Cheney has said a couple of times that he doesn't have enough time to respond to things Edwards is saying. Wonder what would happen if Edwards turned to him and said, "Well then, how about if we schedule another debate next week with no silly time limits?"

The moderator's doing a good, by-the-books job. But what I'd love to see are a couple of questions that the debaters' prep crews couldn't have anticipated.

We're halfway through and my sense is that nothing that's been said has changed anyone's mind about anything.

About fifteen minutes ago, I thought I saw Edwards give Cheney one of those looks that Chevy Chase used to deliver behind the back of someone who was delivering a serious editorial on Weekend Update.

Oops. There's another one.

Well, so much for the rule where they're not supposed to address each other directly.

I wish Edwards sounded a little less like Kerry's agent.

Too many planned talking points. Both of them.

Being limited to 90-120 seconds per answer may have helped Kerry. It may even have helped Bush. But at the moment, Cheney and Edwards are tackling too many areas in each question and the topics cry out for longer discussion.

I just thought of something I'd say tonight if I were John Edwards. At some point, Dick Cheney is bound to make some sort of outrageous, over-the-top attack on Edwards or his running mate or both. If I were Edwards, I'd smile and begin my reply with…

Well, Mr. Vice-President, that brings to mind a suggestion that you recently gave Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor…

…and then, I'd throw in a "however" and give a proper, dignified response.

For those of you in or around Orange County: A gaggle of top cartoonists — including Sergio Aragonés, Scott Shaw! and Stan Sakai will be appearing this Saturday at the Orange County High School of the Arts. Details here.

In a Broadway musical, the musicians are usually playing from a pit in front of and under the stage. Occasionally, they're on stage. But lately, they're sometimes elsewhere.

You have lots of choices on the Internet today…websites that will tell you Kerry is slightly ahead, even or slightly behind. Obviously, what it means is that a lot can still happen with a month to go and more debates ahead. For some reason, I'm looking especially forward to the Vice-Presidential one tomorrow night. Cheney is so unpopular, even with folks who intend to vote for the Republican ticket, that Edwards may have to decide whether to go in for the kill, or just sit there and look statesmanlike by comparison. One assumes he will not make the error Joe Lieberman made of letting Cheney get away with claiming he has never made money off the government.

More interesting to me is this evaluation of the polls that suggests Democrats have a real chance of taking control of the Senate. I'm not sure, given the choice, I wouldn't rather have President Bush and a Democratic Senate than President Kerry and a Republican Senate.

I am also amused by the fact that Alan Keyes, who was selected from another state to run against Barack Obama, is running around fifty (50!) percentage points down. This is one of those situations where, like John Ashcroft and his track record of convicting domestic terrorist suspects, I think, "Hey, I could have done that!" At one point, the premise was that Keyes probably wouldn't beat Obama but they thought he'd keep the guy busy so he couldn't campaign for other Democrats, and maybe he'd get bloodied in ways that would hamper his future prospects. But Obama's sailing to the easiest win in the whole Senate race, so you have to wonder: Maybe the real motive of the Republican leadership was to rid their party of Alan Keyes.

I don't think Bush is going to get far with his claim that Kerry's use of the term "global test" means that a President Kerry would give foreign nations a veto power over U.S. actions. William Saletan has a pretty good column up today explaining how Bush is misinterpreting the term. Clearly, Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations, filled with solid evidence that has proven faulty, failed some sort of test that we ought to regret.

The question I would most like to see in Friday's debate — of those that might actually be asked: "Mr. President…if, as you say, we're 'making progress' in the war on terror, why do we keep seeing all these orange alerts that say, 'High risk of terrorist attacks'?"

P.S. I just Googled to get the exact wording of an orange alert and I found that if you search for "terror alerts," the highest-ranked page is this one that translates the alerts into Sesame Street characters. Make of that what you will.

Tuesday morning, Turner Classic Movies is running The Hollywood Revue of 1929, one of the first talkies ever made and a movie with an amazing cast. How amazing is it? It's this amazing: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Jack Benny, Marion Davies, John Gilbert, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Buster Keaton, Cliff Edwards, Conrad Nagel, Marie Dressler, Gus Edwards, Polly Moran, Bessie Love and a number of others. Among other highlights in this plotless spectacular, Laurel and Hardy do a short but funny magic act, Buster Keaton dances a ballet, Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards leads most of the cast as he introduces the song, "Singin' in the Rain"…and Jack Benny makes his screen debut.

