Is Abe Vigoda alive? Let's find out over at www.abevigoda.com.

Conan O'Brien has made a star out of a graphic designer on his staff, a serious gent named Pierre Bernard. Fred Hembeck, who also remembers when Pierre used to be a comic book letterer, sends me this link to an article on the guy. [CAUTION: This is a link to a site that may ask you for your zip code and age.]

Here's an Amazon link to order George Carlin's latest book, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? It's a funny book by a funny man. Much of it has to do with euphemisms — fancy or inefficient words we use when there's a simple and more direct one. I think he belabors these at times but he's darned amusing, and there's more than enough genuine insight in his work to satisfy me. There was a period not long ago when we were treated (that's not the right word) to a lot of very poor books by stand-up comedians, often putting their acts on paper and taking an author's credit for recycling material that they purchased from comedy writers. Carlin's books are mostly new stuff and all by him.

Which brings me to how I spent last evening. I went to hear Harry Shearer interview George Carlin before a sold-out audience of Carlin fans. Shearer's a pretty funny guy, too, but the spotlight was on Mr. Carlin who discussed many of the topics from his book plus the recent presidential election, getting fired in Las Vegas, serving in the Air Force, smoking marijuana, becoming disillusioned with Christianity and the human race (in that order), why he doesn't consider himself a cynic, why there aren't more great stand-up comics these days, Michael Jackson, the futility of protest movements, his general working procedure and a host of other topics. Naturally, I don't agree with the man on everything. No one would…and that made for an interesting kind of nervous energy in the room. The place was, of course, filled with people who generally love Carlin and what he says, and for most of the evening, they (we) laughed and applauded. But every so often, like when he said he thought Michael Jackson was the greatest entertainer in the world and should be left alone to perform, even with children, you could sense the audience withdraw slightly. No one booed but the energy waves in the room were a little unsettled, and you could practically hear people rolling what he'd said over in their minds, wondering if they were wrong and this usually-so-perceptive gent was right. Before they came to any decision, he'd be on to another, less arguable topic and the sense of the hall would swing back his way.

One of Carlin's great strengths as a comic is his willingness to say what audiences don't want to hear, or think they don't want to hear. He has great perception when he talks of everyday, harmless occurrences…but he also has the guts to go against popular and/or polite opinion. He'll venture into areas like "cripples" and 9/11 and aspects of religion that a lesser comedian would sidestep. Too sensitive. Too many potential landmines.

Carlin ventures in and as often as not, hits on something that causes you to say, "Hey…he's right about that." At times, I find myself laughing at the fact that I'm laughing at something that was right in front of me but concealed by a bogus air of propriety or — to use a term I dislike — political correctness. Occasionally, I even find myself chuckling at an observation where I disagree with his viewpoint. I guess when you're funny enough, you can do that…and it probably explains why the man's been so successful for so long. He doesn't play it safe. He just plays it for laughs.

There's a wealth of info now posted about the 2005 WonderCon in San Francisco. Don't let the fact that I'm on the Guest List dissuade you. There will be people there you actually want to see.

If you ever lost money at the Desert Inn hotel in Las Vegas, you may enjoy seeing the final remnant of that venerable institution destroyed. Early this morning, the last remaining tower of one of the town's oldest casinos was imploded to make way for Steve Wynn's new hotel, which is supposed to open in 2005 at a cost of somewhere between two and three billion smackers. It will include 2,700 rooms, an 18-hole golf course, a performance theater that is costing $100 million just by itself, an art gallery full of Picassos and Van Goghs, eighteen restaurants and — correcting what has long been to me one of the great omissions of the hotels at which I've stayed — a Ferrari and Maserati dealership. I sure hope they have nickel slots and a $4.95 late night steak-and-eggs special.

Many intriguing nuggets of Vegas history were destroyed along with the rest of the place in this morning's razing. The Desert Inn was owned for a time by famed wacky billionaire Howard Hughes. In 1966, Hughes booked the top two floors of the place for ten days…and when the ten days were up, he declined to leave. The proprietors of the hotel wanted him out. Even though he was paying for his lodging, they were in the business of renting to gamblers who'd lose money in the casino, not to rich folks who stayed holed-up in their rooms. Hughes eventually solved the impasse by buying the whole Desert Inn for $14 million, which at the time was around double what the place seemed to be worth. (Next year, there will be individual paintings on the property that cost that much.) Eventually, Hughes purchased other Vegas hotels, including the Frontier — aka The New Frontier — right across the street.

At one point, Mr. Hughes decided he wanted to be able to go back and forth between the Desert Inn and the Frontier but — of course — he was not about to go out and cross Las Vegas Boulevard like any normal human being. So…at considerable expense, he had a tunnel built under the Strip, connecting his two establishments. It cost a couple million and apparently, Hughes never got around to using it himself. In fact, some say he never got around to setting foot in the Frontier or several of the other hotels he owned, like the Sands, the Landmark, the Silver Slipper and Castaways, all of which have since been levelled. But the Desert Inn-Frontier tunnel was used for a few years by employees of both establishments. Wayne Newton tells stories of how he would do his show at the Desert Inn and then, because the headliner at the Frontier was out sick, he'd dash over via the tunnel and fill in across the street.

