, GSN started rerunning old I've Got A Secret episodes again. Last time GSN ran this show, they started with episodes from 1952 but this time around, they're skipping all the ones with cigarette sponsorship…so the one that aired this A.M. was from September of 1959. So we're missing a lot of good episodes there and it may be impossible to predict what will air when.

In the meantime, the What's My Line? reruns are up to December of 1962. The one that airs tomorrow morn should be one with Vaughn Meader as the Mystery Guest. Mr. Meader then had the hottest record in the business with The First Family and one of the other contestants is football great Ray Nitschke. Thursday morn, the Mystery Guest should be Bert Lahr.

Fred Kaplan reads and analyzes the Democratic plan for increased national security.

Okay, it's the 1999 Tony Awards ceremony and a star is born. The revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is up for Best Revival of a Musical and business ain't so hot. This means they want to win the Tony and also present on the telecast a musical number so fine that it will cause people to storm the box office. Of the two, the latter is more important.

They don't win for Best Revival (Annie, Get Your Gun with Bernadette Peters does) but two of the Charlie Brown cast members — Kristin Chenoweth and Roger Bart — take home Tonys as featured performers. People seem to love the number that is performed, mostly by Ms. Chenoweth, but it does not motivate a stampede of ticket purchasers. The show winds up posting a closing notice a few weeks later.

Our video link is to that performance from that evening. The sound is a hair out of sync but it's still quite watchable. The clip also includes Kristin Chenoweth winning her Tony immediately following the song, making what may well be the fastest change of clothes ever accomplished by a woman. I just ran a stopwatch on it and from the moment we last see her in one outfit to the moment we first see her in the other is 43 seconds, which means she probably had 5-10 seconds less than that. I used to date ladies who couldn't change direction in that amount of time.

Right after this aired, every producer in several media wanted to hire Kristin Chenoweth. I'm not sure how many of them loved how she sang and danced, and how many were just thinking, "Boy, an actress who can change that quickly…think how much money that will save."

Let's go to the videotape…

You may recall that when "Grandpa" Al Lewis passed away in February, there was a mini-controversy over his age. He'd been telling people he was 95. Other sources suggested he was 83…which, if true, would mean that a lot of those stories he'd told about what he did in the twenties — like involvement in the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927 — were fibs.

Well, the Social Security Death Index — which one can access online — now has his listing up. They say he was born April 30, 1923 and they oughta know. That means that when he died on February 3 of this year, he was 82 years, 9 months and 4 days old. Or if you like: 82 years, 9 months and 4 days young.

I'm so glad that's settled. You have no idea how many nights of sleep I've lost over this.

Fareed Zakaria offers an interesting view on the immigration issue.

In Georgia, a comic book retailer named Gordon Lee was indicted more than a year ago for allegedly selling an adult comic book to a minor. The case went to trial today and something utterly unexpected occurred. The prosecution dismissed all charges and then re-filed to charge Lee under a similar charge covered by different statutes. They are, in effect, trying to start all over under slightly different rules.

The legal bills for Lee's defense, which look like they'll easily hit the $50,000 mark, have been handled by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a most worthy organization. Their website has a full report on today's developments here.

At the risk of making a Bill Frist-style diagnosis from afar, it sounds to me like the prosecutors are trying the old Bleed 'em Dry strategy. They're afraid they can't win on the merits of the case so they'll drag it out and make it expensive…and hope that the accused will agree to a fast plea bargain just to get the thing over with. This works more often in our nation than it should. I hope it doesn't here.

The above Doonesbury strip ran on April 20, 2005. But it could be tomorrow morning's.

The L.A. Times is running a series of profiles on wounded and limbless soldiers returning from Iraq. Forgive me for going to a Vietnam memory on this but one of the things that turned me around on that war — I went from protesting the protesters to being one of them — was what I saw as a lack of compassion for the troops on the part of those who wanted the war to continue or even escalate. Put simply, I found myself marching among people who simultaneously screamed "Support our soldiers" while not seeming to place a very high value on the lives of those soldiers. When the parents and widows of fallen servicemen spoke out against the war or when the amputees made themselves conspicuous, there was an anger towards them for reminding us that, in a time of war, this happens.

I am not suggesting that the fact that there are body counts and soldiers crippled for life is, in and of itself, reason for stopping a war. Some wars are necessary. But if they're going to go and get blown up in our service, I think the least we can do is look at it.

The first part of the Times series is here, and you should be able to find your way to the others from there. It's very sad reading with occasional glimmers of inspiration, but it will help us to remember that the human cost of a war is not just in the number of fatalities.

You can get a closer look at each of these wonderful items by clicking on it. You'll need a closer look because I'm showing you three examples of the weirdest toy I ever came across — the Lovable Smoking Traveler's Pet. I'm not sure what's so lovable about smoking or just who's doing any travelling here…but that's only the beginning of my bewilderment. When Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble were selling Winstons, they weren't the only Hanna-Barbera characters who had the habit.

I had a couple of these back around '63 or thereabouts. The premise was that you'd take the little plastic figure of Yogi Bear or whoever and wedge one of the little "cigarettes" into the hole in its mouth and light it. It was supposed to blow smoke rings…but when my friend Randy and I tried it with ours, I think we just got a few wisps of smoke in no particular form and then as the fake cigarette burned down, it started to melt the doll. In fact, I think the only part of it Randy liked was seeing Huckleberry Hound with his face melted. We let it go and the doll got shorter and lost its color and looked a lot like Droopy.

We found these in a crummy toy store on Westwood Boulevard. They were a dime or so apiece and there were many to choose from, including Popeye and (I think) Mighty Mouse. I remember thinking that the Popeye one should come with a pipe instead of the tiny cigarettes. There was no evidence on the packaging that the companies that owned the characters had sanctioned or even heard of these bizarre playthings that were made in Hong Kong.

