I'm still battling that deadline so here are a few brief items and updates…

• Several folks have written to tell me of past, unsuccessful attempts to introduce White Castle to Los Angeles. I'm not sure if those were owned-and-operated stands or if White Castle tried farming out the business on a franchise deal. But apparently there have been times when White Castle's reticence to venture outside its established turf hasn't been as firm as it has been in the past few years.
• Two people wrote to note that Aaron McGruder does not actually draw Boondocks, at least not any more. The piece to which I linked says that he's handed that task off to an assistant.
• I just received an e-mail ad for medications from "Thereafter R. Listlessly." Another great name.
• Yes, I know the incident of the man who wagered his life's savings in Vegas was being filmed for a British reality series. I still think it'll be more than that. And that it's not a good idea to try such a thing.
• Yes, I know that there was no live TV coverage of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11 and that G.W. Bush could not possibly have seen it as it happened, as he has claimed. I'm surprised the Democrats have not made more of that little discrepancy…but they will.
• Corey Klemow writes to say, "People keep saying that Bush was 'reading to children.' As I'm sure you know (since you've linked to it and all), the footage of Bush in the classroom that day shows that the children were actually reading to him." Like me, Corey thinks that's a tiny detail but it is worth mentioning.
• Lastly, this weblog post by Kevin Drum lays out an interesting account of why he changed from backing the war in Iraq to opposing it. I frankly don't understand why folks who support the effort aren't more upset about the wildly inaccurate estimates we've had of cost, manpower, timetable, being welcomed in the streets, etc. Even if one presumes they were all honestly believed when they were made, that does not inspire confidence in our leaders…or their current projections.

That's all for now. Back to deadline!

Here's a profile of Aaron McGruder, who draws the syndicated strip, Boondocks.

Michael Chabon has a good article in the New York Times about escapism in entertainment.

When I was younger and first discovering the joy of pictures of beautiful women, my favorite photographer was a man named Peter Gowland. In this article, I tell an amazing (but true!) story of discovering not only his work but his studio. And today in the Los Angeles Times, there's this article about his job. Nice work if you can get it.

UPDATE at 10:50 AM: I screwed up the above links. They should work now.

If you're going to the WonderCon in San Francisco at the end of this month (or thinking of going), you may want to take a look at the Programming Schedule. I'm hosting four panels which I'll be reminding you about here, ad nauseam.

My comment that I thought George W. Bush was being treated a bit unfairly brought an amazing amount of argumentative e-mail…and from all sides. Pro-Bush folks were upset that I was minimizing the injustice being perpetrated on their guy while anti-Bush folks were upset that I thought it was possible to treat Bush unfairly. And as is often the case, a couple of both mistook predictions for wishful thinking on my part.

In any case, there's too much of this for me to answer individually, especially since I'm back battling a big deadline. I may not be posting much here for the next day or two, and I know I won't be able to respond to all the e-mail.

But before I get back to work, I have another prediction. I don't think Bush is going to be harmed, at least not in a real electoral sense, by what he did or didn't do before 9/11. When all the hearings and charges dissipate, the consensus will be that a lot of things could have been done — by Bush and Clinton and the FBI and the C.I.A. and many other folks — and we all wish they had been done. But no individual can really be held culpable for not doing them.

At the same time, I think Bush may be harmed by the inevitable discussions of what he did or didn't do on 9/11. As the story is told, Bush was on his way to visit a classroom when he was informed that a commercial airliner full of people had crashed into the World Trade Center. He supposedly watched a few seconds on TV, made a joke about "that's some bad pilot" (or words to that effect) and then went in and read to children. I think we're going to hear a lot about that, especially now that it's been established he'd been briefed that Osama's boys wanted to hijack planes and had been casing New York buildings. The fact that he apparently didn't "connect the dots" when that first plane hit is something we're going to hear a lot about…and at some point, he's going to have to give America a convincing explanation. Someone is also going to have to explain why it was that at 9:00 AM, neither Bush nor Condoleezza Rice knew there had been two hijackings even though the F.A.A. had known for almost forty minutes and NORAD for almost twenty. And Bush is really going to have to answer the charge that after Andrew Card informed him "America is under attack," he continued to read to children for at least five minutes instead of, for example, ordering all planes grounded as someone else had to do.

I'm not saying there aren't good explanations for all of this and perhaps some of the established "facts" in the timeline aren't as factual as we think. I just think this is going to become a major campaign issue…and all the current revelations about advance briefings and what Bush knew before 9/11 are just arming those who will charge that he was irresponsible to not act as soon as that first plane hit.

It's over at Comic World News. Here's the link.

Lewis Black has a special that begins multiple runs today on Comedy Central. It's called Lewis Black: Taxed Beyond Belief and I haven't seen it yet. But as I've laughed at darn near everything Mr. Black has done, I thought I'd mention it.

Also: "Smilin'" Stan Lee will be on the Home Shopping Network on Monday, April 15, hawking a number of signed, limited-edition items and celebrating the 40th anniversary of Spider-Man and the release of the movie. It'll air in different times around the country but I think it's 4:00 in the afternoon on the west coast. Better check to make sure.

No one seems to know the cause of the massive power outage that hit the Bellagio Hotel early Sunday morning. Obviously, these people have not seen Ocean's Eleven.

In other news: This is not a smart thing to do. Even though in this case, it turned out okay and will probably lead to a TV Movie or something of the sort.

The scary-looking gent above is another entry in our roster of "People I've Always Admired and Heard From Because of This Website."  He's James Randi, and he's probably only scary if you claim to have psychic powers or to be able to heal sick people by pulling evil spirits out of them.  Once upon a time, he was a top magician and escape artist but he has long since transformed himself into the world's greatest debunker of hokey claims of impossible powers.  I am, obviously, a skeptic about such assertions; ergo, I cheer the work he does via the James Randi Educational Foundation.

