Blondie references in The Lockhorns, Marvin, Curtis, Hagar the Horrible, and Buckles. And the Fat Broad's killing snakes in Blondie's house in Blondie. Lemme know if I missed anything.

The other day, I reached my fill of watching scenes of people in Louisiana and Mississippi looting and crying and begging for help and even dying. If I could go out and do something to help, it would be different. But sitting here, unable to do more than donate what I can donate, there is a limit to how much pain I can watch.

Today, I have reached my fill of seeing politicans complimenting each other on the splendid relief efforts. Clearly, the relief efforts are not splendid. They are not even close to adequate and I see no evidence that the people taking bows for this minimal help have done very much at all, except maybe to interrupt vacations. Attention, Senator Landrieu: People are dying in the streets of the state you represent. Can you do a little something beyond telling us what a great job state officials did preparing for the storm and how grateful you are to George W. Bush for his strong statements of support?

I have also reached and exceeded my tolerance level with people who think that the greatest tragedy here is that they may soon wind up paying four dollars a gallon for gas…but we can speak of this another time. I have to stop thinking about this for the rest of the day.

A public memorial service for Comedy Legend Pat McCormick will be held Wednesday, September 7 at the Writers Guild Theater on Doheny in Beverly Hills. It's scheduled to start at 7PM and I wouldn't hazard a guess at what time it will end since Pat had so many friends and they had so many stories. We could be there for days.

Pat died at the end of July and I wrote this piece (and this follow-up) about one of the field's truly great comedy minds.

It's going to be an interesting evening. At these events, one often hears stories that the speakers didn't want to tell while the subject was alive. Given the tales we did hear of Pat while he was alive, you wonder what they've been holding back.

It's in Marvin.

Blondie references today in Zits, Buckles, Hagar the Horrible and Curtis. So what did I miss?

And The Wizard of Id turns up in today's Blondie.

As I've written here in the past (here and also here), there's a wonderful little show every Wednesday night at the Acme Comedy Theater up in Hollywood. The venerable game show called What's My Line? comes back from the dead as a very much alive live show. Your host is J. Keith van Straaten who may not know as many polysyllabic words as John Daly but he's a lot funnier. He presides over a nice clone of the old series, including four celebrity panelists, three "guess my occupation" guests, a lovely hostess, a one-piece band, and the special feature of the program, the appearance of the Mystery Guest for which the panelists are always blindfolded.

A packed house had a great time last night, in part because the panel included two real heavyweight stars — Rip Taylor and Jayne Meadows. Mr. Taylor entered (you may find this hard to believe) in a shower of confetti. Ms. Meadows entered to a standing ovation in recognition of her standing as a genuine legend in the field of game shows. She and her late husband Steve Allen often adorned the panel of the original What's My Line?, though they could more often be found over on its sister show, I've Got a Secret. A bit later, when she posed Steve's famous question about a contestant's product ("Is it bigger than a breadbox?"), the audience broke into even more applause.

Also on the panel were Alison Arngrim, who's best known for her years on Little House on the Prairie, and comic actor J.P. Manoux, who's presently seen on The Disney Channel's Phil of the Future. They were both quite funny but I think they'd agree that the evening belonged to Jayne and Rip.

The first guest's occupation, which the panel had to guess, was "makes confetti." The questioning started with Rip Taylor…and ended with him, as well. He guessed what the producers were up to and nailed it in three or four quick questions. The next two contestants didn't go as rapidly.

Noted science-fiction author Richard Matheson signed in as "Mr. X" and the panel failed to guess him as a top novelist and writer for shows like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek. The third contestant was a man who eats light bulbs — an odd feat which he proceeded to demonstrate, much to the squeamish of some. Then came the Mystery Guest…Larry King.

There was an explosion of applause as The Iron Horse of Broadcasting entered and signed in, please. It took about ten questions before Jayne Meadows named him, and he was a charming guest in the post-game interview. Matter of fact, it was kind of funny. King is a little too used to being the host and not to answering the questions of others. But J. Keith rose to the occasion and at the end, Jayne Meadows remarked that Mr. van Straaten's quick wit reminded her of her late husband. If there's a better compliment you can pay a game show host, I can't imagine what it might be.

Some quick plugs: Ms. Meadows spoke proudly of a forthcoming book, Inventing Late Night: Steve Allen and the Original Tonight Show by Ben Alba. Sporting an intro by Jay Leno, it details the early days of that venerable television institution. You can advance order a copy here, which I have not done because Jaynie-Bird will be appearing in November at several Los Angeles bookstores to autograph it, and I think I'd rather wait and get one signed. I'll let you know the Where and When of the signings, or you might keep your eye on her website.

You might also keep an eye on Rip Taylor's website, especially to see when he'll next be doing his one-man autobiographical show. Rip has had an amazing career — done everything, worked with everyone — and he's a genuinely nice, funny man. His website is filled with reports of where he's been, who he's met, etc. Alison Arngrim has a nice website, too. And J.P. Manoux has maybe the best "actor's" website I've seen. Check it out and make sure you hit the page where you can play "Six Degrees of Separation" from him.

