What will the George W. Bush private account plan for your Social Security? Here's a calculator that will give you some idea…courtesy of the Democrats. Let me know if you see a Republican response.

…from the wonderful world of overpriced hotel High-Speed Internet Connections. My friend Carolyn and I are in San Francisco, poised and ready for the WonderCon, which commences tomorrow morn. Amazingly, all our luggage is here with us, as well.

In the competitive business of Air Travel, I don't know why some airline hasn't tried to distinguish itself by upgrading the claiming of baggage from the days of Orville and Wilbur. Especially since 9/11 but even before, the effort all seems to go to getting the suitcases searched, checked-in and on the plane. On the other end, you could traipse the Baggage Claim area for days and not find someone who can tell you why everything turned up on the carousel except your Samsonite. I don't know why they don't spring for even one employee who's down there and in voice communication with those mysterious folks who, at some point, are supposed to put your bags on the conveyor.

We were early for the flight and I have to remember that when you're early for your flight, and you're travelling to a locale to which there are a lot of flights, there's a fair-to-middling change that your suitcase will go on the flight before yours. This has happened to my luggage a couple of times, and it happened to one of Carolyn's bags, this afternoon. At 10:00 this A.M., we arrived at LAX for the 11:15 United flight to S.F., so one of her two suitcases somehow wound up travelling on the 10:30 United flight to S.F. When we arrived, we waited at Carousel 1 for our bags and one of hers didn't show. So we waited and waited…and there was no one to ask, "Are there any more coming down?" Recalling the times I've found out my luggage got in before me, I walked around the area where they store unclaimed bags, but I missed seeing hers. Finally, another passenger in the same predicament searched and found someone…and because of that, we found the errant suitcase. You'd think, in the age of computers, someone could invent a better way to do this. They have these bar codes that are supposed to track our stuff and tell them where it is. How about if they have someone right there at the carousel to tell us?

Oh, well. We had great Chinese food for dinner and of course, that makes almost anything better. I'll be hosting panels all weekend and reporting in here from time to time.

I hope you enjoyed reading the above. It cost me $14.95 to post it.

Frank Rich on how the line is being blurred between real news reporting and fake news reporting.

Animation webloggers are reacting with varying amounts of horror today over a press report that Warner Brothers Animation is prepping updated (like, into the future) versions of Bugs, Daffy and other classic characters. The goal here is a new franchise that takes the old, beloved players and styles them in some cutting-edge manner that will appeal to a new, younger audience. There will tentatively be a TV show called Loonatics, accompanied by a whole line of merchandising…and some folks are reacting as if it's all the greatest sin of blasphemy since someone first heckled the Holy Ghost.

I yield to no one in my reverence for the classic Looney Tunes cartoons and the men who made them, but it may be too early for talk of petitions, boycotts and nuking the Time-Warner building. First off, though some of the news reports are playing this as a "new displaces the old" move, that is clearly not the case. The original, true Bugs and Friends will be no less available than before, and I can't imagine the high-tech models usurping their place in history. The new cartoons would have to be pretty damn wonderful to make a dent in that.

This is just another repurposing from the marketing principles that brought you The Muppet Babies and Disney Babies and Yo, Yogi! and that show with a Batman in the future and, of course, Baby Looney Tunes, the new Duck Dodgers show and even Tiny Toon Adventures. When you have a successful property or group of properties and you've merchandised it to the max, the next step is to find a way to repackage it into something new — but not so new that it loses the heat of the established material. Some of those shows or campaigns were pretty good, some perhaps less than good…but in no way did they destroy or dislodge the underlying classics.

Secondly — and lastly, for now — I'm always uneasy when I see a new show or movie being condemned when it hasn't even been written yet. In articles like this one, we see that — and I quote: "Names for the new characters haven't been finalized, but they are likely to be derived from the originals: Buzz Bunny, for example." In other words, it's real early in the development process. Very little has been done and its unlikely than any of that is set in lucite. I can understand the temptation to leap to say something's a hopeless idea. I've done it myself at times, and it's not impossible that WB is announcing the project at such an early stage in order to gauge reaction. Still, there ought to be more than two daubs of green on the canvas before you say the painting stinks. If it eventually does, there will be plenty of time to say that later, after it actually exists.

I may have mentioned this before but many years ago, around the time I started edging into the TV business, I attended a lecture by a very accomplished, successful producer…a man with many prestigious credits. He told us that we had to recognize and avoid what he called "The Marley Ideas" — notions so dreadful that they were dead from the moment of conception. As an example, he told us that one TV network was then considering an idea so terrible, so guaranteed to fail, that everyone involved with it should be immediately fired for programming malpractice. And the way he described it, it sure sounded like you'd be an idiot to think that they could make a weekly series out of the movie, M*A*S*H.

Here's a rather meaty live chat with the Baghdad bureau chief for Newsweek, Rod Norland. It's all about the elections in Iraq and despite the attempts of some questioners to lump Norland in with extremists on either side, it comes off as a good, common sense look at the situation over there and what it means.

