In twenty years of going to Las Vegas, sometimes several times a year, I've never driven there and never rented a car. I do a lot of walking and when it's too far to walk, I take cabs. Vegas cabdrivers are the best I've encountered in this country but of course, there are exceptions. If you seem clueless about how far apart places are, a tiny but pernicious fraction will engage in a practice called "long hauling." This is when you tell them to take you someplace two miles away and they get there by way of Tucson. This recent article will give you more info.

I was pointed to that piece by a reader of this site who works in one of the major hotels there. He wrote, "This is the number one complaint I get at my job about cabs from all our out of town visitors. I hate to see people's vacations tarnished before they even get checked into the hotel. This is primarily done on the trips from the airport." He's right. The only times I've ever had a driver try to swindle me was coming out of McCarren Airport. There are several routes from there to the Strip but the undesirable one involves the Interstate 215 tunnel, which usually gets you there sooner but always adds $5-$10 to your fare. Drivers are allowed to use it if you agree so what some of them do is say, "You want to get there the fastest way, right?" They don't tell you it's longer and therefore more expensive. Here's an article by an undercover reporter who investigated this delightful practice.

And here's what a trip should run you. All of these are without tip…

• From the airport to any of the hotels around the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and the Strip (The Excalibur, Tropicana, MGM Grand or New York, New York) should be around nine bucks.
• From the airport to the mid-Strip area (The Mirage, Harrah's, Caesars Palace, The Venetian) should be around eleven dollars.
• From the airport to near the North end of the Strip (Riviera, Circus Circus, Stardust) should be about fourteen.
• And from the airport to downtown could be twenty bucks or a bit over.

It also helps to not get into the cab and advertise that you're a newbie. Most drivers, even the honest ones, start by asking you, "Business or pleasure?" and/or "First time in Vegas?" "Business" means you're probably on an expense account and not that worried about getting swindled out of ten bucks. And announcing it's your first visit, or your first in a long time, is like admitting you won't know the difference if the ride is twice as long as necessary. I usually answer, "I come here all the time to gamble," even though I stopped wagering long ago. That alerts the driver that I know the town, that I'm not a wide-eyed tourist, and that I probably pay good attention to where my money goes. You can also just get in, give your destination and tell them not to take the tunnel, thereby alerting them that you know about such tricks.

Like I said, crooked cabbies are a tiny minority. I'm surprised the undercover reporter got taken as much as he got taken. Still, you've got to keep your eye on them. Don't let them cheat you out of ten dollars you can throw away in a slot machine.

I just surfed through a mess of news reports on Ralph Nader announcing his candidacy today. I was struck by how many of them, like the Associated Press in all its photo captions, identified him as "Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader." (There's an example here if they haven't fixed it by now.) No, he's not. Someone else will be the Green Party nominee and Nader, if he gets on any ballots, will be on as an Independent. Odd mistake for them to make, especially since that matters an awful lot to the candidacy.

Calvin Trillin reconsiders Dan Quayle.

My TiVo, which now knows what I want to watch better than I do, took it upon itself to record the Cartoon Network Popeye show today. As a result, I just got through watching the 1933 "I Yam What I Yam," the first official Popeye cartoon. Mr. Segar's squinty sailor had previously appeared in a Betty Boop cartoon, then soloed (along with Olive Oyl and Wimpy) in this one…which, by the way, the title card above is not from. You forget how clever some of those Popeye cartoons could be, especially before they fell into the formula of Bluto wooing and/or wronging Olive until Popeye finally, at long last, hauls out the can of green stuff. This one was interesting because it was the only cartoon in the series that did not open with the well-known Popeye theme song. It's heard as underscore…and so is "I'm Against It," the song Groucho sang in Horse Feathers (previous year, same distribution company). But the opening song here was some tremulous bass voice singing, "Strike up the band for Popeye the Sailor." It was also interesting to hear William Costello, the first voice of Popeye, in the role that didn't make him famous.

