The folks at the National Weather Service are revising their forecast for San Diego from July 22 through July 25. This is when a lot of us will be there for the Comic-Con International and it looks like it'll be at least 80 degrees most days, with lows between 65 and 70. And I'll bet if those numbers change, they'll go up. So pack accordingly.

But of course, you won't have to brave the heat if you spend your afternoons attending the panels I'm moderating.

As we predicted here, Universal Home Video is bringing out a boxed DVD set of the five Marx Brothers movies they control — Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers and Duck Soup. It's called The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection and it comes out in early November with a list price of $59.98, which means $45 to $50 since no one on this planet pays list price.

This, of course, will go on your shelf right next to your copy of The Marx Brothers Collection, the DVD set from Warner Home Video that includes A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, At The Circus, Go West, Room Service, The Big Store and A Night in Casablanca. If you don't have that one yet, you can order it from Amazon for $42. This means that by the end of this year, you'll be able to own every single Marx Brothers feature — apart from The Story of Mankind with its brief, pointless cameos — for under a hundred bucks.

So is that everything? Well, not quite. There's still Love Happy.

It's an easy movie to forget about. In fact, when Groucho and Harpo wrote their autobiographies, they did. But that won't make their last and least-enjoyable film go away…and if you buy the good ones, your "completist" genes will probably compel you to get the DVD of this one, too. You can order if from Amazon right now by clicking here. Go ahead. It's only thirteen bucks. Think how much more they'd charge if Groucho appeared for more than a couple of minutes in what is basically a Harpo movie with a lot of Chico. As one might expect, the DVD cover plays up Groucho's brief role and the even-briefer screen debut of Marilyn Monroe. She's in the film about as long as it takes her to inhale and exhale once…which, by the way, she did very well.

For the most part though, it's a pretty weak movie…and this DVD may (I don't know for sure) be weaker than it needs to be. The original theatrical release was 91 minutes but for years, the prints available for TV and on VHS have run 85 minutes, omitting some footage that helps the film considerably. The Laserdisc release was 91 minutes but this DVD is advertised as being 85 minutes long. This was probably a silly oversight but part of me suspects they did it deliberately so that one of these days, they can con me into buying a supplemental Love Happy DVD containing just the other six minutes.

If you think some politicians do a bad job of defending their past actions, you should have seen Wolf Blitzer being grilled on last night's installment of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. I'll post a link to the clip if and when they put it up on the Comedy Central website…but if you can catch a rerun, do so.

As I mentioned early this morning, the DVD set of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoons came out without the special features. However, there's an interesting special feature that was separately prepared for the Internet by some of the voice actors who worked on that series. It tells you who they were, how they were cast, what they're up to now, etc. The site is also a pretty amazing example of what one can do with Shockwave animation if one is clever. (But it's pretty elaborate. If you have a dial-up connection, you could be there a long time.)

Buried within the presentation is some info on the voice cast of the 1964 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special, which included a number of the same actors. I can think of at least three people who regularly read this site who will consider that the most important piece of info I've ever dispensed here.

A number of folks have written to ask me what I thought of the recently-released Garfield movie. I think I haven't had time to see it yet.

A number of folks have written to ask me what I think of a new biography of Jack Kirby called Tales to Astonish, written by a gent who goes by the name of Ronin Ro. I've only had the time to give this a quick read-through but my feelings so far are very mixed, both in terms of its accuracy and of the "portrait" it paints of Jack. It would be unfair to the author to be too negative at this stage, so do not take this as a bad review…just a cautionary note to not believe everything you read. Which is good advice regarding almost everything, including this weblog. I'll write more about this when I have the chance to give the book a more thorough study. And yes, my own biography of Kirby is coming. I just don't know when yet.

Lastly, a number of folks have written to ask me why there are no special features (like, say, the interviews they did with Stan Lee and me) on the new DVD set of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoons. This one, I can answer. A little documentary was prepared but didn't get finished and approved in time to make it onto the set…which, I gather, had a very strict release schedule since they wanted it to coincide with the new movie. No word on whether that mini-documentary will ever appear anywhere.

Time to sign up!

The report of the Select Committee on Intelligence is full of redactions and omissions, but there are a lot of interesting things left. Here's a link to a fully-searchable Adobe PDF file of it.

If you surf political websites, as I do when I need to get away from the more realistic worlds of comic books and animation, you may come across ads that say "Stop Stan Lee!" These have nothing to do with the Editor Emeritus of Marvel Comics. There's a very Conservative Republican State Senator in Kentucky named Stan Lee. Here's his website…and in the interest of equal time, here's the website of his main opponent, Ralph Long.

