I was told not to announce this until it was definite but a number of websites that cover new DVD releases are now reporting…

GARFIELD AND FRIENDS – VOLUME 1 – DVD — From Fox Home Entertainment, featuring the cartoon antics of everyone's favorite fat cat, Garfield, joined by Odie, Jon, and the barnyard crew of U.S. Acres, this DVD set collects all 13 1988-89 first season animated episodes of Jim Davis' Garfield and Friends. Scheduled to ship in July 2004. $39.98

I think the above may have the contents listing wrong but it is true that they're about to start releasing Garfield and Friends, written by Yours Truly, on DVD. And wait'll you see what a pain I'm going to be about trying to get you to buy this one.

Damn. I needed to work tonight but this is too important not to post about…
Pete Alvarado, one of the most prolific comic book and animation artists of all time, passed away January 30 at the age of 83. He worked for almost every animation studio in existence including a long stint for the Warner Brothers cartoon studio during its Golden Age. The Animation Guild's newsletter, via which I learned of Pete's passing, notes that he worked for Warners, MGM, UPA, Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng, Krantz, Sanrio, Ruby-Spears, Filmation, Marvel, Disney and Hyperion, and that he was awarded the Animation Guild Golden Award in 1987.

That doesn't even begin to describe the long career of Pete Alvarado. Born in 1920, he attended Chouinard Art Institute and was soon hired as an assistant animator by the Walt Disney Studio where (he said) he worked on Snow White and Dumbo, but mainly on shorts. His Disney stint was interrupted by a 1939 trip to New York when he decided to travel and explore the market for other kinds of work. In Manhattan, he hooked up with a couple of artists working in the then-new comic book industry, and Pete labored for several months for different "shops," pitching in on assembly lines to produce comic book stories for an array of publishers. In later years, he could never remember what he did then or where it appeared but researchers have suggested he did some comics for Funnies, Incorporated, the firm which supplied Marvel (then Timely) with its earliest comics, and also worked in a shop that supplied material to Fawcett, publishers of Captain Marvel. Pete did recall that what he did was mainly in an adventure style and not the "funny animal" genre he would work for most of his career.

After eighteen months in New York, he returned to Hollywood and to Disney, then went to work for Warner Brothers in 1946, receiving his first screen credit on the second Pepe LePew cartoon, Scent-imental Over You (1947). He worked mostly in backgrounds until around 1950 and was especially proud to have designed and painted all the backgrounds on Fast and Furry-ous, the first Road Runner cartoon, directed (of course) by Chuck Jones. Later, Pete was a key layout man, primarily in director Robert McKimson's unit, and you can see his screen credit on most of the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons and many others.

Robert McKimson became a close friend, as did the director's brothers, Tom and Charles, who also drew. All three brothers were moonlighting for Western Publishing Company doing work on their activity books (coloring books, kids' books, etc.) and comic books, and Charles later became an Art Director for the firm. Starting around 1947, Charles and Pete drew the Roy Rogers newspaper strip which Western helped assemble, and which was signed "Al McKimson." Contrary to published reports elsewhere, there was no such McKimson. It was just their names put together. Later, Pete did a stint on both the Gene Autry newspaper strip and comic book, as well as drawing the Roy Rogers comic book, but he came to dislike the more illustrative work and soon switched over, pretty much forever, to the cartoony stuff. He later did the Mr. Magoo newspaper strip for its entire run, a long period of the Little Lulu newspaper strip, and many many weeks worth of the Hanna-Barbera newspaper strips (The Flintstones and Yogi Bear), as well as fill-ins for almost all the Disney newspaper strips, including an extended period as the main artist on Donald Duck.

