Here's someone's homemade video clip (you'll need RealPlayer) of a recent segment from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. If you think Dick Cheney has a severe credibility problem, you'll enjoy it. If you don't, this clip might make you understand why a lot of people do. It runs around five and a half minutes.

The documentary I recommended — Breaking Vegas — is on The History Channel this evening, not The Discovery Channel. This is an easy mistake to make and I made it.

It was caught by David Feldman. Show your appreciation by buying one of David's wonderful "Imponderables" books like this one or this one or even this one.

GMail is a new online webmail service from the Google folks. It's free and it gives you a staggering amount of online storage space (1000 megabytes) and it has an easy-to-use user interface and I don't think I'll be making much use of it. That's my conclusion after a month or so of fiddling around with an account.

My problem with it does not relate to its privacy/advertising policy. They're not there at the moment but at times, the "price" for your free e-mail account is that little ads will appear in the margins, much like those that appear on the wonderful Google search engine page. Google has its computers scan your e-mail for keywords and then select advertising that it thinks will be relevant to you. This panics some folks (like this guy) and I don't know quite why. I mean, when you sign up for an e-mail service, you accept that your correspondence will be sitting on file servers owned and controlled by total strangers. They could easily be reading it or scanning it for certain content…and you'd have no way of knowing. Why is it so obtrusive when they tell you that anonymous bots will be looking to see if you seem like a good candidate for Viagra ads?

So that doesn't bother me. One thing that does is the whole idea of webmail, especially the way GMail operates, which is to encourage you to keep all your mail on their servers and never delete anything. When you go to do so, a little message reminds you that you have tons of storage space so there's no need to delete…and they make doing so a two-step process. (You have to move the message to the Trash folder and then mark it in the Trash folder and flush it.) I don't like the idea of leaving all my mail on someone else's computer…especially someone who could be subpoenaed in the Era of Ashcroft. Moreover, GMail will delete your account — and therefore all the mail they've encouraged you to store there — if you don't log in for nine months.

Which brings me to another thing I don't like about sending and receiving e-mail online. They say they may add POP3 access at a later date, possibly for a fee, but at the moment there's no easy way to download the whole database to your home computer. I'm not particularly worried about Google and GMail going out of business and disappearing with all my mail but I also don't think it's a bad idea to keep your own mail on your own computer.

Lastly — and this is the thing that drove me to write this message — GMail's Spam filters aren't working well, at least for me. Quite a few legit messages are getting bumped over to the Spam folder along with all the ads for cheap mortgages and cheaper women. An occasional error is understandable but their batting average is just too low.

So is GMail good for anything? Absolutely. It's great for a "junk mail" account…you know, for when some site makes you sign up for access and you don't want your real mailbox cluttered with any mail that site might send. One way I've reduced the amount of Spam through which I have to wade is to have a couple of different e-mail addresses. I don't use my main one for most sign-ups. You might find a GMail account handy to maintain a separate identity.

But you can't just go sign up for one. Eventually, that will be possible…but right now, someone who's already had a GMail account for some time (or is in tight with Google) has to invite you. In the next few weeks, someone probably will. I suggest you take them up on the invite…but not that you use it for your important correspondence.

Want proof that western movies are dead? Warner Brothers has torn down Laramie Street.

Tomorrow afternoon at 5 PM, Bill Clinton will be at the Brentano's in Century City to sign his new book. Today at around the same hour, I had to stop in there to look for a book that — it turned out — they didn't have. The place was already in a bit of a tizzy.

Outside, a security guard was trying to politely shoo away some folks who came to camp out all night so they could be first in line. The guard was explaining that the mall closes overnight so no one can be there. Three people with knapsacks and picnic baskets were telling him how devoted they were to the former President…as if that might make a difference.

Inside, phones were ringing constantly and all the store employees were having the exact same conversation with callers, explaining The Rules. The line starts at 6 AM and you can either buy a ticket (for the price of the book) or get one by showing the receipt for the copy of My Life that you already purchased at that store. Then you have to be back in line by 4:00 — or maybe it's 3:00 — and you'll be processed in order. It's one book per person. Clinton will only sign his book and he will only sign his name. No personalizations. No cameras. No cell phones. No purses. (There are other rules, too. If anyone reading this is thinking of going, don't presume that I'm giving you the entire story, or that I didn't get something wrong.)