So it's a fun evening and one I recommend highly. The only downside is that the show is about to lose its incredible musician, Adam Chester. He's the guy in the back row, far right, in the photo above and he's off to the East Coast to play some gigs in Elton John's band. (Here's Adam's website, which plays some of his music.) I'm sure they'll have a decent replacement but Adam is darned good.

What's My Line? Live on Stage plays every Wednesday night at the Acme Theater through the middle of November. If you're not sick of links by now, visit J. Keith van Straaten's page for details on upcoming performances. I'd suggest phoning early for reservations as they sold out tonight and I have the feeling that's going to be the norm for the rest of the run.

Hey, you know how I've been touting Operation USA as a great place to send your donations to help areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina? Well, United Airlines is working a promotion with them whereby members of its Mileage Plus frequent flyer program can earn bonus miles when they donate. Details here. Thanks, Shelly.

You can also donate any Mileage Plus miles you have to Operation USA on this page. I'm giving all I have to them, including the ones I'll earn for an additional cash donation I make.

And now it's come to this: Betty Boop has gone to work for Hooters. That's right…Betty Boop, a 75 year old woman, has taken a job with a restaurant chain that forces women to wear tight shorts and tighter tops as they serve overpriced and overspiced chicken wings. I hope Grampy doesn't hear of this.

Poor Betty. We all know how even at the peak of her superstardom, she was horrendously underpaid. Max Fleischer compensated her so poorly she was never able to even afford a profile. Still, she managed to maintain her dignity…if you can call consorting with Koko the Clown "dignified." I guess she had to do this to eat, which is the only reason women go to Hooters. Men certainly don't.

Seriously, there's something highly symbolic — I'm not sure what but there's something — about the fantasy sex symbol of one era intermingling with the fantasy sex symbols of another. And while I've never been in a Hooters, I've walked past them and there always seems to be some lady serving out front who can't quite fit into the outfit they have her wearing. Given how real those women always seem, Betty's gonna feel right at home.

I think I'm going into one of my "don't read the news for a while" periods. There are a lot of tragedies and potential tragedies out there and at some point yesterday — well, I can tell you when it was; it was ten minutes into Keith Olbermann's report on hurricane devastation — something in me just said, "Enough." I understand how bad it is and have done the microscopic amount that I can do to help. Time to start restoring normality in my own life where I just might be able to make a difference. Eventually, maybe as soon as tonight, there will be something on this weblog besides Blondie links and me mumbling about what I've been mumbling about.

Thanks for putting up with my foul mood. And thanks to all of you who've dropped me notes to say that you've sent cash to Operation USA. Made you feel a little better, didn't it? Yeah, me too.

I missed one. The comic strip Buckles has been crossing over for a few days now. Here's the first one, here's the second one and here's today's.

Blondie references can be found today in Hagar the Horrible, Family Circus, Marvin, Curtis and what else? Help me out here, people.

And of course, you should always check out the day's Blondie strip here. They've had some pretty clever ones the last few days.

Several folks have written me to ask if the cartoonists are drawing each others' characters or how that works. In some cases, the cartoonists are drawing in the guest stars. In some other cases, it looks like stats have been pasted in.

Apart from fulfilling my Blondie-monitoring obligations, I haven't felt like posting anything here lately. I have nothing to say about the mess Down South apart from the obvious thoughts about how depressing and tragic it is, and how we should be better prepared for things like this. I don't need to write that and you don't need to read it…but it also feels so trivial and uncaring to write about almost anything else.

I started composing a piece about the Iraq War, which of course is not a trivial topic, but it kept veering into a criticism that we're expending resources Over There that we could desperately use Over Here. I don't want to make the mistake that many bloggers seem to be making today of trying to use Hurricane Katrina to bolster their partisan arguments…and besides, I don't even believe it has to be an either/or situation. The richest, most powerful nation on the planet ought to be able to deal with a war and a couple of natural disasters at the same time. And if we aren't, that is hardly a failing that can be blamed on any one administration or Congress.

So I can't write about the hurricane and I can't not write about it. I'm way behind on a script and even farther behind on replying to e-mail (my apologies if yours is waiting) and…well, I'll be caught up or at least out of this mood shortly. Things will be normal again here…just maybe not for a day or two.

In the meantime, if you've been thinking of donating some money to this website, please do the following instead. Double the amount you were considering and send it instead to someone who's going to help someone in Louisiana or Mississippi or any of the other affected states. If I were you, I'd give it to Operation USA, which I've found does more good with donations than most other charities. It made me feel better to send them some cash and it might have the same effect on you. So give it a try.

Dagwood Bumstead visits Baby Blues.

Yesterday's Marvin strip and today's.

Given what's in the news, I'm really not in the mood to care about Blondie crossovers but I started this so I'm going to keep going…

In today's papers, Blondie crossovers and references could be found in Curtis, Buckles, Hagar the Horrible and the strip that oughta be called Snuffy Smith but some papers insist on calling it Barney Google. Matter of fact, this last gets in a good joke over the fact that Barney makes only a token appearance, every decade or so, in the strip that sometimes sports his name. I guess he's been busy raking in billions from the search engine he founded.