But as impressive as all these credits may be, they represent a small part of the Alvarado output. Starting in the late forties, Pete was a mainstay of Western Publishing's comic books for Dell and later Gold Key, penciling somewhere between 20 and 40 pages a month for them through the late seventies. He drew stories for almost every Disney, Warner Brothers, Hanna-Barbera and Walter Lantz title. Most notably, he did long runs on Chip & Dale, Andy Panda, Scamp, Yogi Bear, Tweety & Sylvester and Beep Beep the Road Runner. Up above, I included the cover of one of Pete's best-remembered Gold Key efforts — the adaptation of the movie, Gay Purr-ee — but I could have picked dozens of others, including most of the adaptations of the later Disney animated films like The Rescuers and Robin Hood.

I always thought of Pete as the archetype artist for the Dell/Gold Key funny animal comics. As I said, he was in all of them — even the Three Stooges comic for a while — and he was especially adept at drawing "on model," which meant that the characters looked like they did on the TV show or in the movie, but usually with more expression and flair. When I began working for Gold Key in the early seventies, I was delighted to have several of my scripts for Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Road Runner and other books drawn by Pete. I absolutely remembered his work from some of the favorite comics of my childhood.

Later, when I was editor-writer of some Hanna-Barbera comics, Pete was the first guy I tried to hire. He did a few shorts and one entire issue of Hanna-Barbera Spotlight. That's a Pete Alvarado cover above, with inking by Scott Shaw!, who was just as thrilled to be working with the guy as was I. Interestingly, when Pete found out we had credits, he asked to use a pseudonym, claiming that his name had never appeared on any of the hundreds of comics he'd drawn and he wasn't sure he wanted to start now. He couldn't explain why that was, and after a bit of coaxing, he relented. He got credit on a lot of the kids' books he illustrated for Western Publishing but I think the few jobs he drew for me then were the only comic books on which his name ever appeared until Gladstone reprinted some of his old Disney material and identified the artists.

Pete continued working in animation until his last few years, primarily doing storyboards and layout work. We had him for a while on Garfield and Friends, and his work also appeared on Bobby's World, Ghostbusters, She-ra, The C.O.W.boys of Moo Mesa and many other shows. He also worked on the Fritz the Cat movie and also on its sequel, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat. He was a lovely gentleman who truly loved cartooning, and he was loved and respected by all those with whom he worked. And trust me on this: In the above piece, I haven't begun to itemize all that he did in his incredible career.

I'm still hacking away at that deadline so I've decided to post the Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup can. For those of you who are woefully unhip to the ways of the Internet, this ancient tradition (adhered to by almost no one but me) means that the proprietor of the weblog is swamped and won't be posting much for a while. We'll be back as soon as we finish our current assignment or when a flood of donations (hint, hint) convinces us that this is almost as important as paying work. Hasta la vista, baby.

Frank Rich draws some interesting parallels between the current situation in Iraq and the movie, Lawrence of Arabia.

Well, this brings us to the end of Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Standups of All Time. Their Top Twenty consisted of Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Cosby, Roseanne Barr, Eddie Murphy, Johnny Carson, Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, Bob Newhart, David Letterman, Ellen DeGeneres, Don Rickles, Jonathan Winters, Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison, in that order.

I was right that their Top Two would be Pryor and Carlin…though I would have reversed the order. Matter of fact, I might have put a couple of folks ahead of Pryor, but it isn't an unreasonable choice at all. My pal Daniel Frank theorized they'd put Carlin first since Comedy Central just acquired all of Carlin's HBO Specials. I thought of that but then noted that immediately following the broadcast on which they revealed their #1 pick, the network scheduled a Richard Pryor Special. In any case, I hadn't noticed either of these facts when I predicted Carlin and Pryor. They're just obvious choices.

Also as predicted, they had Bill Hicks in the Top Twenty. I thought there were two names unknown but as it turns out, they teased 19 of their picks instead of 18. I accidentally dropped Steve Martin from the list of those previewed, and Lord Buckley didn't make their list at all.

