Came home from something I'll describe in the next posting to find no less than fourteen messages reminding me (or asking me if I knew) that Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville) had a nice role in Mr. Hitchcock's esteemed Rear Window — playing a songwriter, no less. Yes, indeed.

A couple of folks wrote to ask if I was kidding when I said that "David Seville" created Alvin and the Chipmunks. One wrote, "He was a cartoon character, wasn't it?" Well, yes, he was…but he was the alter ego of Ross Bagdasarian, the songwriter-singer responsible for the Chipmunks records. Even before Alvin squeaked into existence, Bagdasarian had hits (like "Witch Doctor") under the Seville name. He used the two monikers rather interchangeably — I have an autographed Chipmunks album he signed as D.S. — and that's how I was using them. So, no, I wasn't making a joke…and yes, he was also Ross Bagdasarian…and, hey, isn't it about time for a CD of his non-Chipmunk recordings?

David Brooks, who does a column for the New York Times, is the Conservative that Liberals most often cite when they want to prove they're fair-minded enough to not write off everything any Conservative says, just because he's across the aisle. I'm not sure who the Liberal is that Conservatives would cite as fair-minded. Some, of course, would argue it's an oxymoron.

Brooks, of course, occasionally inflames The Left with things he writes but they seem to be cheering this column, which is about the nasty (and lucrative) ways The Right has co-mingled lobbying and governing. Worth a read.

Warner Home Video has finally issued a DVD of the 1960 movie version of Bells Are Ringing, starring Judy Holliday and Dean Martin, complete with a glorious hunk of bonus material. There's a short "making of…" documentary, there are cut numbers and alternate takes…and if you have any fondness for this film adaptation of a hit Broadway show, you'll want to order it, which you can do from Amazon by clicking here. I always found the film quite entertaining, if only because it captured the wonderful performance of Ms. Holliday. I never got to see her on stage but there was something so delightful about her screen appearances that I'm sure I missed out on something.

I have two special interests in this movie. One is purely nostalgic: In 1960, I was eight years old and my mother took me on a two-week trip to New York, Hartford and Boston — the first two towns were because I had relatives to meet. In Manhattan, we stayed at the Taft Hotel, went to the Statue of Liberty, attended a live broadcast of the game show, Concentration…and took in two movies. One, which bored me silly, was The Nun's Story. I think my mother didn't like it either, and we walked out on it. The other, which I enjoyed, was Bells Are Ringing, which we saw at the Radio City Music Hall. I liked the film and I liked the fact that there were scenes of walking around New York City, and then when the movie ended, we went out and walked around New York City. When you're eight, as I was, that kind of thing can impress you.

I'm also, as you can see from this site, fascinated by the contribution of great voiceover actors, and Bells Are Ringing has fine, uncredited performances by June Foray, Paul Frees and Shepard Menken. You all know June and Paul from their many appearances, most notably in the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, but the late Mr. Menken was equally ubiquitous. (He did almost all the extra voices on The Alvin Show, including the great inventor, Clyde Crashcup.) In Bells Are Ringing, Shep was the announcer in the opening fake commercial, and he's heard in a few other spots. Paul and June provided most of the voices that are heard in phone calls, of which there are many in the film. In the "Drop That Name" musical number, there's one point where two on-camera actors are dubbed by Paul and one actress is dubbed by June. This may not matter to you but when you're fifty-three, as I am, that kind of thing can impress you.

At least, we hope Stephen Sondheim is both on this, his 75th birthday. He should be. I mean, he's only our greatest living Broadway composer, and a lot of people think he's the best ever. He probably won't read this but maybe, if we all think good thoughts in his direction, he'll sense them, enjoy the day…and then go back to writing his next show. We can't get enough out of this man.

Just wanted to note the passing of two great musicians who probably never played the same room…

Bobby Short was the King of Cabaret Performers, logging four decades at the Cafe Carlyle in New York. I once had the pleasure of enjoying his smooth blend of jazz, old standards and show tunes, and it was a fine (if pricey) evening. There was something very beautiful about the sight and sound of Mr. Short in his tux at the piano. It was just so…right. Here's a link to a piece about him in the New York Times.

Lalo Guerrero was a fine singer-writer of Mexican-American tunes, many of them glorious parodies like "There's No Tortillas," which he composed to the tune of "There's No Tomorrow." His biggest hit was probably "Pancho Lopez," a parody of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett." (The New York Times obit errs and gives its name as "Pancho Sanchez.") And Guerrero was not only the Allan Sherman of Mexico. He had a line of kids' records starring "Las Ardillitas," a band of squirrels who sang with sped voices. If that sounds to you like The Chipmunks…well, Mr. Seville, the creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, thought so, too. He sued…but Guerrero managed to convince a judge that he'd been making the records before Seville started his series. I never got to see him perform but just last year, I attended a play based on his life and music. He was a very talented man and an important voice for his countryfolks.