Clinton, they said, is committed to sign 1000 books. He may sign more "at his discretion" — and when was the last time you heard the word "discretion" in a sentence about Bill Clinton? I suspect he won't sign many more than that…and I say that as someone who occasionally has to sign his own 11-letter name on 1000 copies of some Groo book or print. I couldn't do it all in one sitting, and I didn't have to keep stopping and shaking hands between signatures, as Clinton presumably does.

I delighted one clerk by going up to her and saying, "Could I ask you a question that has nothing to do with Bill Clinton?"

"It'll be the first one today," she grinned…and seemed more disappointed than I was that their computer showed they aren't carrying the book I wanted. Then out of nowhere, she said, "We're putting on ten extra people to help tomorrow and we're closing for several hours before he arrives, and it still won't be enough. I don't know why we're doing this."

I do. It's just about the only thing a bookstore can offer us that Amazon can't.

Here's a link to the online video for a new Bush-Cheney commercial. The premise is that the folks who oppose George W. Bush are wild-eyed and crazy and angry…and I can't imagine why the Bush folks thought this would get them votes. I mean, yeah, the clip of Michael Moore at the Oscars makes him look rude and rabble-rousing. But at a time when Americans increasingly believe there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction and no Saddam-Osama partnership, I think the reaction to Moore saying the war was for "fictitious reasons" [sic] will be more along the lines of, "Gee, maybe that guy wasn't as wrong as we thought at the time."

The thing that puzzles me about this ad is that it's not really anti-Kerry. Yeah, they have him in there…but they can't seriously believe they're going to convince America that boring ol' John Kerry is a wild-eyed radical crazy. They'd be better off going the other direction, trying to sell the notion that Kerry lacks the fire and passion to be Prez. This is really an attack not on the opposition candidate but on the more vocal folks who say George W. Bush has been a bad president. I can't think of any other incumbent who has ever spent money on that kind of spot.

Tomorrow night (Friday), The Discovery Channel is reairing Breaking Vegas, a combination documentary and dramatization of how a batch of M.I.T. students made an incredible Blackjack assault on the casinos of Nevada. A fascinating tale told in an interesting manner.

Fans of Hawaii Five-O may be interested to know that the rerun rotation has come around again to "V for Vashon," a story that ran for three consecutive episodes of the series in 1972 and was later edited into a quasi-movie. Just about everything that was good or bad about that program was represented in that three-parter about a crime family that vows to stop McGarrett from interfering with their operations. The first hour runs 6/27 on the Hallmark Channel with others to follow on subsequent Sundays, while a local station in Los Angeles, KDOC, is running all three parts next Monday through Wednesday. (Here's an article I wrote some time ago about Hawaii Five-O and its little quirks.)

Monday evening, Game Show Network is reairing Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal. This is the hour-long "documentary" about Michael Larson, the man who went on the game show Press Your Luck and through unexpected ingenuity, took CBS for over a hundred thousand dollars. An interesting story, indeed.

And if none of these shows interest you, you can turn on darn near any program at random and watch Bill Clinton being asked about Monica.

Over on his weblog, a gent named Will Campbell posts an anecdote about the late Lorenzo Music working with him at a Suicide Prevention Center. His account is true. Lorenzo did work occasionally at such places and the way he told it to me, people occasionally did recognize his voice. He once described a call that went something like this…

"I can't go on any longer. My wife left me for my sister and is suing me for divorce. I lost my job and I'm hopelessly in debt. My parents won't speak to me. My kid disowned me and changed his name. My doctor says I only have…say, do you know you sound like that cat on TV?"

I found this story thanks to a link that Amid Amidi posted over on Cartoon Brew. I am so grateful to him that I will even forgive his sacrilegious remarks the other day about Top Cat.

My TiVo has been recording I Love Lucy lately, whether I want it to or not. This morn, I watched three and was struck with how incredibly horrible Lucy and Ricky Ricardo were to each other in them. Yes, I know these are not supposed to be realistic portrayals of human behavior and yes, I know there are plenty of episodes which show their true affection for each other, usually with regard to forgiving mistakes. But even in the broadest fiction, two people who ostensibly love each other shouldn't ever be lying and plotting against each other and causing deliberate mental anguish. It's amazing how many times I've seen an episode of one these shows and never thought about what was really happening in the scenario.

In the first episode I watched, Lucy — based on very little evidence, including an eavesdropped partial conversation — concludes that Ricky is planning to murder her. She is so nervous that to calm her down, Ricky decides to surreptitiously slip a harmless sleeping potion in her drink…and when she sees him do this, she concludes that it's poison. Question: If you really love someone, wouldn't it take a lot to cause you to believe they were planning to kill you? Would you stay with someone about whom you could ever believe that? Or who would believe that about you? And isn't it kind of nasty to ever slip something into someone else's beverage without their knowledge?