The tricky thing with a ranking like this has to do with what's being considered. A lot of the folks there are beloved for what they did apart from standup. Most of the clips they showed of Jonathan Winters, for example, were of him guesting on shows where he was being interviewed. He's always been brilliant at that but I don't think I'd consider that "standup." I don't think most people who love Jonathan Winters have even seen him do standup…but I also think that if Comedy Central had used a stricter definition, they'd have left out a lot of Big Stars. If I'd been assembling a show like that, I think I'd want to get clips in of Johnny Carson and Billy Crystal.

Yeah, one can quibble. I can't imagine any criteria by which Roseanne Barr places higher than Bob Newhart…or Ellen DeGeneres above Robert Klein. And while I think Chris Rock is terrific, I also think I'd want to see him be terrific for a few more years before I put him above Cosby and next to Woody Allen. But we can all come up with arguments like this, and I still think it's not a bad list. Someone put a good amount of thought into it and there's some nice recognition there for some folks, plus a good overview of how diverse the standup talent pool has been — and how non-diverse in some areas.

The next thing I'd like to see them do is to take this list, send it to everyone who's alive and on it, plus everyone who might qualify in the second hundred, and ask them to vote their twenty favorites. I have a hunch it would yield a very different Top Twenty…but Carlin and Pryor would still probably be in the top two slots.

It apparently hasn't made the wire services but the great glamour photographer, Pompeo Posar, passed away on April 6. He was quite an artist with the camera…and guys in my age bracket owe him big for all the fine, adolescent fantasies. There's an obit posted over at the Playboy site. [Caution: Mild naked women photos.]

I have a funny story about the one time I met Mr. Posar but I'm still on that deadline and it'll take a while to type it out. Maybe next week some time.

The overnight edition of Saturday Night Live that airs early Sunday AM on NBC (3 AM in most timezones) seems to switch back and forth between recent shows and very old ones. This coming Sunday, they're running an episode hosted by Jay Leno — with musical guests, The Neville Brothers — that originally aired February 22, 1986. This was the season when the cast consisted of Joan Cusack, Robert Downey Jr, Nora Dunn, Anthony Michael Hall, Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller, Randy Quaid, Terry Sweeney and Danitra Vance, with "featured players" Al Franken, A. Whitney Brown and Damon Wayans. It was one of the periods in the show's history that is generally forgotten…but when you see them now, there's occasionally some real good stuff in there. At the very least, a lot of it is interesting in a historical sense.

What I recall of this episode is that Leno did a very strong monologue at the outset and then they stuck him in a lot of sketches that seemed calculated to show what he couldn't do: Accents, singing, playing characters, etc. I have a hunch Jay will not be plugging this on The Tonight Show but the opening spot is a good example of how good a standup he was at the time.

This was also the period during which A. Whitney Brown was doing very sharp commentaries during the Weekend Update segment — material that often sailed way over the heads of the studio audience. If this is the episode I think it is, his commentary was about Iran and Iraq, and is still sadly relevant.

E. J. Dionne Jr. summarizes a basic problem with our Iraq efforts. I agree with this and I suspect most people do, even if some won't admit it during an election year.

I am not watching The Apprentice but I know that tonight is the big finale where we find out which of the contestants wins. At 8:21 PM Pacific Time, an Associated Press report appeared at news websites revealing that winner. The final show airs on this coast from 9:00 to 11:00 PM, so the answer was available before the show even started. That had to ruin it for someone…but of course, there's no way to embargo or suppress this kind of news on a show that isn't done live to all of America.

Once upon a time, there was a simple reason for networks to air shows on tape delay to the West. It would have been inconvenient for the Pacific Time Zone (and decreased viewers) if the shows programmed for 8 PM aired here at 5 PM. It would still be inconvenient but with the rise of VCRs and DVRs, it's a little less so. People are increasingly recording shows when they air and then watching them when they feel like it. Also, those of us with satellite dishes can watch a different time zone. I have The Tonight Show on right now.