But you have to admire the total lack of logic. First, there's the assumption that children are eager to see their favorite characters smoke…although, come to think of it, Randy and I did buy them. On top of that, they promote two things we really want to see kids do: Smoke and play with matches…although, again come to think of it, I've never smoked. Not once in my entire life, not even one puff. I always thought it was because I find the odor so repulsive but maybe, deep down, I just have a fear that my face will melt until I look like Droopy Dog. Perhaps these toys weren't such a bad idea after all.

If I'd put this up on April Fool's Day, none of you would have bothered clicking on the link…but it's legit. Here's what The New York Times has to say about it…

For the last few months, youtube.com has had available for streaming an advertisement for Rice Krispies, recorded by the Rolling Stones in early 1964. It's completely smoking. You don't see the band; you just see a parody of the British television show "Jukebox Jury," with screaming girls, disapproving grown-ups and exploding cereal boxes. "Pour on the milk-a-licious to the crackle of that rice," Mick Jagger sings. This is when the Stones had only begun to compose; they had just graduated from clubs to theaters, and were still known as a nasty rhythm-and-blues cover band. The question is, how can a Rice Krispies jingle be so hot?

That's as much as I know about it but it's our video link for this morning. If you can eat breakfast while watching it, so much the better…

While we're in a Krispie mood, here's a non-embedded link to another Rice Krispies commercial. This one features the great comic actor Lou Jacobi and the voice work of Frank Welker and Don Messick. I don't know about Frank but to do these, Don (who lived in Santa Barbara) used to get up very early in the A.M., drive down to LAX, catch a plane to Chicago and he'd actually record a couple of Kellogg's spots there the same day, then be driven to O'Hare to catch a plane home. This was before they had ISDN lines that made it possible for someone to record from anywhere in the world but it was possible then to do a phone-patch.

(Quick explanation of phone-patches: The actor is, for example, in a recording studio in L.A. but there's a telephone connection to the studio in Chicago so he can hear the other actors and the director and can take direction from that director. The L.A. actor is recorded in the L.A. facility and then that tape is FedExed or otherwise sent to Chicago to be edited into the mix. Nowadays, an ISDN set-up enables people in different corners of the world to be linked via digital connections and they can all be recorded at once. Or one guy can be in Rangoon and you can hear him and record him just fine in a studio in Tampa.)

Apparently, the folks making the Rice Krispies commercials didn't want to put Messick on a phone-patch. Since Don made an awful lot of money remaining here in Southern California, I can only imagine how much they had to pay him to go through that ordeal. But he'd fly there and fly back and then the next day, he and Frank would go into the Hanna-Barbera studios in Hollywood and record an episode of Scooby Doo.

YouTube also has two versions of my favorite musical Rice Krispies commercial online but on this one, the sound is way outta sync and on this one, the sound is a little out of sync and the picture is worse. I downloaded 'em figuring that when I get the time (HA!), I'd try to slip-and-slide and create one in-sync good copy but it may be a while. If someone else wants to tackle this, be my guest.

Not that long ago, John "Straight Talk" McCain referred to the Reverend Jerry Falwell as "an agent of intolerance." But now the Senator from Arizona is facing his last shot at the presidency. If he were to win, he'd be three years older than Ronald Reagan and a lot of people thought Reagan was too old. McCain seems to feel he needs to court the far right-wing of the Republican party so suddenly, though I sure haven't seen any change of personality or rhetoric out of Falwell, they're buddies. Over at Crooks and Liars, they have a video clip of McCain trying to explain this on today's Meet the Press.

While you're over there: As I've mentioned, I haven't been too taken this season by Real Time With Bill Maher. But the episode that debuted last Friday evening and which is repeating throughout the week was pretty good. At one point, Maher made a very solid case for the ineptness of George W. Bush on the morning of 9/11. Bush's defender on the show was Congressman Dana Rohrabacher who had such a feeble response that I doubt he even believed what he was saying. If you can, catch the whole program this week but in the meantime, Crooks and Liars has about 50 seconds that will give you the idea.

My longtime chum Scott Shaw! has moved his wonderful Oddball Comics site from Comic Book Resources over to its own domain. Things aren't completely set up over there yet but he already has a fun message board and the first Oddball Comic review in his new digs. Henceforth, when you want to see a comic book that'll make you go, "What the hell were they thinking?", click your way on over to www.oddballcomics.com. That's where you'll find 'em.

I went over to the Souplantation near me this afternoon for one last bowl of their Classic Creamy Tomato Soup. That's it in the photo above. The particular soup was only supposed to be in the pots for the month of March but I knew from past experience that the weekend is a transitional time. A lady who works there told me it was the last day but they'd had so many requests to bring it back that she assumes they will.

I was not the only person there for it. Someone else was using the ladle to fill their bowl as I approached. Thinking I was reaching for the soup next to it (Texas Red Chili), he said, "Hey, try this. It's great and this is the last day." He was very happy when I said, "That's what I'm here for." Two strangers bonding over a good bowl of soup…there's a commercial there.

This month, your local Souplantation or Sweet Tomatoes outlet is on a Hawaiian kick, meaning that the employees are all wearing Hawaiian shirts and leis and that most of the non-permanent items have pineapple in them. There's no Pineapple Soup but they have a Curried Pineapple and Ginger Pasta that looked like something you'd buy at a live bait shop, Carrot Pineapple Muffins (with Oat Bran) and Wowie Maui Pineapple Focaccia (with ham). This was in addition to the much-promoted Pineapple Coconut Slaw. I used to think just plain cole slaw was the most disgusting thing on the planet that anyone ever voluntarily puts into their mouth. But there were people eating this stuff so I stand corrected.