Jacob Weisberg tosses out the idea that while a military draft would not work today in this country, the lack of one ain't working too well, either. I think he's probably right but that there isn't a single politician alive who wants to touch that third rail and discuss the matter, let alone change things.

In 1966, my father and I went to a movie at the Crest Theater, which was on Westwood Boulevard just south of Wilshire. I forget what the movie was but the trailer was for a film called Penelope starring Natalie Wood, Dick Shawn, Peter Falk and Jonathan Winters. I, of course, instantly noticed that it was a reunion of three of the leads from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. What interested my father was that Jonathan Winters was in it. (He may also have been interested in the scenes in the trailer that had Ms. Wood running around in her underwear. Come to think of it, so was his son. I was fourteen and I was interested in any woman running around in her underwear. If it was Natalie Wood, so much the better. But when you're fourteen, you're not that fussy.)

My father thought Jonathan Winters was the funniest human being on the planet — a not-uncommon opinion, then or now. "We'll have to see that," he said to me. A week or two later, we were back at the Crest seeing that. My recollection is that, underwear scenes aside, neither one of us liked the movie much. You got the feeling that a lot more thought had gone into Natalie Wood's wardrobe — she seemed to go through about ninety-seven outfits in 97 minutes — than into the script.

We especially disliked the paucity of Mr. Winters. Though billed as a star, he was in the film for what seemed like about two minutes. It was probably more than that but I'll bet it wasn't a lot more than that. Four minutes, tops. It was certainly not an appearance commensurate with his billing. His name on the marquee of the Crest was just as large as Natalie's. What's more, about half of his performance was obviously done by a stuntman…and most of it had been in that trailer. If you'd seen the Coming Attractions, you'd pretty much seen Jonathan's contribution to Penelope.

On the way out that evening, my father felt swindled and it wasn't because the movie wasn't very good. It was because he felt it had been misrepresented. A man who I guess was the manager of the Crest said to us at the door, "Hope you'll come back soon," and my father blurted out his dissatisfaction. He pointed to the marquee and said, "We came to see Jonathan Winters. You shouldn't have his name up there if he's only in the movie for three minutes."

Immediately, the manager whipped out four free passes, almost like he'd had them ready for us. "Please accept these with my sincere apologies," he said. Then he turned to an employee and said, "Go get the letters for the front and the ladder. I want to change something." Sure enough, the next day when we happened to drive down Westwood, the name of Jonathan Winters was no longer on the Crest marquee. Dick Shawn's was in its place.

I'm sure this all sounds trivial today but I remember the incident vividly. It was the first time I was ever acutely aware that you ought to speak up when things aren't right…and not just because you might get something (like free passes) out of it. You do it because few things that oughta be fixed ever get fixed if no one says anything.

It is, of course, possible to overdo this. I broke up with one lady friend because she seemed to go through life, finding fault everywhere and demanding that the world be corrected to her liking. It got very tiresome, especially when I found myself fixing things that really didn't need to be fixed, just so she'd stop telling me they did. A lot of people criticize because they like the attention it gives them and the feeling of power to make others jump through hoops to please them. There have been times in my life when my biggest complaint has been people with complaints. Still, it's just as wrong, if not more so, to suffer in silence.

So that's the memory I associate with the movie Penelope, which I haven't seen since '66. In fact, I can't recall ever seeing that it was running on TV or available on home video…but it's on Turner Classic Movies this Friday evening and I'm setting a TiVo. This is not a recommendation that you do likewise since I barely remember anything about it except for how quickly Jonathan Winters disappeared and that I didn't like anything except Ms. Wood's undies. Then again, how bad can a movie with Dick Shawn, Peter Falk and (briefly) Jonathan Winters be? Plus, it also has Lou Jacobi and Carl Ballantine…so right there, you have five of my favorite comic actors.

Still, tape or TiVo it at your own risk, especially if you want to see what Ms. Wood is and isn't wearing in it. I'm just watching to see if it's any better than I remember…and also, I want to run a stopwatch on Jonathan Winters's screen time. I have the feeling you could use it to time a boiled egg.

Larry Johnson writes about how the Bush administration uses the language in evasive ways. You know, they said Al Qeada was behind 9/11 and they said Saddam Hussein was indistinguishable from Al Qeada in the war on terror that began that day. But they never meant to imply that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11.

