Here's a nice little display of all the covers of MAD Magazine in an unusual way. Thanks to Mike Everleth for calling it to my attention.

Everyone's promising me indictments tomorrow but some are cautioning they may be secret indictments. Okay, fine. I'll settle for secret indictments just so long as we know all about them. I almost can't wait to wake up and find out not only who's been indicted but which side will be calling Patrick Fitzgerald an irresponsible partisan.

Sure looks like it. A lot of you have written me to say, "Be not disheartened. Wednesday looks like it'll bring indictments. Or maybe Thursday." Yeah, yeah. That's how it always is. Tomorrow. And then tomorrow, it'll be tomorrow.

Some of you have also written that the indictments, when they come, will be explosive and worth the wait. I think you're missing the point here. I don't care who's indicted or how close they are to Dick Cheney. I just want someone indicted, preferably many someones. The more, the merrier.

I'm giving them until the end of the week. If I don't see some indictments by Friday, I start indicting. In fact, I'll start by indicting all the people who were supposed to issue indictments and let me down. Then I'll go after people I've mentioned on this website. Nathan Lane? I'll indict him. Charles Lane? Indicted. In fact, I may just indict everyone in the country named Lane. Allan Sherman? So what if he's dead? I can still indict him. I'll also be indicting everyone who has never clicked on one of my "give money to the website" banners like this one…

That's right…I can be bribed. And if you think that's wrong, what are you going to do about it? Indict me? Ha!

Nice to know the folks at the White House don't have anything more important to deal with than this.

Here's another photo of Charles Lane, this time playing a gym coach in the 1965 movie, Billie. In the film, Patty Duke played a high school girl who tried out for the boys' track team and put all the males to shame. Her secret? A little rock 'n' roll mantra she called "The Beat." I know it's hard to believe, given that plot summary, but it was not a great movie. If you want to order a copy of it on DVD, here's a link but I don't particularly recommend it. The film's main redeeming feature is that it was filled with good character actors including Jim Backus (seen at right above), Ted Bessell, Billy DeWolfe, Richard Deacon and, of course, Mr. Lane. Remember when you could cast people like that and make unwatchable material watchable?

But I didn't post the above photo to make that point. One of my oldest friends is a devout reader of this weblog, Bruce Reznick, and this is for him. Hey, Bruce! Recognize that track in the background? You and I used to run around it back when we both could run. That's University High School in West Los Angeles, our alma mater…though I don't remember us having any gym coaches like Charles Lane. Ours were much meaner.

Anything? Anything?

Aw, shucks. Doesn't look like there are any yet.

Oh, well. The week is young.

Here we have a photo of artist Bill Watterson and in this article, about as much info about the creator of Calvin and Hobbes as we're likely to get from a reporter.

I am told that copies of the newly-released Complete Calvin and Hobbes have been flying off the tables at Costco, and are presumably being snatched up at other stores, as well. A friend of mine who's a huge fan of the strip told me he was hoping the book would sell poorly. His logic was that the more money Watterson makes off it, the less likely he is to ever come back and do it or something else again. My impression of Watterson, based on the one phone call we had years ago and on a long chat with an exec at his syndicate, is that he's not out to see how much cash he can make in this world. So you can probably buy this new collection without fear that you're depriving yourself of future Watterson work.

(P.S. If you want to buy this book from Amazon, here's a link and it's one of those that will pay me a slight commission. They have it for $94.50 plus postage. If you're a member of Costco, their website sells it a bit cheaper but I don't make anything off it. My friend Gordon Kent told me that it was eighty bucks plus tax at his local Costco. It's probably about the same at a Sam's Club.)

Here's a shot from the 1962 movie of The Music Man. The guy at far right is Charles Lane. If you don't know who Charles Lane is, go read this posting and then read this one and then, once you know who Charles Lane is, come back here and read the rest of this posting. We'll wait for you.

Now then. One of the eight million movies in which Charles Lane played a mean old man was, obviously, The Music Man. This afternoon, the American Cinematheque group ran it out at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica. The guest of honor, interviewed on stage before the film began, was Charles Lane.

