This was taken about eight minutes ago, looking out the sliding glass door onto my back patio. We had a gap of several months there with no raccoons turning up in my yard to poach on the cat food I leave out for local strays. I thought they were gone for good…but this last week, they began showing their masked faces…and last night, I saw one that was larger than either of these. Just in time for Trick-or-Treat.

Los Angeles Times obit for Bill Liebowitz. And I should report here that I've gotten an awful lot of calls and e-mails from folks who are still in shock over this loss.

They'll probably catch it and fix the mistake before long…but currently at Slate, they have the above box up on their day-by-day poll tracking column. This may be an unintentionally true reading of how the election will go. Remember: Last time, the loser got more votes, too.

Frank Rich on election fatigue and the general phoniness of the two men who have a shot at being President for the next four years.

I just replaced the photo I had up of Bill Liebowitz with one I know he'd have preferred.

We've just lost Bill Liebowitz, owner of the Golden Apple comic book shops in Los Angeles and one of the most prominent, influential retailers in his field. Bill had been ill for some time with what seemed to be a very bad flu. He died last night of an apparent cardiac arrest and is survived by his wife and business partner Sharon and sons Damon and Ryan. Bill was 63 years old and had loved comics all his life. Somehow, he made a strange career turn and became an accountant but in 1979, he felt the calling and opened his first comic book shop in a small space on Melrose.

I was one of his first customers and I watched him grow to the point where he moved to the larger, current shop a block east on Melrose. At first, it was a part-time affair for him but the empire grew to include a few more outlets and the business grew to the point where around '85, he abandoned accounting — except for his own, of course — and became a full-time comic retailer. Comic book shops were still a relatively new institution and a lot of the early ones were run by fans who had more enthusiasm than business acumen. Bill had both, to the extent that executives at all the major publishing companies would cite him as the model of a guy who really knew how to operate a store. (He also knew how to operate a yo-yo with the best of them but that's another matter.) Golden Apple attracted an amazing clientele not only of comic book creators and fans but of movie stars and studio executives, and Bill's parties and in-store events were truly memorable affairs.

Bill was not shy about sharing his expertise. As long as you weren't in direct competition with him (and in a few cases, even when you were), he would gladly offer advice and help, and a lot of stores owe their very existence to Bill. Heck, the mere fact that there is a comic book industry today is in part due to the skill and passion of Bill Liebowitz…a heckuva good guy and a great friend to all who love comics.

The funniest man on the planet has opened up his new website. It costs almost $50 a year to join but it looks like it'll be worth it. In any case, there's a lot of free stuff there to enjoy for now.

Forget about Weapons of Mass Destruction. Forget about Health Care and the War in Iraq and Swift Boats and The Texas National Guard. Forget about Halliburton and Tax Cuts For Rich People and Flip-Flops and Bulges on Backs.

Forget about all that stuff and go read some classic Pogo comic strips from the election years of the fifties. We're putting 'em up all this week, just to get your mind off things, over at The Official Pogo Possum Website.

Not long ago, I linked to Tom Spurgeon's new comic news website. That link and a few others drove so much traffic there that, he now informs me, his server kicked him off. Which is why if you go there, you get an "account suspended" page. Tom says a new server is being engaged and that he'll be back up and running in a week or so. See the power of news from me?

Okay, back to Soupland…

It is a long-standing Internet Tradition — invented by me and followed by very few others — 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. Since this is a comfort food, it is intended to make you feel secure even while I am putting other things ahead of entertaining you. In a day or so, when pressing work is done, deadlines are met and I don't have producers looking to beat and pummel me, all will return to normal around here. Be well.

Jimmy Breslin on the polls and other election-related gripes.

My pal Tom Spurgeon has set up shop as The Comics Reporter, and his site is full of useful info and sharp comments. You'll want to visit often.

Wanna read an article about the replacement of Richard Dreyfuss in the London production of The Producers? Here's one.

One of the many clever cartoonists I know, Peter Kuper, has created a short flash animation that takes the classic Harvey comics/cartoon character and turns him into Guess Who. You can see it at this website [CAUTION: Contains unRichie-like language] and after you do that, visit Peter's site and notice what a versatile artist he is. Those monthly "Spy Vs. Spy" cartoons in MAD magazine are only a smidgen of what he does. (Did you know he does them by cutting stencils and then spraying paint through those stencils? You'd have known that if you read Mad Art, the stunning and incisive history of that rag and all the talented illustrators who've drawn for it. (Hey, don't complain. It's been months since I plugged my book.)

I just want it over with. I'm sick of this election. I'm sick of spin. I'm sick of talk about an October Surprise. It's starting to look like the October Surprise will be that there's no October Surprise.

Most of all, I'm sick of looking at polls and of electoral maps with these states colored red and those states colored blue and the undecided ones white, and Florida and Ohio switching back and forth every day or so like a damn neon sign.

All of us are wasting way too much time with that stuff. We're even getting delusional, acting like the polls are telling us who's probably going to win. We're like people who have seen that the faith healer's patients always die but we still go to him because he's better than nothing.

An awful lot of sites are like Real Clear Politics — which, despite the following wild pitch, is still a well-respected political site in some circles. Four years ago, they analyzed all the different polls and coughed up an electoral projection that had Bush winning 446 electoral votes as opposed to Al Gore's 92. They had Bush winning 51.2% of the popular vote to Gore's 41.9% and said Nader would get 5.8%. (The actual totals, just to remind you, were 271 electoral votes for Bush versus 266 for Gore, and they split the popular vote with Gore getting 48.38%, Bush getting 47.87% and Nader racking up 2.74%.)

As predictions go, that's a pretty wide miss. You wouldn't phone a Psychic Hotline a second time if the first time was that far off the target. But somehow, people are still flocking to Real Clear Politics and to other sites and pollsters with similarly poor track records. The final Gallup Poll in 2000 had Bush at 48%, Gore at 46% and Nader at 5%. The final Battleground Poll had Bush beating Gore by five points. The final USA Today/CNN poll had Bush beating Gore by six.

We're still a week from the final polls…and even when we get them, why expect them to be any more accurate than they were last time?

By the way: In case you haven't heard, Zogby says Kerry is up a point in Colorado.