One of the most-visited pages on this website is this article that I wrote in 1999 about a brave comedian/puppeteer named Rod Hull. The late Mr. Hull was a huge star in some countries for his performances with Emu, a mean-spirited rubber bird who tended to attack everyone within reach.

Our video extravaganza today is a short clip (under two minutes) from an appearance Rod and Emu made on a Dutch TV show. It's nowhere near his best or funniest work but at least it'll give you some idea of what the puppet looked like and how much audiences delighted in its antics. Click on the little arrow and enjoy. [NOTE: This is an ifilm link and it doesn't seem to work for all browsers. If it doesn't work in yours, you can see the clip by going to this page.]

Alan Light sent me this link to a page of photos of prize-winning rabbits. Just go look and see if there haven't been times you've felt like that.

As noted, I'm very interested in the pro-Iraq War arguments, especially those that don't spring from a "Bush doesn't make mistakes" demagogy. My request for links has brought me this article by Christopher Hitchens, this piece by Fouad Ajami, this article by Victor Davis Hanson and this weblog by Bill Roggio. What I mainly notice is that most of these explain why the goal is or was proper and even if the execution has been horribly botched, we have to "stay the course" because if we did it right, it would be well worth doing. I suspect that will become the position of more and more hawks who can't deal with the way things are going over there and over here.

Yesterday afternoon, I came as close as I ever have to killing another human being…and the guy wasn't even an inept TV producer. At least, I don't think he was. He looked to be about twenty and he was riding a shiny new motorcycle on Third Street, darting down an imaginary lane that he thought existed between the real ones in which I and many other folks were driving. He was ducking and weaving and when he abruptly pulled in front of me, I had to brake and steer madly to the right to avoid getting his innards all over my hood. I came within about four pixels of crashing into him or someone else.

Two blocks down, I stopped for a traffic light and the kid was next to me, gunning the engine on what I think was a brand new Kawasaki. I yelled to him, "That's not a smart way to ride" — and I guess he didn't hear me because his response was, "Today's my birthday." Or maybe he did hear me and expected me to say, "Oh, it's your birthday. Then by all means, drive like an idiot!" Before I could say anything else to him, the light turned green and a nanosecond later, he was doing sixty down the boulevard, zig-zagging between Hummers and Hondas.

I don't know what it is lately but everyone's driving like they're desperate to get on The World's Wildest Police Videos. Maybe it's the proliferation of Starbucks outlets. I gave up caffeine about a month ago and since then, it seems like the whole world is a silent movie projected on a sound projector. Everyone and everything is about eight frames per second too fast. If it were up to me, those electric signs on the freeway wouldn't be displaying fraudulent estimates of how long it'll take you to get somewhere. They'd just flash in big letters, WHAT'S THE HURRY, BUB?

It's a lesson we all need to learn — especially that kid on the Kawasaki. I don't know if that cycle was the best birthday present he's ever received…but I have a feeling it'll be his last.

All this talk about What's My Line? reminds me that I should alert my friends in the Los Angeles area: Tomorrow (Wednesday) night at the Acme Comedy Theater in Hollywood, you can see the wonderful What's My Line? Live show — four witty panelists, a fine host, a lovely hostess, a great musician, three contestants and one Mystery Guest. None of them are the people in the above photo but that's only because the people in the photo are all dead. If they were still with us, they'd be proud to participate in this faithful and funny re-creation of the original series.

You can go tomorrow night or you can go next Wednesday night…but after that, the show's taking a hiatus. So you might want to go before that happens. It's a lot of fun and the details are all here.

Not long ago here — in this post, to be exact — we were talking about the famous Abbott and Costello comedy routine, "Who's on First?" So today, I'm linking to a six minute version of it that they did on (I think) The Colgate Comedy Hour. Looks like that's where it's from.

Anyway, one of the things I find interesting about watching those two guys at work is that Bud Abbott's contribution goes so unnoticed. Everyone thought Lou Costello was the guy who did all the heavy lifting in that team and that Abbott was getting an enormous free ride. But you can see it in this clip if you watch carefully: It's Abbott who's running things. Costello is getting the laughs and pulling focus and it's all about him…but Bud's the one who keeps driving the routine forward. A couple of times, Costello bobbles the words and Abbott is right there to get things back on script.

