Back here, I predicted that Michael Jackson would probably moonwalk (i.e., be acquitted) in his current child molestation case. I would like to reverse my prediction. It was made at a time when it looked like the judge would not allow evidence and testimony relating to other cases wherein the King of Pop allegedly put his hands where they didn't belong…and hey, how's that for a euphemism? And if the judge had indeed ruled that way, my prediction would stand. There's enough to tar the parents of the supposed victim as money-grubbers who are not above ginning up a phony charge, that I figured the jury would give Jackson the benefit of the doubt.

But the judge is allowing a parade of other victims or witnesses to victimization, and that changes things. I figure if I'm on the jury, I'm thinking, "Well, he may not have been wholly guilty in this case but he's gotten away with too much for too long." In that case, I don't think I could live with myself if I let Jackson go and then, six months or a year from now, read about him paying off more molested kids to keep quiet. Conversely, if we all vote to convict, the worst that can happen is that a pedophile has been stopped, albeit for the wrong instance.

On the other hand, I can't imagine M.J. actually going to prison. Hmm…you know what I think? I think I oughta go to bed. Good night, all.

Here's an easy review: If you have any interest in EC Comics, you need a copy of Foul Play, a fine new book by my pal, Grant Geissman. It's an overview of the artists who worked for the company (like Al Williamson, the fellow in the photo above). There's a bio, art samples and one complete story for each of them, plus you get a lot of little extras, like drawings done for company stationery and office parties. There's also one story that was never published 'til now. I just received my copy, sat down to read a little and got hooked, working my way through the entire thing before I put it down. Grant knows the topic well and quotes liberally from interviews with the men (and one woman) who did such lasting work. Click here to buy it from Amazon.

E.J. Dionne discusses the looming repeal of the Estate Tax. I'm actually a big fan of tax cuts but this one, I think, has been sold to the American people with a lot of fraudulent information, including calling it the "Death Tax" to load the emotional argument. It's really a loophole for the super-rich to pass on wealth to their heirs without anyone ever paying taxes on it.

Here's a link to a 2000 article by Michael Kinsley about why this is, and here's an excerpt for the benefit of folks who are too lazy to click on that link…

The truth is that most of the accumulated wealth that is subject to the estate tax was never taxed at all as income. Repeat: never taxed at all. If the estate tax is abolished, the average billionaire's billion-and-first dollar will be subject to a cumulative tax rate of zero. By comparison, the very first dollar earned by someone frying burgers at McDonald's is subject to the FICA tax of about 15 percent. (Investment income is exempt from FICA.)

[snip…]

The reason most inherited wealth was never taxed as income is that it consists of so-called "appreciated property." The simplest example is shares of stock. If you buy at $100 and die at $120, your $20 profit is never taxed as income. When your heirs sell the stock, their profit is calculated as if they bought at $120.

Like I said, I like tax cuts. I'm just skeptical that tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy won't eventually translate into tax increases in some form for the average working guy. Has anyone ever seen any of these crusaders for lower taxes ever expend much energy on lowering payroll taxes?

Master voiceover artist Bob Bergen is arranging a sea cruise for folks interested in joining his profession. Check out this page on his website for info. And check out his entire website for lots of good tips on the field, and demos of Bob's outstanding work.

Michael Tomasky notes that George W. Bush has become one of the least-popular chief execs of the last few decades but the press doesn't want to say that.

Several of you have written to call my attention to this article on the use of Digital Video Noise Reduction. This is a handy process that cleans up the image when a live-action movie is transferred to digital format, such as is seen on DVDs. However, when used injudiciously on animation, it wipes out portions of the image that should be retained. We need to make more of a stink about this. (For further research, consult this article from a few years back by Amid Amidi.)

We are about to see a flurry of investigations of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay…a man who's in enough trouble that his Republican colleagues had to pass a rule that said he would not lose his leadership post if he were indicted by a Texas grand jury. I have no idea if he will survive or not.

But don't you get the idea that once all the inquiries are done, the real scandal will be not what DeLay has done that violates the law but all the things he was able to get away with that didn't violate the law?

When the Enron investigations started, a friend of mine predicted that no one of any importance would serve any real time behind bars. I asked why he felt that way. He said, "Because guys like that have done such a good job getting laws amended their way and working the loopholes that they could rob a liquor store and shoot the manager…and it still would not be, in some technical sense, illegal."

