Alan Keyes sings a chorus of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" for news cameras. Somehow, I think it's going to take more than that for him to get the gay vote.

Paul "Mousie" Garner, who died last Sunday at age 95, was a veteran performer, starting back in the halcyon days of vaudeville. He was never much of a star but he was a nice man who loved to talk about the business and especially about his affiliation with the Three Stooges. Back when it was Moe, Larry and Shemp performing on stage with Ted Healy, Mousie was the pinch-hitter, filling in when Shemp was out. Several decades later, whenever the Stooges were down a member, there would be talk of Mousie rejoining the troupe…and at one point, "Curly" Joe DeRita briefly toured with Garner and another comic, billing themselves as "The New Three Stooges."

All of that gave Mousie the right, I suppose, to bill himself as part of the famous act and since he outlived the others and was so accessible, he was the go-to guy when any Stooge chronicler needed someone to interview. He actually did more than serve as a standby Stooge, but not a lot more. The times I chatted with him at autograph shows, we talked about his association with Spike Jones and also with Olsen and Johnson, who sent him out in the touring company of their Broadway smash, Hellzapoppin'. He would say that he planned to "semi-retire" from show business when he hit his hundredth birthday. I'm not sure what that meant since he sure didn't seem to be working the last few decades…but it's still a shame he didn't make it to retirement age.

My pal Earl Kress and I have been playing around with video editing on our respective PCs and I think I need to solicit some counsel here. As I said, we have Windows-based PCs and we're looking for the perfect piece of software. We have some DVDs full of clips (not copy-protected) and we want to import them into an editing program, do some edits, add some simple wipes and dissolves and maybe dub in music and add titles, then build a menu and export to a new DVD. Sounds simple? Well, it oughta be. Earl has been fiddling with Pinnacle Studio 8 and it seems to do most of the things we want except that there doesn't seem to be an efficient way to get files off the DVD and into the program. I've had the same problem with Adobe Premiere Pro. This is above and beyond the obvious problem that all forms of video will be obsolete by the time I could possibly learn Adobe Premiere Pro.

We've tried a number of programs that claim to convert VOB files to MPEG-2 but they all seem to either truncate the clip, get the sound off-sync or fuzz up the video. Shouldn't one be able to take clips off a DVD and edit them without any of these things happening?

Of course. So I'm hereby asking if anyone here has stumbled across the perfect program(s) to do what we want. And are you converting files to MPEG-2 or AVI or what?

Like (I sure hope) most Americans, I think the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" is a bunch of Republican stooges who are out to smear John Kerry with claims that are, at best, questionable. A friend of mine who went to Vietnam says a lot of guys who received medals there might not have literally deserved them, so if some of Kerry's were based on exaggerations, that would not be unusual. I see no reason yet to assume that's the case but even if it is, it's of little relevance to whether he's fit to be Commander-in-Chief today. For that matter, I don't think the "frat boy" partyings of George W. Bush a few decades ago are all that important in judging his fitness to lead…and don't think we won't hear more about them in the weeks to come.

I'm sure those who were already disinclined to support Kerry welcome the attack on his medals. In politics these days, a lot of people aren't satisfied to believe that their guy is better than the other guy. Now, the other guy must be demonized as criminal, a fool, a pathological liar, a traitor and an all-around worthless human being. Kerry's war record was always an obstacle if you wanted to believe that of him, and it's probably nice to have someone provide you with an alternate version that removes that obstacle. Best of all, you don't even have to really believe it. You can just say, "I don't know…I hear Kerry may have cheated to get those medals…I hear Bush may have cheated on his National Guard service…let's just call that a wash." It's a nice way for some to neutralize an area where Kerry held a big advantage.

How many votes, if any, this whole thing will cost Kerry is a good guess…but you know who I do think is being hurt by this? John McCain. He's out there simultaneously denouncing the attack on Kerry's service record while he stumps for George W. Bush. That can't be a very comfortable position to be in.

McCain is one of those guys I've never quite known what to think of. I first became familiar with him when he was making some extraordinary gestures to soothe bad feelings on both sides in the aftermath of Vietnam. He reached out to some of the protesters and set what I thought was a fine example of how we all needed to put certain angers behind us. If McCain, who spent years in a P.O.W. camp could become friends with a noted anti-war activist like David Ifshin, that was cause for more optimism than a thousand speeches that "hope is on the way." I am a big believer in forgiveness and also in standing up for the other side when you think they're being wronged. McCain denouncing the nasty Swift Boats campaign against Kerry is exactly the kind of thing I've admired in the guy.

But then he's out there hugging Bush, campaigning for him, trying to do nothing that will alienate the Republican base that will select the 2008 nominee. Given what the Bush team did to McCain in the 2000 primaries, you have to wonder. Does he think Bush has nothing to do with the attacks on Kerry's record and/or can't be expected to denounce them? I doubt that, though that may have to be McCain's public position. Does he not hold Bush responsible for the attacks made on him? Again, doubtful. Has he merely forgiven Bush for those tactics because it will help the McCain in '08 campaign? If so, that's not the kind of forgiveness that once made me admire the senior Senator from the great state of Arizona. I know that he has to support the nominee of his party but there was always something nice about McCain that made me think he'd never let that obligation — or even the obvious thirst to be president — override a matter of principle. He always seemed like a Republican that Democrats could support. I am now less inclined to believe that and I'll bet I'm not the only person who feels that way.

