Yes, I know: I'm mentioned today in the Cecil Adams Straight Dope column.

In a day or three, I'll be posting the list of panels I'll be hosting at the WonderCon in San Francisco, which takes place February 10 through 12. WonderCon is a great convention. It's run by the same expert folks who bring you the annual Comic-Con International in San Diego…but WonderCon is smaller, more intimate, more manageable and in many ways, more fun. I don't go to a lot of conventions these days. I've been to too many and experienced too much déjà vu. But I try not to miss WonderCon and you shouldn't, either.

If you're going to be in S.F. for it, you might be interested to know that the annual Chinese New Year's Parade is that Saturday night and its route takes it not far from where the convention is being held. This could be good or bad news. It could be good because it's a colorful, fun event and you might want to hike over to the parade route and enjoy the festivities. On the other hand…well, last year it coincided with Wondercon also and a batch of us tried to go to Chinatown for dinner that night. You have no idea how delightful it is to try to get a cab in San Francisco right after the parade, especially when it's pouring rain and the police have half the streets blocked-off.

Also: We'll be doing our famous Quick Draw! game at the WonderCon with Sergio Aragonés, Scott Shaw! and other fine cartoonists. But we'll also be doing a different version of it in Santa Cruz on the evening of February 9. Joe Ferrara, who runs the Atlantis Fantasyworld comic shop in that fine city is celebrating his 30th year in business so Sergio, Scott and I will be doing it there as well, along with Batton Lash, who draws the acclaimed Supernatural Law comic, and Bill Morrison, who's responsible for the comic books of The Simpsons. If you're interested in attending, here's the info.

A little while ago here, we discussed rumors that the famous hot dog stand, Tail o' the Pup, would either be moved or demolished. Here's the latest. (Thanks to David Feldman for the link.)

Michael Kinsley on why you can never believe anything a lawyer says. Especially when he's up for a seat on the Supreme Court.

Paul Krugman explains a little about why the new prescription drug plan is such an unmitigated disaster for everyone except the big drug companies. And I'd be very interested to see if anyone in the government or punditry steps forward to seriously deny it isn't. So far, all the defenses I've seen have been a lot of furious tap-dancing and attempts to change the subject.

Obits in the L.A. Times for Dennis Marks and Eldon Dedini.

Four of these really exist on the Internet. One is something we made up and as far as we know, it doesn't exist on the Internet. Your job? Spot the phony. As always, get it in one and you'll be the recipient of whatever fabulous prize you choose to purchase and bestow upon yourself. I'm thinking a new car would make it very exciting…

• SwizzleDD's Swizzle Stick Collection – There's a woman who collects swizzle sticks and she has a collection of more than 50,000 of them.
• Jeff Kaminski's Hydrant Collection – Jeff Kaminski doesn't have anywhere near as many photos of fire hydrants as SwizzleDD has swizzle sticks. But he's sure got a lot of them.
• Billbo's Major League Tetherballing – Remember playing tetherball on the playground when you were a kid? Well, "Billbo" (whoever he is) thinks it should be recognized as the national sport.
• Beedogs – You know what your dog needs? It needs a bee costume. If you love your dog, you'll dress it like a bee.
• Dogs in Cars – Here's a gallery of pictures of dogs in cars and other motor vehicles. I haven't looked through all of them but unfortunately, it would appear none of them are in bee costumes.

The sites that are real but sound like they aren't were suggested by Bill Stiteler, Tony Isabella and Joel O'Brien. Send us more addresses of those way-out and wacky World Wide Weird webpages!

Above is a ticket to attend the filming of one of the first episodes of the TV show, Our Miss Brooks. It was a fine show and it's the fiftieth entry in our sister website, Old TV Tickets. Every day or so, we add a new ticket for an old show and tell you all about it. After you get through here, go take a look.

Once upon a time, if you were utterly incompetent at your job…if you made mistakes that cost people their homes and even their lives, you got fired. But this is George W. Bush's America where the only sin is to speak against the Bush administration. Screw up but remain loyal and you can get a medal or a promotion or a no-bid contract…

…or you can even become a Keynote Speaker and a consultant in the area you couldn't handle.

We now have an Amazon link to pre-order The Laurel & Hardy Giftset which, as explained here, is a new DVD collection of three of the later films of my all-time favorite performers, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The movies are Great Guns, Jitterbugs and The Big Noise, all of which were made for Twentieth-Century Fox in the forties, all of which represent them at their not-best. Still, the not-best of Laurel and Hardy was a lot better than the best of many other entertainers.