I may be guilty of some sloppy phrasing in the previous message so let me run through this again.  The Amos and Andy radio show actually overlapped the TV show. The Amos 'n' Andy Music Hall left the airwaves on November 25, 1960 (date courtesy of Anthony Tollin, who knows old radio better than anyone I know except Frank Buxton). The TV show was on from 1951-1953 in first-run. Reruns followed and they were very popular at first but ratings decreased and protests increased around the end of the fifties. CBS, which owned the program, formally withdrew it from syndication in 1966 but by that time, very few stations were airing it.

I have a story about this. Elsewhere on this site, there's a story about how I used to sneak in to watch Red Skelton rehearse his show over at Television City in Hollywood. This was made possible by a friend of mine named Mike who had a friend who worked there. One day, Mike's friend tipped him off to be at a certain trash dumpster outside at 3:00 in the afternoon and to bring a car. Neither Mike nor I drove so we got a friend who did and we went over there…and waited and waited. Sure enough, around 5:00, some people began dumping old 16mm prints of TV shows into that dumpster. They threw out maybe 500 cans of film and once they were gone, we began scooping them up and loading them in the car. I think we grabbed about a hundred before a security guard came by and chased us off.

Some of the films turned out to be unwatchable because the film had decayed or curdled, but most were perfect. There were about thirty episodes of Amos and Andy, a lot of G.E. Theaters hosted by Ronald Reagan, some kinescopes of soap operas and a couple of Groucho Marx treasures. In 1962, Groucho followed his long-running You Bet Your Life show for NBC with the similar-but-not-successful Tell it to Groucho for CBS. There were a number of those, plus a film — and we could never figure out why CBS had this — that had served as the pilot for the TV version of You Bet Your Life. It was a film of a recording session for the radio version intended, I guess, to see how the show looked so they could determine what they'd have to do to dress it up for television.

Mike and I showed some of these films at schools and a few public exhibitions, and then he got an offer and sold them all to some film dealer. The You Bet Your Life film has made the rounds of collectors and has been aired on the PBS series, I Remember Television. I suspect that all the copies of it that are around are copies, of varying generations, from that print we fished out of the trash. So, probably, are a lot of the Amos and Andy episodes that are now available on tape.

The TV show hadn't been withdrawn in '61 when Gosden and Correll went to work on Calvin and the Colonel, but the reruns were drawing protests by then, and everyone knew they had a problem. They also were out of work since, as noted above, the radio show had ended. Actually though — and I knew this but I wrote it wrong — they didn't create the show. It was created with them in mind by Bob Mosher and Joe Connelly, who had written the Amos and Andy TV show, and later went on to create Leave it to Beaver and The Munsters.

As some of you noted in e-mail to me, there were a couple of Amos and Andy cartoons done in the thirties. What none of you know is that there was talk of one in the eighties. Around '82, someone at CBS either discovered they had the rights to Amos and Andy, or thought they had the rights, and they pressured the Ruby-Spears animation studio to develop it as a possible Saturday morning series. Ruby-Spears, in turn, pressured me into writing the pilot…which I did, knowing full well the thing would never get on the air. As I recall, the day I handed in the script, the CBS exec called up and said, "We're not sure we have the rights…we have the lawyers working on it." And that was the last time the show was ever mentioned in my presence. I don't recall if it dawned on me at the time but what I wrote was basically an episode of Calvin and the Colonel, but with the characters turned back into human beings.

Over on Cartoon Brew, my pal Jerry Beck announces a Los Angeles screening of episodes of Calvin and the Colonel, a prime-time cartoon series that was on from 1961 to 1962 and has rarely been seen since. The series was created and the leads were voiced by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, the two white guys who played Amos and Andy (and other recurring characters) on the radio show of the same name. When Amos and Andy went to television, it was wonderfully recast with black actors. I used to love the TV show — especially Tim Moore as George "Kingfish" Stevens. Sadly, when they compile those silly lists of the all-time great TV characterizations, they never seem to rank Kingfish up there with Bilko and Bunker and Louie DePalma, which is where I think he belongs.

I never cared as much for the old radio programs when I tried listening to them, in part because that Kingfish didn't have the energy and wonderful timing that Tim Moore later brought to the role. And by the way, in case anyone's puzzled here: Amos and Andy started out being about Amos and Andy but at some point, Amos faded into supporting status and the show could have been called Kingfish and Andy. Correll voiced Andy, while Gosden was both Amos and the Kingfish. When the show went to television, the two men relinquished their roles and served as producers, and the show was quite successful, both first-run and in endless repeats. In the early sixties though, the endless repeats ended because the depiction of minorities made some — sponsors, especially — uncomfortable. I thought that was an overreaction, but that's another topic for another time. It was shortly after those shows disappeared from the screen that Gosden and Correll figured out a new, less-racial way to package their old act. They turned the Kingfish into a fox and Andy into a bear, and called it Calvin and the Colonel.