The place was packed with film buffs, all of whom chuckled at the marquee which along with the name of the movie included big letters that said CHARLES LANE LIVE. If I were closing in on my 101st birthday, I think I'd enjoy seeing that in lights. Mr. Lane's appearance was preceded by a fifteen minute sampler of a documentary on his life and career that's currently being produced. (In fact, cameras at the event were getting footage to be included in it.) Much of the fifteen minutes consisted of clips from different films and TV shows in which he appeared and it was staggering. We all know how much he'd done but still, we sat there, amazed to see scenes in rapid-fire. There's Charles Lane with Groucho. There's Charles Lane with Barrymore. There's Charles Lane with Lucy. There's Charles Lane in It's a Wonderful Life and State of the Union and 42nd Street and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and before long, we were all going, "My God, this man's been in everything!" The funny part is that he was playing an old man seventy years ago.

The interview was delightful. Mr. Lane can't recall much of his fabulous career but he's still rather sharp. Asked about the secret of his longevity, he said he had no idea and that for fifty years, he smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. (His friend, actor Robert Donner, was in the audience and he corrected Lane. Apparently, it was three packs a day.) He loved everyone he ever worked with but singled out Lucy and Desi, as well as director Frank Capra, and seemed very moved at the several standing ovations he received. He also managed to spit out a few lines in perfect keeping with this grouchy screen character. It was a very touching presentation.

So was the movie that followed. I keep forgetting how much I enjoy a certain kind of movie when it's on a big screen and I'm watching it in the dark with other people. There is much that is sappy in The Music Man and the plot has more holes than an old colander but I don't care. It always gets to me, especially at the end when Professor Harold Hill says, "I always think there's a band" — for me, one of the great moments in cinema history. Robert Preston is wonderful, Shirley Jones is wonderful, Paul Ford and Hermione Gingold are wonderful, the whole thing is wonderful. I'd be very happy if the American Cinematheque people would show this every year or two. Especially if they can get Charles Lane to show up each time.

All of those New York Times columns for which I'm paying fifty bucks a year to read are now turning up for free on the website of a group called Truthout. I don't know why the Times hasn't shut it down but maybe the folks there have more important things to worry about these days.

Since it's there, you might want to read this weekend's Frank Rich column, which lays out a timeline for why certain "stories" seem to have spread by the White House. I'd also suggest a glance at a piece by Nicholas P. Kristof, which is about how a Bush administration decision is causing people in Niger to die, many of them pregnant women. One of the problems I have with the "pro-life" movement is how arbitrary and selective it seems to be about which lives are sacred and must be protected at all costs.

It was kind of peaceful this morning…to wake up and not have to race to the computer to see if there had been any indictments of anyone. Nobody indicts on Sunday.

The official-sounding sources seem to suggest that we won't see indictments from Patrick Fitzgerald before Wednesday…if then. But I'm to the point where I'll take indictments from anyone about anything. I may even start indicting people myself before the week is out.

On the Sunday morn newschat programs today, several prominent Republicans were making the following case: You know, just because you can find some technical contradiction of fact in someone's sworn testimony, that doesn't mean it's proper to charge them with perjury. Uh-huh. Right. But of course.

That would ordinarily make me think they know that some high official in the Bush administration is about to be slapped with a perjury rap. But if you look over everything that's being said about this case by folks who might be in a position to know, you realize that at least 80% of it has to be faulty. So believe it at your own risk.

Paul Jacob explains that when Senators say they're against pork-barrel spending, they mean "in any state but mine."

Here's a link to a free read of the Maureen Dowd column I mentioned in the previous message. Thanks, Bruce.

I suppose it's too much to hope for weekend indictments.

It's kinda fascinating to watch the public mea culpas and recriminations of The New York Times. Clearly, the Times made a lot of errors and misjudgments on both the Valerie Plame story and all the stories that parroted and/or validated Bush administration claims that got us into the Iraq war. Clearly too, I think, other newspapers made and often make these kinds of mistakes and never admit them, which is less healthy than what the Times does. In many ways, the measure of a newspaper is in not how much they get wrong but in what they do when that's pointed out to them. Today's Maureen Dowd column, which I'd link to if I could find you a free route, basically says that a lot of Judy Miller's headline stories were journalistic malpractice. I wonder how many papers would allow a columnist to say that the people editing the front page screwed up royally. Not many, I'm guessing.