Having said these films are inferior, I am laying myself open to several angry e-mails from Laurel and Hardy buffs who not only like these films but who react to negatives the way you'd react to someone saying your momma was funny-looking and stupid. I disagree with these folks but in a way, I envy them: They have more Laurel and Hardy movies to enjoy without reservation. There are moments in all three (though fewer of them in The Big Noise) that I can savor. Most of all though, I find myself fascinated that two comic geniuses could take such a tumble merely because they stopped making movies at a studio over on Washington Boulevard and began filming for one over on Pico. We like to believe that it's the talent that matters, not the employer, but we're all aware that the employer can shackle or misassign the talent so as to handicap it.

A lot of things went wrong with Laurel and Hardy movies after The Boys left Hal Roach studios, starting with the fact that they didn't have as fine a support team, either in terms of supporting actors or writers, nor did Stan have as much control of scripts as he'd had at Roach. But also, there is something wrong with Stan and Ollie in the films, and it isn't just that they were getting too old for slapstick. Their timing, always so superb in earlier films, is just a beat off throughout their films for Fox (and the two they made later for MGM). Even the good jokes have a heavy-handedness that diminishes them. Both men — but Hardy, especially — always had this perfect sense of scale. Every reaction, every gesture was perfectly modulated for the camera, being just broad enough without being too broad. They — and again, Hardy especially — invented a kind of character comedy on film, perfecting it in the early sound era. When everyone else was scurrying to figure out how to replace wordless pantomime with wordy banter, Laurel and Hardy found the perfect balance almost from Day One. And left it behind when they abandoned the Roach lot.

It's not surprising. No great comedian has ever gone out on top. Charlie Chaplin's last films were embarrassments. Harold Lloyd's were disappointments. The Marx Brothers went Love Happy. And after talkies came in — and not because of sound — Buster Keaton made one movie after another that seemed calculated to make us forget what everyone once loved about Buster Keaton. Only W.C. Fields didn't despoil his exit from the screen with a lot of unworthy efforts but that was probably because he had the good fortune to die when he did. If he'd lived another ten years, we would have had some really lousy W.C. Fields movies.

The three movies on this new Laurel and Hardy set are not really lousy, except maybe in comparison to their previous efforts. The Boys fit the classic definition of the True Movie Star, which is someone you want to watch even when they're in a bad film…and like I said, there are moments in all of these. I'm glad they're finally being released on DVD in what promises to be a first-class presentation of prints and extras. I just wish I could watch them without thinking, "Gee, that scene reminds me of the really good version they did ten years earlier."

What does it say about the people running our country when the only politician out there giving passionate, activist speeches about righting terrible wrongs is Al Gore?

Here's a link to the website and trailer for the new Albert Brooks movie, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. I'm eager to see it because I love Albert Brooks, even though I didn't care for his last few films. I'll probably always go to see Albert Brooks movies, even if they keep to that standard, because I will never shake my memory of how funny he once was.

One time in the mid-sixties, Carl Reiner was on The Tonight Show and Johnny Carson asked him to name the funniest person he'd ever met. He said, "I'm going to give you two names…Mel Brooks and Albert Einstein." After the audience laughed at the second name, Reiner explained he didn't mean Albert Einstein, the physicist. He meant Albert Einstein, the kid who played with his son, Rob. This Albert Einstein was the son of comedian Harry Einstein and even in his teens, Reiner said, as funny as anyone he'd ever met. And not long after, this Albert Einstein changed his name to Albert Brooks, began doing standup comedy and it became obvious that Carl Reiner was right.

It was a great loss for the world of comedy that he gave that up. Heck, it was a great loss for me…but at least I got to see one of his last live standup appearances. I laughed 'til I thought I might have to leave the room lest I injure some essential body part. No one who ever saw Brooks at his best will doubt that was a clear and present danger.

I have one personal Albert Brooks anecdote. When Lost in America opened, I took a date to see it at the first matinee on opening day in Westwood. We both enjoyed it up until the scene where Julie Hagerty goes on a gambling binge in Las Vegas and loses most of the money they have in the world. It's a funny scene but when I looked over at my lady friend, she was trembling and crying.

As she later explained to me, someone in her family had destroyed many lives by doing pretty much the same thing and it was just too painful a memory for her. "I'll wait out in the lobby," she said as she got up from her seat. Since I didn't know what the problem was at the moment, I got up to go with her, much to the annoyance of all the people we had to climb over to get out of our row.

As we headed out into the lobby, I caught a glimpse of a man sitting in the aisle seat in the last row. It was Albert Brooks and he looked like we'd struck him over the skull with a Louisville Slugger. Here it was: The first day his new movie was open and two people were walking out on it. I felt bad about his pained expression for days.

This was in 1985. Three years later, the Writers Guild was on strike and I was working the tables at a mass picketing of one of the studios. Everyone whose last name started with A-G had to check in with me. I remember I logged in Michael Blodgett, star of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and then the next two people in line were Albert Brooks and James L. Brooks, who had apparently arrived together.