Its website, which you can access by clicking here, is a wonderful oasis of sanity.  (Would that the Internet offered even a tenth as much sanity as pornography.)  Randi is a feisty exposer of frauds, charlatans and folks who would have you believe they possess paranormal abilities.  He offers a million-buck reward for anyone who can demonstrate the genuine article and his cash looks pretty darn safe.

Randi is also a gentleman.  I remember seeing him one time on a TV show, exposing a nugget of Uri Geller's chicanery.  In the circumstance, the easiest thing for him to have done was to reveal the secret of the magic trick involved, but he did not.  It was a trick sometimes employed by legit magicians (i.e., those who do not pretend to any superhuman abilities) and exposure might have robbed one of them of a chunk of livelihood.  Instead, Randi replicated the feat, admitted it was achieved via a gimmick and effectively debunked without ruining anyone's act — except, of course, for Geller's.  It's obvious that if Randi ever went over to the dark side, claiming powers of E.S.P. or telekinesis, he could wrest millions out of those who are keen to believe.  (It is a lesson, not just about fraudulent psychics but for life in general, that human eagerness is at the root of most scams.  The putative medium can usually not pretend to read your mind unless you are hoping for them to succeed and unconsciously helping them along.)

Mr. Randi wrote me recently because he wanted to get in touch with my partner-in-comics, Sergio Aragonés, to replenish an old friendship.  He also said he'd enjoyed my article here on Peter Hurkos, and I've given him permission to re-post it on his site.  And what's amazing is that I predicted this would happen.  You see, a couple weeks ago while I was bending spoons with my brainwaves, I had a premonition…

George W. Bush could earn a chunk of respect from me if he would stop saying things like, "If we'd had specific knowledge of the terrorists' plans for 9/11, I would have moved mountains to prevent it." I'm almost as sick of that as I am of jokes about Donald Trump's hair.

Is there anyone anywhere who thinks any president, given hard info, would have gone fishing rather than try to stop the murder of thousands of Americans? Hell, I think most Chief Execs would even try to do something about Donald Trump's hair if only they could.

I do think Bush is getting hammered a bit unfairly by Democrats on this. But I also think a certain amount of it is his own fault for saying things like that, and also for statements like this one. This morning, he tried to characterize a document entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S." as saying — and I quote — "…nothing about an attack on America." To me, that's right up there with "I did not inhale" in the category of Disingenuousness.

I do not believe Bush is stupid but I sometimes agree with Jon Stewart's line about how he sure seems to think we are.

As we get closer to November, the Democrats are going to launch a full-scale assault regarding what Bush did the morning of 9/11. They will charge, in effect, that when he was informed America was under attack, he did absolutely nothing. They may even make commercials out of that footage of him reading stories in a classroom and put in in a split-screen with people falling out of the World Trade Center. If Bush responds with his line about not wanting to panic the children, he'll do himself an awful lot of damage.

As you may know (or be able to guess), I have a pretty good collection of comedy albums. I think I own all or almost all of the fifty named in this list of what one guy picks as the 50 "Most Influential" of all time. If I made up such a list, it would be quite different but I don't find his choices all that outrageous.

I have no big reaction to the P.D.B. (President's Daily Briefing) that was released last night. Yeah, it does suggest that there was a bit of advance warning of the 9/11 plot but no, it doesn't convince me that anyone was negligent not to snap into action. I think Bush's foes have made a strong case that the White House should have been more focused on terrorism than it was but a weak case that someone there could have prevented the disasters of that awful day.

I was struck by the amazing contrast in how the P.D.B. of 8/6/01 is being reported, though. The following is the lede from The Washington Post…

CRAWFORD, Tex., April 10 — President Bush was warned a month before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the FBI had information that terrorists might be preparing for a hijacking in the United States and might be targeting a building in Lower Manhattan. The information was included in a written Aug. 6, 2001, briefing to Bush that was declassified Saturday night by the White House in response to a request from the independent commission probing the Sept. 11 attacks.

And here's how the same story began if you picked up The Washington Times…

CRAWFORD, Texas — The Bush administration last night released the declassified contents of a presidential briefing document that contains mostly historical information about Osama bin Laden's terrorist plans — almost all of it compiled from open sources, including television and news reports.

Despite my view, I think the Post report is the fairer summation. Doesn't the writer of the Times piece strike you as a bit too eager to insist there's no story here and that Dr. Rice was correct to say it was a "historical" document? Usually in a news article, you lay out the charge before you provide the rebuttal.

A website that plays 20 Questions. I hate websites that are smarter than I am.

I've been getting a lot of spam from some company that wants to sell me vast quantities of pornography. The offers don't interest me but what's on the "Sender" line is usually kinda fun. Apparently, someone is using a program that takes a random word and makes it the first name. Then it inserts a random letter as a middle initial. Then it picks another random word for a last name. The following are the actual sender names on the last 16 I've received…

Pancreas H. Delmonico, Aristocracies G. Installation, Tolkien M. Bloodthirstier, Hunchbacked S. Glamored, Cesar P. Simulcasted, Outrage H. User, Tricycling P. Dobbin, Yipping V. Month, Modal D. Indignantly, Devotes H. Hollering, Wintry R. Wariness, Potteries U. Wideness, Orlon L. Sensory, Rattling C. Knocker, Sonic I. Outcries and Pearly C. Economic

Aren't those great names? Don't some of them sound like characters that Groucho Marx should have played? Next script I write, I'm naming someone Pancreas H. Delmonico. I just have to figure out if Pancreas is a man's name or a woman's.