We're about two weeks from the official release of the DVD set of Garfield and Friends, Volume One, and reviews (like this one) are beginning to appear. I wrote almost everything on this set…which is not, by the way, the first season. There are 24 half-hours on this new DVD release. We did 13 half-hours in the first season, 26 in the second season…so this set has the whole first season plus almost half of Year Two. There were 121 half-hours total so if these sell well enough to go the distance, they'll put the whole body of work on five volumes. You can do your part to make that happen by ordering a set or ten, which you can do at Amazon by clicking on this link. You will also be contributing to the Circle of Life: Most of the money I make from my Amazon cut and my royalties will probably go to buying DVD sets of other TV shows. It's all part of the Ecology of Home Video.

If you haven't seen this yet, take a few minutes and enjoy a clever bit of Flash animation and political humor. It's a parody of "This Land Is Your Land…" performed by Mssrs. Bush and Kerry. And it's awfully good.

The programming schedule for this year's Comic-Con International has been posted and once again, Programming Director Gary Sassaman has done an incredible job of assembling an array of panels, interviews, screenings, lectures and happenings. If you'd like to see which events you're going to miss because they're on opposite other events you want to see, here are links to what they have planned for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In that order.

However, you can make your life simpler by just attending all the events I'm moderating. I've thrown together a decorative page that lists them and you'll find it here.

Tonight around 20 minutes after Midnight, C-Span 1 is rerunning the Howard Dean/Ralph Nader debate. (An online video is also available on the C-Span Website.) The theme, more or less, was Dean's contention that Nader ought to get out of the presidential race, lest he suck up enough votes to get Bush 'n' Cheney another term. Against this, Nader defended his candidacy as good for the country and even for the Democrats.

On this particular controversy, I have no opinion. I would (surprise, surprise) like to see Bush defeated but I'm not sure that Nader won't do more to make that come about by staying nominally in the race, bashing the incumbents in terms that would be beneath the dignity of Kerry and Edwards. I'm also not sure that Dean isn't right and that Nader should get out, well before November if not immediately. I thought both men made some good points and both said some evasive, disingenuous things. Nader keep tapdancing around — and I don't think he even denied — the assertion that he will only get on some ballots due to Republican organizing…but Dean also didn't seem able to refute the claim that Nader is saying important things that no one else is saying. I found the whole back-and-forth interesting even though it didn't cause me to make up my mind for either view.

Another aspect that I found interesting was that from where I was sitting, neither man won, nor did either land any real decisive punches. Before I watched it, I read on several websites that Dean had mopped the floor with Nader…or that Nader had left Dean broken and bleeding. I am always amazed at the capacity of some folks to see their side "winning," no matter what. When we get around to the Bush-Kerry and Edwards-Cheney debates, it is unlikely that anyone will do such a poor job that their partisans won't be out there, claiming their boy clobbered and humiliated his opponent. They're already demonstrating the same blind cheering interest when their guy is 2 points ahead in a poll with a 3-point Margin of Error.

Stan Lee guests on Dennis Miller's CNBC show on Friday, July 16. The A&E Channel reruns the episode of Biography about him (and with me among the interviewees) early the morning of Sunday, July 18. And then the weekly Variety that comes out the following day features a special section on Stan and another special section on the Comic-Con International. I wrote an article that will appear in the latter.

Okay, it's time we stuck you with this one to think about. Let's say you go on the game show Let's Make a Deal, and you have your choice of three doors. Behind one is the grand prize of a car. Behind the other two are goats. You pick a door. Let's say you pick Door #1. Your host, Monty Hall, knows which door conceals the car and he then opens one of the other doors — let's say it's Door #3 — and he says, "As you can see, the car is not behind Door #3. Would you like to stay with your choice or would you like to switch to Door #2?" Is it to your advantage to switch? Or do you have just as good a chance of winning if you stay with your original choice?

The answer seems obvious…but given how much argument this question has prompted, maybe it's not. Here's a link to one of many websites that tackles the problem…and even allows you to play Let's Make a Deal first. You'll enjoy it more if you put on a ridiculous costume first. (Never mind. What you're already wearing will do just fine.)

We continue to recommend The Daily Show With Jon Stewart as the cleverest show on television. Lately, we've especially enjoyed this report by correspondent Samantha Bee on a man who's making a documentary against Michael Moore. We also recommend this commentary by Lewis Black on folks who are merchandising the death of Ronald Reagan. (Stay tuned for the punchline at the end.)

If those links don't work, go to this page of the Comedy Central website and look for the clips entitled "Dislike Mike" and "Reaganomics." Better still, just watch The Daily Show.