In the seventies, someone decided that vibrations from the traffic above had dangerously weakened the tunnel structure so they closed it down. The bringdown of the Desert Inn probably seals off one side of it forever and any day now, when a deal is finally put in place to implode the Frontier, that will close it off from the other side. Before that happens, someone had better check to make sure Shecky Greene isn't down there.

You should be able to view this morning's implosion at this link. If not, go to the website for KLAS-TV and hunt around. [NOTE: The first link is to a pop-up window. So if you have something like a pop-up blocker, you may want to do whatever it takes to allow pop-ups before you click on it. In most programs, you hold down the CTRL key when you click the link and that overrides the blocker. And the video plays fine on my computer via Internet Explorer but doesn't seem to work in Foxfire, even though both are loading it into Windows Media Player. This is not my fault.]

As Robert Scheer points out: In the Bush administration, being wrong about Iraq does not get you fired. Being right does. [Los Angeles Times registration may be required.]

There have been poor copies of it around the Internet for years…but IFilm is now offering a better video clip of perhaps the greatest TV musical moment of the seventies. That's right…William Shatner performing his version of Elton John's "Rocket Man" on a 1978 awards show. This link may bring it up on your screen (it's an ASF file, playable through Windows Media Player). If that link doesn't work, go here and look around for it. This is the number that was so odd that Chris Elliott did a parody of it on David Letterman's show by just coming out and doing it exactly the same way Shatner did it.

I have a little problem I'd like to share with you, not that I expect anyone to be able to solve it…

Recently, I've received an amazing number of e-mails from strangers who are trying to contact someone…usually an individual in the animation business or the field of comics who they think I may know. In some cases, they say they are old friends. In some cases, they say they're looking to discuss some project with the person. Sometimes, they don't say. It's just, "I'm trying to get in contact with So-and-so. Please send me their e-mail address or phone number."

If I don't know the person they seek, it's fine. It takes 20 seconds to write a reply that says, "Sorry, I have no contact info for him (or her)." Unfortunately, I usually do have what they seek. I just feel I shouldn't be giving it out to strangers. I've chosen to put my e-mail address and contact info all over the Internet but most folks don't do that. (I just realized there's another category of these messages. It's when someone writes me something like, "Can you send me Peter David's e-mail address?" If that person went to Google and typed in "Peter David," they could have found it in less time than it takes to write to me. This probably bothers me more than it should.)

Sometimes, I have an e-mail address for the person so I forward the message to them. Most of the time though, the person is writing me because they're trying to reach someone who doesn't have e-mail. Some human beings don't, you know. I don't want to pass on a private phone number or address so I have several options, all of which require more time than I can afford to devote to this. At the moment, I have forty or fifty of these messages in a folder…and I'm not even answering all the mail that people write to me about me, lately.

Like I said, I'm not expecting anyone to tell me how to handle this. Just thought I'd vent and perhaps discourage more of these messages. Please, people. I'd like to help you get in touch with the person you seek but it's just getting to be too big a drain on me.

At above left is the cover to the historic Flash Comics #1 which featured the first Flash story, written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Harry Lampert. Today, many text-only obits are appearing about Harry (like this one and this one). In a day or two, they'll start appearing with pictures. Let's see how many run this cover — which was drawn by Sheldon Moldoff — as if it represents Harry's work. A couple are already forgetting that Harry was not the sole creator of the super-speedster; that it began with a script by Fox. And I just heard from a reporter who's writing about Harry but who apparently doesn't know that the Flash has undergone a few changes (like becoming a couple of totally different people) since 1940.

For the record, Lampert never drew a cover with The Flash on it. The cover to Flash #6, seen above right, is sometimes wrongly identified as his. It was actually by E. E. Hibbard, who took over the Flash strip as of the third issue. Comic book lore may not be as important as some history but it's not that difficult to get it right.

Michael Kinsley writes about judicial activism. [Washington Post registration may be necessary.]

I don't agree with every word of articles to which I link, and sometimes don't agree at all. But this one I think is right on the money: Decrying "judicial activism" is usually just a way of saying you think a judge should interpret a law, which may or may not say what you want it to say, as saying what you want it to say.

That's right: Another damn obit. The very funny comedian and voice actor Dayton Allen died last Thursday at age 85. Born Dayton Allen Bolke, he was a native of New York and he got into show business, more or less following the path of his boyhood friend, Art Carney. Both broke into radio in their teens as disc jockeys and specialists in funny voices. Dayton parlayed his skills into work on early children's TV shows, dubbing in voices for puppets and often appearing on camera. He did both for years on the Howdy Doody program, originating the voice of Flub-a-Dub and many other denizens of Doodyville and playing a wide array of non-puppet characters.