In burlesque and vaudeville, it was traditional for the straight man in a comedy act to get paid more than the comic. Part of that was because the straight man was usually expected to dress well and to do other emcee duties…but part of it was because it was recognized that he had the harder job. When Abbott and Costello teamed, that's how it was — Bud got 60%, Lou got 40% — and it stayed that way 'til they got big and Costello insisted on a change. Thereafter, the percentages were reversed. This was probably fair in the sense that audiences loved Costello and were generally indifferent to Abbott…but appearances can be deceiving. The more I watch Abbott and Costello, more conscious I am that Abbott contributed just as much to their performances.

Before we get to our film presentation, I need to mention something. The other day here, I told you a way to capture the video clips that are embedded on this site and others, and suggested you might want to do this because clips sometimes get removed from the web. Well, that's happened with the Tom Lehrer video I linked to a week ago last Friday. If you notice that any of the other embedded videos here go dead, let me know so I can remove the link.

Okay, that's all I wanted to say. Take it away, Bud and Lou…

Looking ahead at GSN's reruns of ancient What's My Line? episodes: I just told you what's on Tuesday morning. Wednesday morning, the Mystery Guest is the legendary movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck. Thursday morning, it's Gordon and Sheila MacRae and one of the contestants is a hot dog vendor named Mike Kilkenny. Mr. Kilkenny later stopped selling franks at ball parks and started playing…for the Detroit Tigers and a couple of other teams.

Friday morn, they should be airing an episode with Melina Mercouri as the Mystery Guest and Victor Borge on the panel. The episode was notable because at one point, an intruder walked out on the stage — this was live television, remember — and started delivering a commercial for a dating service. He was quickly removed and turned over to the police who reportedly had trouble figuring out what crime he could be prosecuted for. In his book about the show, producer Gil Fates noted that it was not against the law to deliver a commercial on television.

Saturday morning, the Mystery Guest is Joan Crawford. Sunday morning, it's Robert Ryan and Nanette Fabray. Next Monday morning, it's Tony Martin. And then next Tuesday morning — and I'm going this far into the future so I can mention this — it's Robert Goulet, but the show also features as Mystery Guests, the cast of Beyond the Fringe. Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore were then playing New York. So there's a nice bit of history.

The What's My Line? episode that airs on GSN tonight — actually, tomorrow morning — features among its contestants a woman named Joanna Lee. Ms. Lee was a writer of sitcoms beginning in the sixties and she was among the writers of The Flintstones. She wasn't the first woman to ever write for animation but she may have been the second. (The first may have been Barbara Chain, who wrote for Crusader Rabbit and Mr. Magoo.)

Paul Krugman writes about what he called "Bogus Bush Bashing," meaning erroneous criticisms of the guy in the White House. Those of you still on Bush's side won't like this column any more than the ones that just criticize the guy.

Before I forget: The other day, I asked for suggestions of sites that presented the history of the Iraq War with a "things are going well" viewpoint. I've only received three nominations, all of which were to subscription-only sites that I can't read, let alone link to. One person did offer the thought that I'd already linked to one with the Donald Rumsfeld article I recommended last Saturday. If nothing better comes along, that may have to do.

Fred Kaplan discusses some of the things that went wrong in Iraq.

Greg Preston is a photographer and comics enthusiast I met several years ago. He was then travelling the country and taking photos of cartoonists, comic book illustrators and animators for a proposed book project which, I am happy to say, is finally happening. This summer, Dark Horse will release The Artist Within, a hardcover collection of Greg's photos, which are very, very good at capturing the personality of the subjects. In most cases, the subjects were photographed in their natural habitats — their studios — and the backgrounds themselves are full of fascinating details.

Amazon is taking advance orders for the book, which they say will be out at the end of August. I hear it'll be out in time for the Comic-Con International in July. Whenever it comes out, you'll want a copy of it.

This has been around the Internet for a while and I may even have linked to it long ago…but hey, there's gotta be someone visiting this site who hasn't seen it. I'm not a big fan of trained animal acts but sometimes, the animal seems to be enjoying it so much that that alone makes it fun to watch. The lady is named Carolyn Scott, the Golden Retriever is named Rookie and the clip runs a bit over two minutes…