This morning's feature presentation is a short clip of what Fred Astaire once called the best tap dance routine ever put on film. How's that for an endorsement?

A few months ago here, we lamented the passing of Fayard Nicholas, who was one half of the Nicholas Brothers. That's Fayard and his brother Harold you'll see dancing in the excerpt, which is from the 1943 movie called Stormy Weather. In the number, the great Cab Calloway sings and then the Nicholas Brothers hoof it up. Whoever edited this piece for the Internet cut off Mr. Calloway's part of it…but that's almost okay because this clip over on Google Video has Calloway singing and then it cuts off in the middle of the dance routine.

Actually, if you like either half, you oughta just spend the fourteen bucks and buy the DVD of the whole movie. There are a lot of great musical numbers in it.

Here then are the Nicholas Brothers doing what they did better than anybody else…

April, you may be fascinated to learn, is National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month. Now, this raises all sorts of questions, not the least of which is who the heck designated it National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month? Who has that authority? And what is it about April that makes it more conducive to a grilled cheese sandwich than, say, March or May? I'm guessing there's some sort of National Cheesemakers Council that looked at their month to month sales and noticed that people weren't making a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches in April. So someone there said to someone else there, "What can we do to promote the making of grilled cheese sandwiches in April?" And then the other person said, "Well, how about if we designate April as National Grilled Cheese Sandwich month?"

But never mind that. What bothers me is that in the interest of celebrating National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month, some people are polluting the whole concept of the grilled cheese sandwich. As part of a promotion on this site, the DuPont Corporation has gathered close to 6,000 different recipes for grilled cheese sandwiches and they've posted a sampling of them.

This is very wrong. There aren't 6,000 recipes for a grilled cheese sandwich. There is one. You take two slices of bread, put a couple of slices of cheese between them and grill the thing. That's a grilled cheese sandwich. Even I can make them.

Flipping through the recipes there, I see concoctions involving all kinds of bread (including baguettes, bagels and crullers) and all kinds of cheese (including cream cheese and Brie) and all sorts of additives like walnuts and apples and sauerkraut and peppers and cinammon and molasses and pumpkin and pretty much the entire contents of a Whole Foods Market. On that site, they're all cooked in pans coated with Teflon® because DuPont makes Teflon®…and they may be great sandwiches but they're not grilled cheese sandwiches. A grilled cheese sandwich is two slices of bread and a couple of slices of cheese. And always will be.

According to this site, Americans make 2.2 billion grilled cheese sandwiches at home every year and the average American eats 8.4 grilled cheese sandwiches a year. If they're counting these creations that include sausage and maple syrup and peach chutney on a muffin, they're cheating. A grilled cheese sandwich is two slices of bread and a couple of slices of cheese. If these people had any brains, they'd know that.

Here's an article about Stan Lee's newest project.

Treasure Chest carried the Comics Code for a number of years, which raises an interesting question. As we all know, the Comics Code was formed in 1954 because their comic books were under attack from various groups that wanted to ban them or institute government-controlled censorship or something of the sort. So DC and Marvel and Archie and most of the other major publishers and their printers and distributors got together and formed this self-censorship board and henceforth, all their comics displayed the Comics Code symbol. It was there to assure parents and watchdog groups that the comic had been properly scrutinized and laundered. The smaller publishers had to go along with it or no one would carry their product.

There were two exceptions. Dell Comics, which published in partnership with Western Publishing, refused to have any part of it. They had their own distribution and, more important perhaps, they had Mickey Mouse in their line. They felt the crusaders wouldn't come after them and that their spotless reputation shoudn't be used to repair the blemished name of the folks who'd published horror and crime comics. Later on, when Dell and Western split off (as explained here), Western also refused to have anything to do with the Comics Magazine Association of America and their Code. An editor at Western once told me that in some magazine somewhere, a representative of the C.M.A.A. was asked why Western hadn't joined and was quoted as saying something like, "Well, they have their reasons but believe me, they got copies of our guidelines and they told me they apply its principles to their books." According to this editor — it was Chase Craig, by the way — Western's lawyers immediately dispatched a letter that said, in effect, "That's a lie. We've never looked at your stupid Code and we'll sue you if you ever say that again."

The other company that didn't subscribe to the Code was Gilberton, the people who put out Classics Illustrated. Presumably, they felt that the reputation of the works they were adapting — books that were in most school libraries — made it unnecessary to join the Code. Besides, they had only limited distribution via conventional channels. They sold most of their product through educational outlets.

Okay, so why did Treasure Chest join the Code, which it seems to have done almost from the start? If the folks publishing Walt Disney's Comics and Stories didn't think they had anything to fear, why did the people putting out adaptations of The Holy Bible think they did? I mean, Treasure Chest was the comic that nuns encouraged kids to buy…and even if the occasional Biblical scene could get a little bloody, was anyone going to object to the content? So why did George A. Pflaum, the publisher of Treasure Chest, join up, which not only meant submitting his books to the Code's censor board but also financially supporting the organization? I'd think he'd have been happy to see the mainstream publishers sink. Why did he lend his squeaky-clean image to an organization designed to rehabilitate the reps of the people who brought you Chamber of Chills?