In the second, Lucy wants to be in Ricky's new show and as usual, Ricky doesn't want her in it. She begins feigning insanity to convince Ricky that all that rejection has caused her to snap. When he finds out what she's up to, Ricky decides to teach her a lesson she'll never forget. He brings in an actor friend to play a doctor who convinces Lucy that she has an incurable disease. She suffers greatly until he reveals the hoax. Question: If you love someone, would you try to convince them you were nuts in order to get them to do something against their better judgment? Would you try to convince them they were dying and put them through that agony?

In the one on right now, Lucy and Ricky have a fight. To get her back with Ricky, Ethel decides to wrap Lucy in bandages and tell Ricky that his wife got hit by a bus. At the same time, Ricky and Fred arrange smoke bombs so they can convince Lucy the apartment is on fire and Ricky can rescue her. Question: Do people who love each other really try things like that? (While we're critiquing human behavior here: In the episode, Fred Mertz — who is the landlord, as well as Ricky's co-conspirator, is running through the halls, yelling not only that the building is on fire but that the whole thing may collapse at any moment. Is this a good thing for the landlord to be doing?)

That's three episodes in a row where hoaxes or lack of trust result not just in misperceptions but life-threatening ones. I dunno about you but if I care for someone, I'd kind of like them to not believe that they're about to die.

I guess it's a tribute to the writers and performers of I Love Lucy that we accept their antics as playful, even though a lot of episodes were about this kind of thing. Lucy and Ricky just come off as so adorable and affectionate that we don't let a little thing like murder plots impact our view of them as America's Happy Couple. Hell, watching reruns, we don't even let a little thing like their real-life divorce cloud the image of Lucy and her Cuban hubby. In the same way, no one ever thinks of Ralph Kramden as a guy who was always threatening to belt his wife or Ernie Bilko as a guy who was committing fraud. Ah, such innocent times…

I haven't read or even sent away for Bill Clinton's autobiography yet but more than 20 of you have ordered it from Amazon via this site. That's the most ever purchased that way, apart from books by me, so I thought I ought to put up an Amazon link and make it easy for anyone else who wants a copy. Personally, I'm in no rush. I can't recall ever enjoying the memoirs of any political figure unless that person was so far retired from activity that they had absolutely nothing to lose…and sometimes, even that doesn't lead to any real sense of candor. Though I usually enjoy hearing Clinton speak, I have no reason to expect his book to depart from the norm for political autobiography.

One thing I find amusing is Amazon's "Reader Reviews" section which is already flooded with bogus write-ups of Clinton's book. Folks who loathe him are writing that it is boring and filled with lies. Folks who love him are writing that it's honest and fascinating. And it's pretty obvious that few (if any) of these posters have even touched a copy of the thing. I guess it makes them feel like they're doing something for their cause. Most of the reviews I've seen so far by professionals who were paid to review the book haven't struck me as coming from a different set of motives, though at least some of them seem to have read some of it.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has announced the names of the folks who'll be receiving stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005…

MOTION PICTURES: Tim Allen, Antonio Banderas, Donald Duck, Kevin Kline, Julianne Moore, Patricia Neal, Dennis Quaid and Ben Stiller.

TELEVISION: Tom Brokaw, James Doohan, Roger Ebert, Susan Lucci, Al Michaels, David Hyde Pierce, Wayne Rogers and Soupy Sales.

RECORDING: Emilio Estefan, Al Green, Herb Jeffries, Billy Joel, The Righteous Brothers, Carly Simon and Rod Stewart.

LIVE THEATRE/LIVE PERFORMANCE: Theodore Bikel, Linda Hopkins and Fred Travalena.

RADIO: Jim Ladd and Bob Miller.

POSTHUMOUS: Stella Adler, Redd Foxx, Freddie Prinze and David O. Selznick

Actually, the press release says they're giving that last one to "David O. Selznik." One hopes they'll correct the spelling before they engrave the star.

They haven't announced dates for the unveiling ceremonies yet but I figure on attending the one for Soupy. And maybe Donald Duck, too. We used to work together.

The "Cliff Notes" version of Bill Clinton's book.