It won't happen tomorrow but it's also not in the distant future that most viewers will have that choice. Every cable company will carry multiple versions of CBS, NBC, ABC and other networks. You'll be able to watch CBS-East or CBS-West, NBC-East or NBC-West, etc. This will solve the problem of "live" events because everyone will have the option of watching a show like The Apprentice live. We may also have "delay" channels that will run the entire network schedule again, twelve hours later. So if you miss a show that airs at 9:30 PM, you can just set your TiVo or VCR to record it the following morning at 9:30 AM. This will make it possible for you to watch several shows that air opposite one another.

And they'll still screw us up by having shows start at 8:57 and end at 9:32.

I don't know why I'm so interested in this since it's just a semi-arbitrary list compiled by unknown folks using unknown criteria. Still, I'm following Comedy Central's countdown of The 100 Greatest Standups of All Time. Tonight, they gave us #21-40 which they have as Dennis Miller, Robert Klein, Stephen Wright, Redd Foxx, Bob Hope, Ray Romano, Jay Leno, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Garry Shandling, George Burns, Albert Brooks, Andy Kaufman, Buddy Hackett, Phyllis Diller, Jim Carrey, Martin Lawrence, Bill Maher, Billy Crystal and Mort Sahl. In that order, with Sahl at #40.

You'll note that when I predicted the Top Forty, I didn't have Lawrence, Crystal, Berle, Burns, Benny, Romano or Wright. I haven't seen enough of Lawrence or Romano for them to register on my radar, and I didn't think they'd include guys like Berle, Burns and Benny. (As they revealed the list from the bottom up, there wasn't a single deceased comic in the bottom fifty.) I somehow don't think of Crystal as a stand-up, but Mr. Wright's name should have occurred to me. He's quite wonderful.

So who's in their Top Twenty, which will get revealed tomorrow night? A teaser at the end of tonight's show flashed shots of Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Bob Newhart, Jonathan Winters, Robin Williams, George Carlin, Ellen DeGeneres, Roseanne Barr, Sam Kinison, Jerry Seinfeld, Don Rickles, Eddie Murphy, Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, Chris Rock, Lenny Bruce, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor. (That's not the order in which they were presented, nor does it probably relate to their order on the final list.)

That's eighteen names. I'm going to guess the other two are Bill Hicks and Lord Buckley, and that they didn't make the promo because most people wouldn't have recognized them on sight.

No matter how they arrange the Top Twenty, this isn't a bad list. As I said, I think Shelley Berman and Jackie Mason are way too low. So are Robert Klein and Mort Sahl, who are among the most imitated folks on the roster. I don't quite get the placement of Roseanne Barr or Ellen DeGeneres…and I wonder if anyone considered Danny Thomas, Godfrey Cambridge, Lily Tomlin, George Gobel, Myron Cohen, Martin Mull, Jack E. Leonard, Moms Mabley, Norm Crosby, Rich Little, Dick Shawn, Margaret Cho, Gabe Kaplan, Whoopi Goldberg, Pat Buttram, John Byner, Andy Griffith, Pete Barbutti or Jackie Vernon. I can't recall laughing more than I did the time I saw Jackie Vernon at the old Marina Hotel in Las Vegas. Are these folks not on the list because someone didn't think of them? Or did they not fit the judges' definition of standup comedians? Or did someone really think Godfrey Cambridge didn't blaze trails and make people laugh?

Anyway, like I said: Not a bad list. I was expecting to disagree a lot more than this.

Today was the annual Joe Barbera birthday party, which for some reason is never held on Mr. Barbera's birthday, which is March 24. Last year, the party took place on April 9 and the year before, it was March 22. In any case, he was born around 93 years ago (give or take) and as usual, a nice grouping of friends and employees turned out to wish Mr. B. the best. Among the voice actors present were Gary Owens, John Stephenson, Ruth Buzzi, Lucille Bliss, Henry Corden and Casey Kasem, and among the long-time Hanna-Barbera artists were Iwao Takamoto and Jerry Eisenberg.