Jerry says the cartoon program was banned from distribution for years due to the participation of Gosden and Correll. That may be overstating the case a bit. A one season show needs to generate some interest to have an afterlife of any kind, and Calvin and the Colonel didn't manage that in its year of life. I liked it but much of the time, I opted to watch The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which was opposite it on CBS. A cartoon show that couldn't hold my loyalty when I was ten was almost destined to fail. It's like if I wouldn't watch it every week, who would? I seem to recall a brief attempt to rerun the shows on either Saturday or Sunday afternoon which ended after a few weeks. Overall, I suspect its scarcity is due as much to it never attracting much of an audience as it is to any racial subtext. Or to put it another way: The fact that it was Amos and Andy in animal drag might not have mattered if the show had ever developed any real following.

Oddly enough, I watched two episodes just the other day — the first I'd seen in twenty or thirty years. There was a lot of funny stuff in them, especially as performed by voice whiz Paul Frees in an array of supporting roles. But the pace is sometimes very lethargic, and the shows have the fakest-possible canned laughter on them. It's not just bad because you can't imagine a live audience sitting there watching cartoon characters perform. It's bad the way clumsy sweetening can ruin a live-action sitcom. I enjoyed seeing them again, and I may even make it up to the screening later this month to hear the guests talk about the making of the show. But there are an awful lot of "lost" TV programs I'd rather watch…including the Amos and Andy shows with Tim Moore.

I've heard a lot of folks say that the day is drawing near when our soldiers can turn over the job of policing Iraq to the Iraqi army. But according to this piece by Fred Kaplan, that force is about as much an army as you and I are.

You see that thing the Penguin is holding? That's called an umbrella, also sometimes known as a parasol or bumbershoot. In addition to the usual things the Penguin does with his — shooting bullets, spraying lethal gas, slowing his descent when he leaps off a tall building, etc. — it is possible to use one to keep the rain off one's person. If you are journeying to San Francisco this weekend to attend the WonderCon and see all the splendid panels I'm conducting, you might want to bring one along…and not just to shoot bullets, spray lethal gas or slow your descent when you leap off a tall building.

Again, it's a list with which we could all argue…but you might enjoy reading what someone thinks are the 100 Funniest Jokes of All Time. [CAUTION: Occasional naughty language. And thanks to Bruce Reznick for the pointer.]

My pal Gerard Jones writes in the Los Angeles Times about the Stan Lee lawsuit and the way the comic book industry has treated some of its greatest creative talents. And no, I still haven't gotten a copy of Gerry's new book…but I will.

Pat O'Neill reminds me that on the Jonny Quest TV show, "sim sala bim" were the magic words employed by Jonny's pal, Hadji, whenever he exercised his mystic powers.

I have a new way to tell when I've been working too late. My computer's virus software is set to scan the system each morn at 4:00. I was sitting here, working on a script when it kicked in and I went, "Jeez! It's four o'clock in the morning. Last I looked, it was quarter to one."

Odd how time disappears sometimes when I get deep into a project. When I was 17, one of my first professional assignments was to rapidly ghost-write a cheap paperback novel…and it was one of those jobs where anything I produced would be good enough. If it was more-or-less in English and had punctuation marks sprinkled throughout, the publisher would have been happy, just so long as it was finished in the next five days. The deadline was way more important than any literary content…which was good because given my experience, my manual typewriter, and the limited amount of time I had to pound script, the literary content stood to be a notch below the instruction label on a package of suppositories.

My parents were in Vegas so I had the place to myself. Instead of bringing my girl friend over when the neighbors weren't watching — which is what I usually did when Mom and Dad went off to gamble — I sat down around Noon and began writing. The next thing I knew, it was 3:00 in the morning and I had about half the book piled up next to me. I'd stopped for a couple of snacks and bathroom breaks, but I'd pretty much worked straight through, losing all track of the hour. It was the first time I ever experienced that as a writer, and it was both exciting and chilling in different ways, maybe even better than sneaking in the girl friend. As I recall, I slept about six hours, got up and finished the book in two shorter spurts of maybe six hours each. I do remember handing it in a day early, which stunned the publisher…absolutely stunned him. He'd promised me a bonus if I was finished in five days, and I'd delivered in three.

Naturally, as rush jobs so often go, it turned out not to be the crisis he'd thought it was. The publication date was then delayed, and as far as I know, the book never did get printed. In a way, that was probably just as well, except I'd been in too big a rush to deliver so I skipped making myself a copy. At the time, the payment I got meant everything in the world to me. Today, I'd give it back with interest, just to have a copy of that manuscript. If something I now wrote evoked the comment, "This is the worst thing ever written," I could haul out the novel I wrote in 2.5 days, shove it in the critic's face and say, "Oh, yeah? Read this!"

The virus-checker isn't detecting anything and I'm going to bed. Good night.

George W. Bush says he wants to get rid of government programs that don't work. How about if we start with the National Ballistic Missile Defense Project?

A lot of Californians were happy to get rid of Governor Gray Davis because he was taking so much money from special interest groups that seemed to be buying his support of beneficial legislation. If this article in Salon is correct, his replacement is doing twice as much of that. [Paid membership or the viewing of advertising may be required.]