Benny is the host, in fact. At one point early in the film, he introduces Conrad Nagel as "a name to conjure with…" and as per the script, he mispronounces the word, "conjure." As filmed, this then led to a brief sequence in which Nagel corrected him, but that bit was cut, leaving Benny saying the word wrong for no apparent purpose. One of the main reviews of the film said, "If Mr. Benny wishes to have a film career, he had better learn the English language."

Also, in case you read this in time: Much of today on TCM is taken up with Buster Keaton flicks, both sound and silent. Many funny things in there.

The highly-talented Lennie Weinrib sends me this article that explains what Bush and Kerry would each do about health care in this country.

A couple of folks have written me, as if I could do anything about it, to say that they disagree with the picks on the E! Specials, The 101 Most Unforgettable SNL Moments. Well, of course you disagree. These are just the selections of some anonymous folks whose opinions are bound to be different from yours or mine.

That said, it occurred to me that if I were asked to mention the SNL bit that I've most often heard people mention over the years, it would be one that wasn't anywhere in the 101. It would be the time Lorne Michaels appeared on the show to offer the Beatles a whopping $3000 to reunite and appear on Saturday Night Live.

So, uh, what do you suppose is on Ralph Nader's mind these days? Something like, "Hmm…I didn't get into the debates. I haven't gotten any real publicity. I stand a good chance of doing worse this year than last time. And if it looks like I threw one or more states to Bush and won him the election, a lot of people are going to come after me with large, pointed sticks. Gee, maybe running for president wasn't such a good idea, after all."

Another fact-check on the first Presidential Debate, this one courtesy of our friends at Spinsanity.

I just re-read a line I posted earlier and changed my mind about it. It was the one that went, "I don't think we have any real post-debate polls yet. When we do, I wouldn't expect them to reflect any real gain for Kerry."

I'm thinking I discounted the "horse race" mentality of the press, and with the tendency of some pollsters to hedge their positions. I think there will be a number of polls that show Kerry even or maybe a little ahead. Why? Because "Kerry Comes From Behind With Debate Victory" is a better headline than "Debate Has No Impact on Polls." Even Fox News can afford the leisure, this far before Election Day, of going with the hot story.

I'm also thinking that we forget, or at least I forgot how impressive Kerry's numbers were on the debate. Going in, the polls had Bush at around 48% and Kerry at 43% or thereabouts. So if on the question of which candidate "won," Bush got 48% and Kerry got 43%…well, that would pretty much mean that no minds were changed; that everyone thought their guy was still their guy. For Kerry to even tie Bush in the post-debate polling would probably mean that a certain number of Bush supporters thought Kerry outperformed their candidate, which is not an easy admission for most voters to make, and one that's indicative of a certain softness in their Bush preference. That alone would be great news for Kerry. That he beat Bush by at least ten points (twenty in some counts) means that at the very least, he connected with a lot of people who were predisposed to vote Republican. He did not rack up those numbers just with Democrats or even with Democrats and Undecideds.

So I'll change and predict that we're about to see a couple of major polls that will have Kerry and Bush in a dead heat…and at least one that puts Kerry ahead.

The E! Channel now owns the rebroadcast rights to all the past seasons of Saturday Night Live. So far, they have stuck to the last few years with occasional dips into the Phil Hartman/Dana Carvey years.

But this last week — with reruns throughout this weekend — they've offered a fun overview of the series. They had five hour-long shows that counted down The 101 Most Unforgettable SNL Moments as determined by…uh, I have no idea. But whoever it was, they selected a pretty wide range of clips from all seasons, showing off all the major players and darn near every recurring bit. The clips are maddeningly brief. Most of the shows consist of interviews with a wide range of people (some who worked on SNL, many who didn't) reminiscing about their favorite routines.

Naturally, every SNL fan will disagree mightily with the rankings. Some folks (I am not one of them) think the first five seasons were the high point not just of the series but of all television comedy. Whoever made this list doesn't seem to agree. I think the highest-ranked moment from the original cast was a Blues Brothers appearance, which made the chart at #18. And the next ones below that were Roseanne Roseannadanna (#25), a Samurai sketch (#29) and the Coneheads (#32). You can evaluate the selections yourself beginning on this page.

To save you looking: They awarded #1 to the "Wayne's World" sketch that guested Aerosmith. And #2 was the opening with Rudy Giuliani and Lorne Michaels on the first broadcast after 9/11.

Even if you're aghast that certain sketches are ranked high, low or omitted, it's a real history of an important franchise. What I wish E! would do, and I doubt this will happen, is to take these five one-hour shows and replace the short clips with the full sketches. It would probably expand the countdown to at least 30 hours but it would make for a very entertaining weekend marathon.