Songs were sung, speeches were made, cake was served and a fine, loving time was had by all. Oh, yeah — and Paul Dini got a photo of himself with someone in a Scooby Doo costume.

Comedy Central is running a five-part special this week…The 100 Greatest Standups of All Time. Each night, they cover 20 comedians on their list, counting up from the bottom. A group of comics sit around Canter's Delicatessen talking about each comic and there are short clips…and if you can get past the fact that the list is highly arguable, it's a rather entertaining exercise. As I've mentioned, I think people take such lists too seriously, and the end credits of this show include a fast disclaimer that says as much. Still, you can't help but watch the rankings and go, "That's nuts" every now and then. Here's as much of the list as they've posted on their site so far.

The first three nights, they've unveiled #41-100 and a few gross injustices leap out at me. Shelley Berman (who Comedy Central has as #66) and Jackie Mason (their #63) should both be in the top ten. I'm guessing that Comedy Central's #1 comic will be either George Carlin or Richard Pryor with the other as first runner-up.

I thought I'd try to guess their entire Top Forty but that gets into a problem of definitions. I don't know if they're considering folks like Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Lily Tomlin, David Letterman and Jonathan Winters. So, keeping in mind that I may be way off in their criteria, I'll guess that they'll count those folks plus (in no particular order) Robin Williams, Andy Kaufman, Albert Brooks, Jay Leno, Steve Martin, Garry Shandling, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Dennis Miller, Robert Klein, Bob Newhart, Sam Kinison, Phyllis Diller, Eddie Murphy, Rodney Dangerfield, Lord Buckley, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Maher, Buddy Hackett, Don Rickles, Bill Hicks, maybe Jim Carrey, maybe Roseanne, maybe Godfrey Cambridge, Redd Foxx and Chris Rock, plus Carlin and Pryor. That's 35 names. Let's see who else they have on their list and if they leave any of these people out altogether. If Carrot Top gets in, it'll be the biggest scandal since the invention of the Hanging Chad.

Today, testifying under oath, C.I.A. director George Tenet said that during the month of August 2001, he did not visit Texas, which is where George W. Bush was vacationing. After his testimony, it was revealed that Tenet was wrong; that he'd gone there on August 17. Others are discussing questions relating to how involved Bush then was in what the C.I.A. was doing about terrorism, or about whether Condoleezza Rice fibbed in her testimony about how often Bush met with Tenet. I'm not going to get into that.

What interests me here is the notion that sometimes, even under oath, people get things wrong. I don't think Tenet was deliberately lying. He had no reason to lie and even if he did, it would be the kind of lie that is easily disproven. He just misremembered.

This happens…to everyone. I'm even willing to believe George W. Bush misremembered when he claimed to have watched live TV coverage of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Back during the last presidential debates, Al Gore happened to mention that some time before, he'd gone with James Lee Witt, who was then the head of FEMA, to inspect the damage from some flooding in Texas. It later came out that Gore had gone to other disasters with Witt but had inspected the Texas flood situation with the regional FEMA director. People like William Bennett immediately cited this as an example of Al Gore being a pathological liar.

This is one of the aspects of politics that really annoys me. I don't think it reflects on someone's integrity that they occasionally misspeak or misremember. I do think it reflects on the integrity of those who try to spin everything the opposition does as a lie and a sign of aberrant character…and are quite willing to make up rules as they go along. John McCain and a few others have scored points with me because they occasionally (not always) refuse to stoop to such tactics and scold those who do. But they don't do it very often and most of our public figures and pundits don't do it at all.

Carol Lay is one of the best, most original cartoonists working today. Over on her website, you can see some of her work and purchase originals, prints and pins. And if you're going to purchase something, this would be a dandy time as Carol is holding a Divorce Sale. So here's your chance to help a terrific talent and get a bargain at the same time.