For no particular reason, other than that I just made reservations for an upcoming trip, I decided to jot down some things that I wish hotels did differently…

• I've rarely been in a hotel room where I didn't wish I had a foot more of space in the bathroom even if it meant a foot less in the rest of the room.
• A promise of "High-Speed Internet Access" can mean a lot of different things, including the fact that it's there but priced way too high. It can also mean the television has some kind of WebTV add-on which lets you play some online games and read a few news and weather sites…but you can't hook up your laptop or check your e-mail. It can even mean they have High-Speed Internet Access for guests in the hotel but it's in a Business Center that's only open during limited hours. The term "High-Speed Internet Access" should mean a wired or wireless Ethernet connection in each room, and if there's a charge, it should be no more than the popular going rate of around ten bucks for 24 hours of access. There are hotels that have rates for 15 or 30 minutes of access, and that's just cruel, given that it will often take a few minutes of configuring to get and keep a proper connection.
• Hotels sometimes put up signs cautioning guests not to hang things on the fire sprinkler outlets. That's fine, but it would help if we had other places to hang things. How much would it cost to put some strong hooks up here and there around a room?
• I would much rather have a soda dispenser and a snack machine down the hall than a well-stocked mini-bar in my room. And yes, I know: The point of it is that you wouldn't pay that price for a Sprite if it came out of a vending machine. But I wonder if those little in-room, overpriced convenience stores really make that much more for the hotel, given how they cause us all to buy drinks and snacks elsewhere, or to do without.
• Have you ever tried to plug in something that you want to place on or around the bedside table? You usually find that there's one outlet on that wall and it's hidden behind the bed. You have to move the mattress and box springs to get to it and often, it's only a duplex and both slots are full. The bedside lamp is plugged into one, the clock is plugged into the other, and unless I remembered to bring an octopus adapter, I have to decide which to live without.
• Speaking of that clock: At least three times in my life, I've been prematurely awakened in a hotel because the alarm was set for some ungodly hour by the guest who had that room before me. I've learned to check this, but wouldn't it be great if hotel alarm clocks could only be set for one night at a time?
• Too many of those who design hotel rooms decide you'll watch TV from bed or not at all.
• There's such a thing as too many mirrors in a bathroom. There are things you do in there that you'd rather not have to look at yourself doing.
• I've never liked those showers-in-a-tub because the mat you have to stand on is always too slippery. Once in a hotel in Arizona, the room had something which I wish all hotels had. It was a wooden platform you could place in the bathtub. It locked into place in little brackets and you stood on that if you were showering or took it out if you were using the tub as a tub. Very efficient…but I've never seen this in any other hotel.
• Here's something I've never understood. When I go to Costco and buy in bulk, I can get normal-sized 4.5 ounce bars of soap for about forty cents each. That means a hotel probably could buy them for around a quarter each — less if the manufacturer saw a promotional value to having its product sampled by hotel guests. So if you're a hotel charging a couple hundred bucks a night for a room, why not give your guests two of those in the bathroom for their entire stay — one for the tub, one by the sink — instead of all those little micro-bars which are hard to manipulate, which have to be replaced every day, and which some of us larger folks can actually manage to lose in some crevice of our bodies while showering?
• Last one: Drapes that close. Why can't we have drapes that close? I've learned to take along a couple of those large clips that you use to close a bag of potato chips. If I forget them, I resort to makeshift fixes. You usually get one or two clothes hangers in the closet that have clips on them for pants-hanging, and I put the hangers up and use those clips to keep the damn drapes shut. But it should be easier than all this. The drapes should just close. All the way.

That's all the thoughts on this I have at the moment. Don't send me yours. I'll probably think of another bunch on my own in a day or two.

Every so often, I link to an article by Libertarian congressguy Ron Paul, if only because he comes at current issues from a POV that is neither Zombie Democrat nor Mindless Republican. Here, he makes the argument that the war in Iraq has been a spectacular failure. I don't necessarily agree but I think a lot of the things he says are true.

Frank Rich discusses the "Culture of Death" that is now passing itself off as a "Culture of Life."

Here's a newspaper obit for Gene Hazelton. From it, we learn his real name was Wesley Hazelton Sr., that he was born in Fresno on June 3, 1919 and that he died on Wednesday. Services are next Tuesday in San Diego.

Sorry to report the recent passing (I don't know precisely when) of the great cartoonist, Gene Hazelton, whose career stretched from Fantasia to Flintstones. Gene was born in 1919 and by his teenage years, he was a good enough cartoonist to get a job assisting Jimmy Hatlo on the popular newspaper panel, They'll Do It Every Time. In 1939, he took a low-level job at Disney and set some sort of record for working his way up to gag man and animator. He animated the goat kids and cherabims in Fantasia and a number of sequences in Pinocchio.

When a strike was called at Disney in 1941, Gene moved on to other studios, including Warner Brothers where he did the main designs for the legendary short cartoon, Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs, directed by Bob Clampett. He also began doing a lot of magazine gag cartoons and commercial art assignments. Here's a link to a piece by his friend, Scott Shaw!, reporting on the one comic book Gene drew.

Gene spent many years working with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at MGM on their Tom & Jerry cartoons and with Tex Avery on his highly-acclaimed shorts. When Gene Kelly wanted an animated sequence for his feature, Invitation to the Dance, Hazelton designed the "Sindbad the Sailor" sequence. There were also commercials and commercial jobs: The animated titles for the I Love Lucy TV show were also designed by Gene Hazelton — one of many such projects he handled for the studio.