Still busy, but I wanted to direct your attention to this article by Eric Boehlert. It's in Salon so non-subscribers will have to watch an ad or something if they want to read it. But it claims something about the Terri Schiavo case that I hadn't realized. (That's assuming it's true. If it isn't, I would imagine it would be pretty easy to rebut by citing the correct numbers.) Here are two key paragraphs…

Recent polling data, in outlets from Fox News to the Washington Post, shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans back the position of Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, that he, and not his wife's parents, should have the final say about removing the feeding tube of his wife, who has been severely brain-damaged and incapacitated for the past 15 years. The polling data seriously undercuts the notion that Americans are deeply divided on the Schiavo case. Yet ever since March 18, when Republicans began their unprecedented push to intervene legislatively in a state court case that had already been heard by 19 judges, the press has all but disregarded the polls.

The Schiavo episode highlights not only how far to the right the GOP-controlled Congress has lunged — a 2003 Fox News poll found just 2 percent of Americans think the government should decide this type of right-to-die issue — but also how paralyzed the mainstream press has become in pointing out the obvious: that the GOP leadership often operates well outside the mainstream of America. The press's timidity is important because publicizing the poll results might extend the debate from one that focuses exclusively on a complicated moral and ethical dilemma to one that also examines just how far a radical and powerful group of religious conservatives are willing to go to push their political beliefs on the public.

I'm guessing that if you polled people on the question of whether Congress should decide who wins on American Idol, more than 2% would think that was appropriate. So is there any reason the Schiavo matter is in Congress at all?

My gut is split two ways on this matter, though neither thinks most of the folks riding the Terri Schiavo bandwagon are out to do anything but demonstrate their power and/or fealty to the Religious Right. On the one side, I think there is a state-level process in place that decides this kind of thing and that Ms. Schiavo's defenders have shown no reason to depart from that process, other than that they don't like what it has repeatedly determined. The other side says that we should err on the side of compassion and giving "life" (such as it may be in her case) the benefit of the doubt. But even there, I don't think that should stop with Terri Schiavo. If we're going to do everything possible to keep her breathing, let's make the same effort for everyone else whose death could perhaps be prevented with more human effort. One Republican I saw on C-Span the other night made what I'm sure he didn't intend as a great argument for National Health Care and increases in Medicaid, Medicare and access to cheaper prescription drugs. Or is anyone out there so disingenuous as to deny that people who are much more "alive" and salvageable than Terri Schiavo die due to lack of affordable health care and medicine?

I kinda like a lot of what I'm hearing from the G.O.P. about denying "the culture of death" and about doing everything we can to prolong life. I just think it oughta apply to everyone who might actually be helped instead of just one poor lady who, sad to say, is probably never going to get any better…and maybe didn't even want this kind of "help."

Here's this one from Dennis Donohoe. I'll reply and then I have to get back to paying work…

I too am conflicted about this case. However, I see a distinction (as did your e-mail correspondent) between cutting off "life support" and removing a feeding tube. Consider the sad case of Karen Ann Quinlan. She had life support cut off, but proceeded to live another ten years. Clearly she still had a feeding tube. I think it is grotesquely cruel to let someone slowly and painfully starve to death by cutting off their food. If the courts (and her husband) want her to die, why not give her a quick acting injection and bypass the suffering? The answer seems to be that this would offend the public's sense of propriety.

This is a sad situation. I agree with you, by the way, that this Congressional intervention is crazy.

Even if there is a difference between cutting off "life support" and removing a feeding tube, I don't see how it matters to the debate currently going on in this country. Either way, people make a decision and it leads to the patient dying.

When I first read about the Schiavo case, several elements of the story had me conflicted, and one was this notion of someone painfully starving to death. In such a situation, I would sure rather go via lethal injection. However, I then read in a couple of articles like this one [Miami Herald, subscription may be required] that what is now being done to Ms. Schiavo is peaceful and painless. The right-wing news sources all say otherwise…and I think this all dovetails with the article by Dana Milbank to which I linked last night. We have competing sets of facts here, perhaps on at least one side, tailored to fit the readership.

Don't anyone write and tell me which one is correct. I know who I want to ask about this, and I'll accept what he tells me. But we don't read the news so we can get "facts" that cancel one another out, and then have to go out and do our own research. News exists to tell us things with some authority, even the things we might not want to hear. Or at least, it used to. We don't have to believe everything we're told, and we shouldn't. But we also ought to have some sources that won't fib or sugar-coat to appease their key demographic group.

Incidentally, I think the argument for letting the patient starve as opposed to administering that lethal injection is that in the latter, it seems more like humans are taking a life, whereas in the former, it's like we're stepping back and letting God work His or Her will. But I also think that's one of those distinctions without a real difference.

This just in from John Thomas…

Terry Schiavo is not on life support. She is not suffering from a "fatal congenital disease." If her feeding tube was not removed, she would continue to live, much like if Christopher Reeve's breathing tube was not removed, he continued to live.

There's way too much conflation of the different kinds of medical status to compare Schiavo's case to a myriad of other things, but it's apples and oranges, and just serves to confuse people who might not know what's going on. The insinuations in your recent blog post are part of that confusion.

Why not declare to people that Terri Schiavo is not on "life support" any more than Christopher Reeve was, and that she is not suffering from a fatal disease like the child referenced at the blog you linked to.