I don't know a lot about Mr. Pflaum other than that in addition to Treasure Chest, he published non-comic religious publications like Young Catholic Messenger, Junior Catholic Messenger and Our Little Messenger. That doesn't sound to me like someone who would have cared a lot if Atlas Comics, publishers of Adventures Into Terror, couldn't get their product on newsstands.

My first thought is that perhaps Pflaum's printer wouldn't print his comics if he didn't have the Code symbol on them. Some printers, like World Color Press, were motivators of the Code and might have insisted on it for all their clients. But there were certainly printers who would have welcomed that business. There were distributors who wouldn't carry books that did not bear the Code seal but Treasure Chest didn't go through newsstand distributors.

Or did it? It's possible that Pflaum thought he was just supporting a cause that would improve comics for all children and that this was of primary importance to him. It's also possible — and this is just me speculating aloud — that Treasure Chest did have some newsstand distribution in some areas. And since he wasn't going to set up his own distributor for that purpose, he had to go through the existing ones, some of whom might have insisted on Code approval.

I don't know if anyone can answer this or even if anyone cares. But one of the accusations against the Comics Code was that it was an alliance of publishers and distributors making a move that stank of anti-trust, telling all their competitors, "You join our group, pay in money and make your product conform or we'll see that you never get on a newsstand." Wouldn't it be interesting if even a guy printing Bible stories felt he had no choice but to go along with this?

Several folks have written to ask me about the Honda commercial I linked to this morn, specifically about the part where the tires roll uphill. Back when this spot first materialized, I read a number of articles about it, few of which seem to still be online. My recollection is that while there was no camera trickery involved and while all the action actually occurred in the studio, there were gimmicks used within a few pieces. For example, the tires had weights embedded in them that caused them to roll the way they did. Hold on. Let me see if I can find anything online about this…

Yeah, here over at the Snopes site is this page which says, among other things, "The sequence where the tyres roll up a slope looks particularly impressive but is very simple. Steiner says that there is a weight [in each] tyre and when the tyre is knocked, the weight is displaced and in an attempt to rebalance itself, the tyre rolls up the slope." Sounds possible to me. That page may answer other questions you have about the spot.

On the redesigned New York Times website that debuted this week, there's a little section called Most Popular Movies. Maybe it was there on the old site but if it was, I never noticed it. But I noticed it just now and it says…

Most Popular Movies, also known as TimesPulse, calculates the most popular movies among NYTimes.com readers, based on the cumulative number of reviews read, movie details pages viewed and trailers accessed.

Know what the top movie is at this moment? The one that is reported as the most popular among the readers of that website? United 93.

Know what's odd about that? It isn't out yet. It doesn't come out until April 28.

But it's already the most popular movie among NYTimes.com readers.

Apparently, this is a measure of how many people access the trailer, which is online for viewing over there, or search for info on the film. This is not the same thing as being popular. It's called being curious, especially after reports that when the Coming Attractions are shown in some theaters, audience members get unsettled and emotional. United 93 is being written about elsewhere in the Times so that's generating inquiries, too.

A couple of the other movies on the "most popular" list aren't out yet. One that is — it came out in 1968 — is the Lucille Ball-Henry Fonda movie, Yours, Mine and Ours. It's currently #22 with NYTimes.com readers…though I'm guessing that just means that a couple of people were looking for info on the recent remake with Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo. That, however, is not what it says in The New York Times. They list the '68 version directed by Melville Shavelson.

Beware of online surveys. They know not what they do.

I had a link to this on my site a few years ago but that was back in the Paleolithic Era, long before the days of video clip embedding. In any case, if you've seen it, you won't mind seeing it again. And again and again. What we have for you today is only, I think, the most amazing commercial ever done. It's entitled "Cog," it's for the Honda Accord, it runs two minutes and what follows are the other bullet points you need to know about it…

• It is real. That is, what you're about to see was actually created in a studio and not in a CGI program. They actually set this up and did it without special effects.
• Reported total cost: Six million dollars. The spot ran mostly on British television, which is why it was able to be two minutes long. They have those there.
• It took 3-6 months to set up (accounts vary) and it was shot over a round-the-clock four-day shooting schedule in a Paris studio. The initial press releases said it required 606 takes but that number has been disputed.
• Because the studio in Paris was not large enough to house the whole thing, the commercial was shot in two parts. The edit point, which is just about impossible to spot, comes around the one minute mark. So it's two continuous takes butted together, which only detracts a wee bit from the achievement.
• Two new Hondas were disassembled to get the parts. At the time they made this, the model they were promoting had yet to hit the assembly lines so the ones they cannibalized were new, made-by-hand prototypes.
• And lastly, that's the voice of Garrison Keillor at the end, I'm told. Doesn't sound like him to me but that's who they say it is.

So now you can go ahead and watch it. Somewhere, the ghost of Rube Goldberg is either smiling or demanding royalties.

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.