Okay, let's forget about the Iraq War. Let's get to a more vital, pressing matter: The folks at Warner Home Video are putting the finishing touches on a DVD collection of all the original episodes of the 1961 Hanna-Barbera series, Top Cat. This will be a dandy set complete with a "Making of…" documentary with recent interviews of voice actors Arnold Stang, Marvin Kaplan and Leo De Lyon, among other goodies, and a squad of video experts is almost finished with a restoration of all 30 Top Cat cartoons…but there is one problem. The original end credits are missing. Many years ago, back when the shows first went into syndication, someone had to go in and chop the sponsor plugs out of the opening and closing credits.

In so doing, they threw away the original end titles (which varied each week to reflect the folks who'd worked on that particular show) and spliced in the end credits from one episode. That is, they took the end credit sequence from one episode and put that on every episode. This means that the actual writers, animators and voice actors have not been properly identified all these years. The great voice actor, Paul Frees, appeared as a guest performer in one or two episodes but you'll see his name on every rerun of every Top Cat and you won't see the names of the actual guest stars.

So far, rummaging through the film vaults, the folks at WB have been unable to locate copies of the original end credits. They may turn up someday but time is running out before the Top Cat DVD Collection has to "go to press." This brings us to our Important Public Appeal. There are collectors out there with original 16mm and even 35mm prints of the show. Are you one and if so, are you willing to loan these materials so that the original end credits can be restored for the DVD release? If so, please get in touch with me and I'll pass you on to the appropriate (and appropriately grateful) archivists.

You will want this DVD collection anyway. But it'll be even better if we can somehow locate those missing credits.

Michael Moore may have some valid things to complain about but one will not be that his new movie is debuting unnoticed. Between the ubiquitous commercials and all the interviews and attacks on his integrity and appearance, I'm hearing more than I care to hear about Fahrenheit 9/11. Among the reasons I always thought "Campaign Finance Reform" was kind of a crock were the many ways any set of rules can be circumnavigated. There are rigid restraints as to how much Harvey Weinstein can donate to the Kerry campaign but no one's suggesting or would suggest limits as to how many ads he can buy to promote a movie that makes George W. Bush look like an idiot.

As I've mentioned here before, I have mixed feelings about Mr. Moore. I like a lot of things he's done and when I heard him speak a few years ago, he left little doubt in my mind that he is at least sincere in his efforts. For some reason, that judgment on my part infuriates at least one of my Conservative friends, just as Liberal friends want to insist that every inaccuracy that comes out of the Bush administration is so egregious, it has to be deliberate, conscious and premeditated. I don't necessarily agree. I rarely agree with the old "you can't believe a word he says" attack on anyone. People of good intention can be spectacularly but honestly wrong. In the absence of an obvious motive to lie, I prefer to think that faulty info is not intentional. In Moore's case, he must know that he's going to have to defend every frame of film he disseminates and that every error or semi-error is just handing a bullet to discredit him. I feel this way about most politicians. I don't think they intentionally lie in the first place. What I think they do too often is to lie rather than admit past errors.

My past postings on Moore have brought a wide array of response to my e-mailbox, ranging from an accusation that I am subverting Moore's campaign by not backing him 100% to the claim that by not disavowing him, I am making a tacit endorsement of whatever he happens to say. I think these views are both nonsense. It is not only possible but probable that a polemicist could be right about some things and wrong about others…and I mean "wrong" in not only an opinion sense but a factual one, as well.

My mixed feelings about Moore got a workout this morning when I watched online clips of two recent video interviews he did, both at this MSNBC site. I agreed with most (not all) that he said in his interview with Katie Couric but thought he came off as disingenuous (and none too concerned with accuracy) in the Matt Lauer interview. He's also lost a few points with me via his silly threats made in other venues that he will sue anyone who disparages him or his movie. Where I do agree with him generally is where he talks of how disappointed he is with our leaders. I think a lot of his fans often feel the same way about him.

While I have your attention, assuming I ever do: Comedy Central has been lax about updating its online clips from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. If they weren't, I'd be linking to an awful lot of them because I not only find it the funniest show on TV but also, insofar as covering real issues with some insight is concerned, one of the most interesting. Yesterday, Stewart had on Stephen F. Hayes, whose book — The Connection — is oft-cited by people who argue that there was a very real, dangerous-to-ignore collaboration between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Stewart essentially got Hayes to agree that it isn't so much a matter of "we had to act because this was absolutely true" as it is "we had to act because there was some evidence that this might be true." (My paraphrase) I suspect a lot of the friction we're currently witnessing in this country over the Iraq invasion flows from how much that distinction matters to some people.

Anyway, Stewart is very good at not asking guests the kind of questions for which they have stock, pre-packaged answers. As such, he occasionally gets the person on the couch to say a lot more than they ever say on so-called "real" news shows.