We're thinking only good thoughts for those in the path of Hurricane Wilma. I read somewhere else on the 'net — I forget where — that what with tsunamis and quakes and floods and fires and hurricanes, a certain amount of Disaster Fatigue is settling over people lately. It's almost like, "Ho-hum…another few cities destroyed."

A lot of people have now donated as much money to relief efforts as they can afford for a while. Last week, a man came to my door soliciting donations for a downtown mission. Now, I have a policy: I don't like people coming to my door without an invite. I don't care what you're selling, how much good you're doing. Knock on my door and I won't sign your petition, donate to your cause, vote for your candidate, convert to your religion or buy your Thin Mints. I'm especially firm with regard to charity donations. I make all I can justify to a couple of recognized, established funds that I know do good work with what I send them. Why give money to strangers with no office? Anyway, when I told the mission solicitor that I wouldn't be giving him any cash, he did a little body language that I'm pretty sure meant, "Another one who won't donate" — like he was doing much, much worse than he usually did with these rounds.

It reminded me of an old Jewish joke that, some of you may recall, turns up in Fiddler on the Roof. A beggar asks a man for a handout and the man gives him one coin. The beggar says, "One? Last week, you gave me two." The man says, "I had a bad week" and the beggar says, "Because you had a bad week, I should suffer?" I got the feeling the fellow who came to my door wanted to say, "Because the people of New Orleans had a bad week, my mission should suffer?"

My pal Tom Stewart writes…

About the movie of The Producers being compared to, well, the movie of the musical, The Producers. While I'm a huge fan of the original movie, I think the musical solved a problem I always had with the first version: it has no real third act. I've always felt that it was 2/3rd of an excellent movie. After Max, Leo and Franz blow up the theatre, the movie runs out of the invention that drove the first part, and peters out. The play comes up with the terrific "Betrayed" number, the courtroom scene, and truly lives up to the promise of the first 2/3rd of the movie version.

The real comparison I think would be between Zero Mostel, Nathan Lane, Gene Wilder, and Matthew Broderick. For that, I'll reserve comment until I see the movie, but I don't think anyone will make me forget Mostel and Wilder.

I don't know how many people know this but The Producers (the original movie) had some severe changes made to its last reel or two after it first previewed. Mr. Brooks's first "final cut" had a much longer "blowing up the theater" sequence with Bialystock, Bloom and Liebkind crawling around and fussing with dud bombs and quick fuses and such. Some of that still exists in some TV prints but most of it was excised to make room for the courtroom scene, which was added later. This is the scene where Bloom makes his little speech about how much Bialystock has brought to his life and it was filmed a few months after the rest of the film. In fact, by then Kenneth Mars was unavailable so they wrapped some other guy in bandages to play Franz. I think you may be right that the stage version does it one better.

I don't think anyone can ever "replace" Mostel and Wilder in the minds of anyone who loved the first movie but I'll tell you an interesting thing. Just before the musical opened, there was a 2-hour documentary (infomercial) that ran on New York TV — scenes from rehearsals, interviews with everyone working on the project, etc. And in there was an interview with Gene Wilder in which he said, so help me, that he thought Nathan Lane was better in the role than Zero. I had to replay the tape three times to make sure he'd said that but he did. He's entitled to his opinion, of course, but it struck me as an odd conclusion to reach and an odder thing to say aloud. I'm a tremendous fan of Mr. Lane but that's a comparison that doesn't help him, doesn't help the memory of Mr. Mostel and doesn't help fans of the original movie to appreciate the musical version.

I'm probably posting way too much about this movie. I guess that's the kind of thing you do when you don't have any indictments to write about. But I was fascinated in how they transferred the film to the stage so I'm naturally fascinated with how they're going to transfer it back.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has set up his own website…but there are still no indictments. Come on, Pat. Indict someone…anyone. Indict the guy in the suit covered in question marks in those commercials. Nobody likes him. Indict Martha Stewart again. That was very popular. Indict the Los Angeles Dodgers for impersonating a baseball team.

If you're not ready yet to indict a person, how about a house pet? Maybe a nice indicted hamster or parrot? You could indict the parrot for refusing to talk.

How about a ham sandwich? Prosecutors are always supposed to be able to indict them. (It apparently has something to do with the disproportionate number of lawyers who are Jewish.)

Come on, already. You can do it. We're counting on you.