When Hanna and Barbera started their own studio, Gene was a key artist in the establishment of its style and the development of the early H-B programs. He is often credited with the main design work of certain important characters, including Pebbles and Bamm Bamm. (It is said he based the image of Bamm Bamm on his own son.) Beginning in 1961, one of his main duties was to supervise the production of — and occasionally write or draw — the syndicated newspaper features of The Flintstones and Yogi Bear. Around 1974, he took over the writing and drawing of both strips full-time, doing them until 1988. (The distinctive inking on them was usually the work of Lee Hooper.) Following his retirement, he drew many of the Hanna-Barbera "sericels" that were sold through animation art galleries and also did some teaching, but his main interest became his golf game, which he honed until illness forced him to quit.

Gene was enormously well-respected by his peers and by many younger cartoonists who cite him as a personal and professional inspiration. I'm sure there will be more obits and tributes that will list his many other impressive credits. I'll try to link to them as they appear.

The great choreographer, Onna White, has died at age 83. She won an Oscar for her fine (and much-imitated) work in the movie, Oliver, and probably deserved them for Bye Bye Birdie, Mame, 1776 and The Music Man. She was also the choreographer of the last three of these when they first appeared on Broadway, plus she also staged the terpsichore for many other shows, including Finian's Rainbow, Half a Sixpence and Take Me Along. Her list of credits says it all, so I'll just add that I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. White on two occasions and I found her just as delightful as her choreography. Which was always pretty delightful. Here's a link to an obit.

Hey, if you get a chance to catch this week's installment of Real Time with Bill Maher, catch this week's installment of Real Time with Bill Maher. It reruns a number of times on HBO, and it has two good interviews — one with former New York governor Mario Cuomo and another with former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle. Mr. Maher dares to ask tough questions of both and the answers — or evasions, in Perle's case — are quite interesting.

Here's a silly article — silly because it's way premature — discussing who might be asked to host the Academy Awards next year. But hey, I'm in a silly mood tonight so I'll join in. The names mentioned in the article are Chris Rock, Billy Crystal, Mike Myers, Ellen DeGeneres, Robin Williams, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, Conan O'Brien and the idea of multiple hosts.

You can start by eliminating the multiple hosts concept. It hasn't worked well in the past. I think every time they tried it, they went scurrying back to a single host the following year. Besides, the way the show has evolved the last few years, you don't need more than one host. After about the first half hour, he or she has very little to do.

Cross off Chris Rock. I liked him but he wasn't an earth-shaking success in any particular sense. He brought a certain suspense to the proceedings because there was the possibility that he'd say something outrageous. But that trick won't work again, and the folks who run the show will probably write him off due to the slightly weak performance of this year's show in urban states. (Actually, I think it's ridiculous to credit or fault the host too much for the tune-in numbers. That kind of thinking presumes that there aren't a lot of other variables that contribute to the ratings. Maybe the interest in this year's nominees was so low that the broadcast would have done much poorer with any host besides Rock. But that's not how the people who make this kind of decision think.)

Cross off Ellen DeGeneres, David Letterman, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien because they aren't movie stars. The Oscars ought to be hosted by a movie star. Mr. Carson was the only TV personality who was a big enough celebrity to transcend that rule. True, they had Letterman host in '95 but none of those four talk show talkers, including Dave, is currently "hot" the way he was at the time. (Rumor has it that Leno's name appeared on a list of hosts under consideration around 2000 but that he heard about it and let the Academy know he was not interested.)

And you can probably cross off Whoopi Goldberg because it's been a long time since she was big in a movie, and her last hosting was not well received. And strike Robin Williams from the short list because he doesn't seem like the "host" type. He's the guy you slot as a presenter at whatever time you think the broadcast will need a jolt of energy.

That leaves Myers, who's never done it, and Crystal and Martin, who have. Everyone seems to have liked Steve Martin's stints in 2001 and 2003, and I would guess he'd be at the top of the list. Myers is a possibility, but he's really only a star when he's deep in a character, not when he's Mike Myers. Crystal is a safe choice, and I'd figure his name will be not far below Martin's on that list, though there may be a few others above or between them. One would be Tom Hanks.

He's really the perfect choice: Huge movie star. Loved by everyone. Can deliver a funny line. No, he probably wouldn't do a monologue but that would save time on a broadcast that's looking for every way to chop its running time. I'm guessing the only reason he hasn't hosted is that he's been asked and turned it down.

How about Jamie Foxx…especially if he isn't in contention for an Oscar next year? How about Ben Affleck? Does anyone think Albert Brooks wouldn't be terrific? And if the movie version of The Producers musical is a success, Nathan Lane will be a big enough movie star to be considered for Oscar host. I think he'll do it and he'll be wonderful, but that's probably some time in the future.

For now, don't believe rumors that the host has already been picked. They don't need to decide until August or September, and since things can change so rapidly in show business, you don't want to decide too much before you have to. There's still time for Regis Philbin to make a movie and walk off with the gig.