Steve Allen "discovered" Dayton and added him to his stock company of comic players. Often, when Steverino did his "Man on the Street" routines, the funniest interview would be with Dayton Allen playing some scatterminded "expert." Audiences howled at him and loved repeating his catch-phrase, "Whyyyyy not?"

Throughout all of this, Dayton Allen established himself as one of the top voiceover performers in the New York talent pool. He was heard in many of the Terrytoons animated shows, voicing both Heckle and Jeckle, and almost all the characters on the Deputy Dawg series, including the star of the show. He was also heard on many of the cartoons produced by Hal Seeger, such as Milton the Monster and Stuffy Durma. He occasionally worked with his brother, Bradley Bolke, who was also active in doing animation voices. (Bradley was the voice of Chumley the Walrus on Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales.)

Dayton more or less retired from performing in the early eighties. Around then, I had occasion to offer him a role in a TV show I was writing and it led to what is easily the most hilarious hour or so I ever spent on the phone. Our casting director was unable to track down an agent for Mr. Allen so I called a friend who furnished me with what turned out to be Dayton's home number. I made the call to him and he politely declined the job, saying that thanks to wise real estate investments, he had plenty of money…and he didn't feel like flying to Los Angeles to be funny. He could be funny in his own toilet, he said. He was sure funny on the phone, and he seemed to enjoy the audience. He kept coming up with anecdotes and jokes, and he kept me on the line for so long that I felt like I should have paid a cover charge. Weak with laughter, I finally begged off…but only when he announced he had to go to the toilet and be funny in there. I'm sure he was…just as I'm sure it was our loss that he decided to retire when he did.

Just amended the Harry Lampert obit. I wrote that he died on his 88th birthday because the source I consulted said he was born November 13, 1916. Mike Catron, who diligently preserves convention panels and interviews for posterity on videotape, informs me Harry said at one he was born November 3, 1916. I'm assuming Harry was right. Thanks, Mike…for that and many other contributions.

Harry Lampert, the artistic co-creator of The Flash, died this morning at age 88. The cause was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage, but he had been in failing health for the past few months, battling cancer and undergoing treatments at a hospital near his home in Florida. A native of New York, Harry showed early artistic talent and by age sixteen was working at the Max Fleischer animation studio, primarily as an inker and clean-up artist for Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons. One day, he heard about a way to pick up extra money…drawing for these new things called "comic books." Harry begin moonlighting, and eventually working full-time for some of the earliest "shop" enterprises, thereby becoming one of the true pioneers of the field. He mostly drew "funny" comics but as the industry turned towards superheroes, he did a few of them, too. The most notable came in 1940 when editor Sheldon Mayer at the All-American company (later absorbed by DC) was assembling a new book called Flash Comics.

Mayer needed someone to draw the title character, a super-speedster devised by writer Gardner Fox. Lampert got the job but was not happy drawing in that style. Little suspecting it was the feature with which his name would be forever linked, he asked off after two stories and Mayer, who knew he had miscast Harry, happily replaced him. Lampert moved on to funnier features (including filler gag pages for many of the company's books) and later out of comic books and into magazine gag cartoons for, among many others, Saturday Review and The Saturday Evening Post. In the late forties, he segued into advertising work, where he enjoyed great success and eventually formed his own agency.

Cartooning was only one of his passions. Another was bridge, a game at which he became so expert that after retiring from cartooning in the mid-seventies, he wrote several books and a syndicated column on the topic. In the eighties, comic book fans tracked him down and he began appearing at conventions, selling newly-created sketches of The Flash. The last few years of his life, he bounced back and forth between bridge tournaments and comic-cons, happily signing autographs and marketing his wares at both. I enjoyed talking with the man and interviewing him on panels, and I'm sure glad we all got the chance to meet and know him.

E-mails are reminding me of another duo that went by the name of Tom and Jerry…the singing pair who later reverted to their real names of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. They were "Tom and Jerry" for a couple years…and apparently, they even wrote most of their songs together then, whereas the later Simon & Garfunkel hits (the important ones, at least) were written wholly by Paul. Art was Tom and Paul was Jerry, in keeping with the obvious sense that, in any Tom and Jerry team, Tom has to be the taller of the two. They had ten or so modestly-received records, then broke up, in part because Paul decided he didn't want to be half of the new Everly Brothers. He wanted to be all of the new Elvis Presley, so he went off and recorded a song on his own. Thereafter, they recorded with others under an array of phony names before finally getting together again. Interesting that they didn't do anything all that memorable until they started being, more or less, themselves.

My pal Buzz Dixon informs me that the original, 19th century meaning of "Tom and Jerry" was to go drinking, brawling and carousing, and he directs my attention to this dictionary page on the subject.