I thanked them for showing up in alphabetical order, which made it easier to find their names in my paperwork. Then I said to Albert, "Listen, I have to apologize to you for something…" I told him the story of our walkout and why it had occurred and I assured him that I went back on my own a few days later and thoroughly enjoyed the whole movie. I said, "Now, I know you don't remember this but –"

And he interrupted and said, "Remember that? I had nightmares about you two. I thought you were the leaders and your walkout would give everyone else the idea and they'd all go, 'Hey, those people are right. This sucks! Let's get out of here!'" Then he grinned and said, "No, I don't remember that at all."

I hope he really didn't and that he just wasn't being nice about that last part. I've always really enjoyed his work and I wouldn't want to cause the man one sleepless moment. So just in case, when I go see Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, I'm telling Carolyn we're staying to the end, no matter what.

The other day, I posted an anecdote about Shelley Winters going in to see a youthful casting director, being asked what she'd done and hauling out her two Oscars in response. I warned that it might not be true and we still don't know if it is or it isn't. We'll never know…but I did receive a couple of interesting messages about it. This first one is from Tom Collins…

Regarding your story about Shelley Winters and the casting director, I recall hearing a slightly different version of the story (maybe you have, too). Same basic set-up as the version you printed. Winters is called in to a casting director's office to audition, which she felt was beneath her. So she comes in, sits down, but doesn't say a word. She reaches into her handbag, pulls out an Oscar, thunks it down on his desk — still wordlessly. She waits a beat, then reaches back into her bag, pulls out the second Oscar, plunks it down on his desk. She lets it sink in for a moment. Finally, she says, "Some people think I can act."

What a bold, brassy broad in the best sense. Aren't many like her left in Hollywood, more's the pity. I'm just amazed one of those Oscars wasn't for Night of the Hunter.

She didn't even get nominated for Night of the Hunter, which probably amazes everyone who's seen it. But you know what's wrong with this story? It may well have happened that way but what's wrong with it is that most auditions are not about whether someone can act. They're about whether the person is right for a particular part, and you could be the best actor in the world and still be wrong for a given role. Leaving aside all question of whether it actually occurred, the version I told is just a better story. A casting director who calls in Shelley Winters and is so ignorant of film history that he has to ask her what she's done deserves to have those Oscars rubbed in his face. That's also the case with this version of the tale sent to me by Jack Lechner…

It's possible that something like this happened with two different people — or that it never happened in either case — but I heard a version of this story about Fred Zinnemann. As in the Winters story, 70-ish Zinnemann sits down with a young executive. The exec says to Zinnemann, "So tell me about yourself." Zinnemann responds, "You first."

And I heard of that exchange, only it wasn't Fred Zinneman. It was Billy Wilder. Meanwhile, here's a note from George Haberberger…

Regarding your story about Shelley Winters pulling out her Academy Awards during auditions: I read in an obit this weekend that she donated the one she got for The Diary of Anne Frank to the Anne Frank Museum. Maybe your story happened before she donated it but that's what I read.

According to this page at the site of the Anne Frank Museum, Winters did indeed donate that Oscar to their exhibit in 1975. I get the sense that the anecdote in question, if it happened, happened later than that. Shelley was still getting starring roles in notable movies in '75. One possible explanation is that I believe the Academy has occasionally allowed people who've lost their Oscars to purchase replacements and perhaps someone bent the rules to allow Shelley Winters to have her Oscar and give it too. Anyway, here's a message from Neil Polowin…

Not sure whether you've seen it, but the Shelley Winters story about her pulling her two Oscars out of her bag has been immortalized in film, in the opening scene of 1994's Swimming With Sharks. Frank Whaley's character (assistant to studio exec Buddy Ackerman, played by Kevin Spacey) tells the story to a few other junior executive wanna-bes.

I never saw Swimming With Sharks but that's interesting to know. The great thing about most show biz stories, of course, is that it almost doesn't matter if they're true if they're useful. A number of times, I've asked people who were involved in famous anecdotes to tell me what really happened and the response is, "Wish I knew…I've heard and told so many different versions, I've lost track." Or they've told tales I was present to witness and told versions that did not match what I saw at the time. Stories get fabricated or exaggerated because they're more useful in that form. If the tale of Shelley and the Casting Director helped make a good scene in that movie, that doesn't make it true…but it makes it true enough for show business.

Today might be a good day to watch a little of the famous "I have a dream" speech by Dr. Martin Luther King. Here's a link to an online excerpt.

Here's a webpage with photos of some of the top cartoon actors. In real life, some of them aren't quite this skinny. (Thanks to Jeff Stone for the head's up.)