You're right that the two cases are not exactly alike but I think you're wrong, at least in a conversational sense, that the term "life support" does not apply in the Schiavo situation. I just did one of them nifty Google searches and found well over 3,000 news stories and headlines that disagree with you. A lot of folks, including doctors on both sides, seem to think she was on "life support."

In any case, the rhetoric and arguments that people are using to demand that her feeding tube be reinserted could certainly apply to darn near any instance where human action or inaction leads to the termination of a life. And without taking sides on the Schiavo matter — because I'm conflicted on many aspects of it — I have to wonder what larger principle her defenders think they're fighting for. Tom DeLay is convening emergency sessons to make sure this one woman has "every opportunity to keep living" but there are plenty of people who don't get that opportunity and I don't see him spending five seconds on them. And just last week, DeLay was trying to cut $40 billion from the Medicaid program, and that would certainly hasten a lot of deaths…and in people who are alive in more than the technical sense that Terri Schiavo is still alive.

If you read the article about the child in Texas, you'll see that it's also about a 68-year-old man who, like Schiavo, is in a "persistent vegetative state." Texas law apparently allows the hospital to turn off his ventilator, which will end his life just as surely as yanking Terri Schiavo's feeding tube will end hers. That man's family is fighting to keep him alive and there isn't even anyone in the case saying, like Terri's husband says of her, "this is what (s)he wanted." Why isn't Congress convening emergency sessions to give that man "every opportunity to keep living?" If we want that to be our national goal, great. Let's apply it to everyone.

The National Cartoonists Society has done a major upgrade of its website. Of interest to all will be the member listings where each NCS member (with a few holes) has done up a little bio of him- or herself. And even more interesting are the ones done in the past by those no longer with us.

As you may note over there, the NCS is having this year's Reuben Awards Weekend in Scottsdale, Arizona from May 27 to 29. The festivities are generally open only to members but they've invited me to be there in order to roast my friend Sergio Aragonés and to emcee a rousing game of Quick Draw!, the cartoon improv game we play at conventions. This should be a lot of fun, except that the dinner requires formal wear. I own two tuxedos, one of which is too big for me now and one of which is too small. I've been losing about four pounds a month since I got a new doctor. (Good news because I was afraid my family was going to petition Congress to remove my feeding tube.) If this keeps up, by the end of May, I might be to the point where my tailor can take in the jacket of the too-large tux and let out the pants of the too-small tux, thereby creating one tuxedo that will fit me. We would then take the coat and trousers that remain and use them to dress Jabba the Hut.

I'm still in Cream of Mushroom mode, but if you're interested in the Terri Schiavo case, read this blogpost about how people in Texas are having their life supports disconnected under a law signed by George W. Bush.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post says that…well, here. I'll quote one key paragraph…

Partisans on the left and right have formed cottage industries devoted to discrediting what they dismissively call the "mainstream media" — the networks, daily newspapers and newsmagazines. Their goal: to steer readers and viewers toward ideologically driven outlets that will confirm their own views and protect them from disagreeable facts. In an increasingly fragmented media world, ideologues have already devolved into parallel universes, in which liberals and conservatives can select talk radio hosts, cable news pundits and blogs that share their prejudices.

An excellent article it is…but I think Milbank misses one key point. It's that a large part of the press, in a misguided quest to attract more customers, has abdicated their responsibility to print things that some might consider "disagreeable facts." I do think he's right though that too many people are now seeking out "news" that will spin reality their way. If you think otherwise, read a wide range of stories on the Terri Schiavo matter. It's almost like the Liberal and Conservative sites are talking about two separate cases.

Speaking of which: I have now decided that there's something lower than being in a Persistent Vegetative State. It's being in a Persistent Vegetative State and having Tom DeLay watching out for your interests.

Starting tonight, GSN (née The Game Show Network) is running episodes of The Name's the Same hosted by Bob and Ray. I have not seen these. I don't think they've ever been rebroadcast since they first aired around a half-century ago. But nothing Bob and Ray ever did was without interest, and I'll be eager to see how much they could improve what was basically not a very good game show.

For the first time in many months, I invoke the long-standing Internet Tradition that I invented and which hardly anyone else follows. The way it works is that when the proprietor of a weblog is too busy to update said weblog, the proprietor posts a photo of a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. I have deadlines and things that must be done, and I have to pay for the new roof on my garage. (They should finish tomorrow afternoon, about the time it's supposed to start raining.) I shall return to you when work is done and the roof is paid-for.

The annual TV Land Awards debuted the other night and will rerun a few times throughout the coming weeks. These shows are a bit too self-congratulatory for my taste, and you sure get the idea that the winners — and even the categories in which they "win" — have everything to do with who's willing to show up for the taping. Nevertheless, there are fun moments, and it was very nice that they did a little salute to our boy, 100-year-old Charles Lane.

To put Mr. Lane's long career into a bit of perspective, try wrapping your brain around this fact: At the time Charles Lane began his professional acting career, Joe Barbera was still in school, studying for a career in banking.