Ben Fritz, one of the authors of All the President's Spin and a co-conspirator in Spinsanity, did an article last week for Variety and it's now available online. It's about "geek chic" at the Comic-Con, and I'm linking to it because it's a good piece, not because it quotes me. To be honest, I'll link to just about anything that quotes me but this is a good article anyway.

In the category of "I thought he was already dead," we have the passing of Robert Bootzin, a fixture of sixties' talk shows as the frenetic Gypsy Boots. I remember him mainly from his visits to Steve Allen's various talk shows. Gypsy, as everyone calls him, was sometimes described as "the first hippie." He would burst onto Steve's stage, dressed like a cross between Tarzan and Mahatma Gandhi. Displaying more than enough pep and enthusiasm to classify as a colorful crazy, he'd preach about "natural foods" and would bring berries and bark and other odd things he'd collected in Griffith Park for Steve to sample. How talk shows have changed. Today, if you worked for Leno or Letterman and you suggested they participate in something like that, you'd be fired on the spot.

Gypsy would swing on ropes, dance with women in the audience and make outrageous claims about how his lifestyle would enable him to live well into his second or maybe third century. Audiences loved him and Mr. Allen, who was no fool when it came to the creation of exciting television, kept having him back.

Mr. Bootzin didn't make it to 100. Obits like this one say he was either 89 or 91 and the confusion is understandable. When he did talk shows in the sixties, he never divulged his age and I think most of us got the idea that he was much older than his energy level would indicate. I'm amazed to find out now that he was in his fifties back then as he extolled the magic of organic figs and wheat grass and running naked through the park at daybreak. He probably wasn't as good an example of great health as we thought then. Nevertheless, he was funny and outrageous and great at self-promotion, turning up almost anywhere in Los Angeles where a crowd gathered out-of-doors. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

We've managed to dig up the info that Joe Sinnott (artist supreme) needed. Both stories appeared in Kid Colt, Outlaw #90 but were miscredited. They're listed everywhere as having been drawn wholly by Jack Keller but in fact, Keller pencilled and Sinnott inked. Thanks to all who helped solve this important question.

I like the whole idea of stem-cell research. I think the negatives about it are silly posturings by groups who are opposed to abortion rights and have wrongly decided that stem-cell research is vaguely in the same arena. On the other hand, this article by William Saletan actually caused me to slightly modify my thinking on the issue.

Matthew Yglesias points out that — and here's a shocker — that some of what George W. Bush is saying about his and John Kerry's tax plans might not be accurate.

This message is just for folks who have a ton of old Marvel comic books…

I got a call today from Joe Sinnott…and if you have a ton of old Marvel comic books, you sure know who that is. Joe is trying to clean up his record book which lists everything he's done and when he did it. I helped him solve a couple of mysteries but I was stumped on two, both involving Marvel western comics from around 1960.

Joe's records say he inked a short Jack Kirby story called "The Man From Fargo" which appeared in Kid Colt, Outlaw #90. The Grand Comic Book Database (a wonderful thing but not without occasional errors) lists that story in that issue as being pencilled and inked by Jack Keller. I don't have that issue. Can someone who does check it and see if it's Keller or Kirby/Sinnott?

Also, Joe's notes say he inked a short Kirby story called "Beware the Gun Wizard" but he has no idea where it appeared. He did his work on it October 27-30 of 1959 so I'm guessing the earliest it might have been printed would have been in an issue cover-dated March or more likely April of '60. Anyone have any idea where it ran? Thanks!

My pal Aaron Barnhart thinks the Trio cable channel is not long for this world. I hope he's wrong but he probably isn't.

I'm watching a rerun of The Flip Wilson Show that TiVo (we love TiVo) snagged for me this morn from TV Land. In the sketch, Dennis Weaver is playing a Justice of the Peace and Flip is in wedding dress drag as Geraldine, who's waiting for her never-seen boy friend, "Killer," to show up and marry her. Okay, you got the picture?

There's a knock at the door and Flip/Geraldine says, "Come in, Killer." And in comes another guest star on the show, O.J. Simpson, looking very groom-like in a tuxedo. I am not making this up.

"You're not Killer," Geraldine says. (Right the first time, lady!) Actually, Simpson's the Best Man, and he's there to stand in for Killer, who's too busy shooting pool to show up for his wedding. Weaver proceeds to try to conduct a proxy marriage of Geraldine and Killer…until Simpson tries to call it off because "he won't treat you right." Geraldine goes ahead and marries her absent beau anyway.

Geraldine Jones has not been seen in many years. Which proves it's dangerous to stand next to O.J. Simpson at your wedding…even if he's only the Best Man.

Ronald Brownstein discusses how partisan and just plain nasty this election has become.

Hey, I've done my part. I've bought five of them over the years. It's not my fault TiVo isn't selling very well.

The other day, I recommended a new book called All the President's Spin, written by the staff of the Spinsanity website. I've since given it another read and decided that I was off a bit in what I wrote. It really is more anti-Bush than it felt to me the first time through. But I still think that the main point of interest here is not that George W. Bush and his crew have said so many things that were misleading or just plain untrue, but that the mainstream press did not call them on these fibs.

You can read part of the introduction over at this website. It's a good preview of a good book.