I keep hearing we're about to get a major DVD release of the Fleischer Popeyes but I'll believe it when I can click on an Amazon link. There's a DVD coming out in April called Popeye – 75th Anniversary Collectors Edition but it's all cartoons from the sixties TV version, and all the others out seem to be bad copies of public domain stuff or the Hanna-Barbera version. So don't be fooled.

My longtime pal Bruce Reznick points out to me an odd convergence of covers this week on Time and Newsweek. Often, they come out with nearly-identical covers and sometimes not about the most obvious current topic. This sometimes prompts folks to speculate that the two magazines consult one another and plan such things…as if there's a reason for two competitors or even conspirators to say, "Hey, let's make it hard to tell our products apart this week." Sometimes though, their covers complement each other and provide an unintentional commentary. This week, we find Time with a cover that asks the musical question, "Are too many jobs going abroad?" I suspect the overwhelming answer to that, even from those who are downsizing employment here and outsourcing to India, is "Sure." The controversy all relates to what, if anything, can or should be done about it.

Meanwhile, Newsweek offers the world according to Donald Trump: "He's back and bigger than ever. Why we love to hear him say 'You're fired!'" As Bruce notes, the "we" in such blurbs never includes him, and it never includes me, either. At a time when even Americans with jobs rarely view them as permanent, do people really love anything about Donald Trump, especially those words? They may watch but, hey, we watched O.J. What these two covers taken together make me think is that we've really come to a day when a "job" is a short-term thing, almost like a sweepstakes, which is what the Trump show really is. If I were a young person entering the job market today, I think I'd read all these articles about low and mid-range positions disappearing and I'd think, "Hmmm…I may have a very short time to earn enough money to last me the rest of my life." We hear a lot about the decline of "traditional values" as they relate to sex. How come we don't hear more about the traditional value that you go to work for a company and try to make such a valuable contribution that you can work there until retirement age, making a good living and establishing a pension?

Mike Rhodes sends me this better link to the political animated cartoons of Mark Fiore. There's also an archive there of many of his past efforts. (Though beware: This website has the dreaded DoubleClick ads that sometimes put noxious, snooping cookies on your computer. If that matters to you, make sure you have a good cookie blocker working.)

I'm going to bed. Sweet dreams, all.

A lot of Democrats are irate at news that Ralph Nader is apparently about to launch another presidential bid. I'm disappointed, not so much because I think it will take away votes that might otherwise go to defeat Bush but because, once upon a time, I liked Nader. Didn't agree with everything he said or did but I thought he achieved a fair amount of good and turned a spotlight on a lot of matters, including corporate crime, that needed some exposure. It's sad to see him turn into a guy who seems to stand primarily for self-promotion. He isn't even out to build a viable third party any more. He's just out for Ralph Nader.

That said, I have a thought…one that is probably not relevant but which I'm pondering, nonetheless.

We have this new rule that says that candidates must endorse their own campaign commercials. Somewhere down the pike, this law will probably be declared unconstitutional but right now, a commercial for John Kerry (for example) must close with Kerry himself appearing on camera and saying, "I'm John Kerry and I approved this message," or words to that effect. The idea is that this way, a candidate cannot play Good Cop and distance himself from his own commercials that insult the other guy. If he wants to say, "George W. Bush is a lying puppet of the oil companies," he can but he has to place his signature on that ad.

So here's my question: If Ralph Nader is an actual candidate with his name on some or all of the ballots out there, can't he in effect run attack ads for someone else? Kerry runs positive, non-attack ads for himself and Nader, who's running against George W. Bush after all, runs the ads that say, "George W. Bush is a lying puppet of the oil companies." And so what if Nader takes the heat for such negative campaigning? He's not going to win one state, anyway.

This is all academic, I'm sure, since Nader is not getting in as a stalking horse for the Democratic nominee. Nader is in for Nader, and will probably attack the Democrat as forcefully as the Republican. But in theory, couldn't it work the way I describe? At least a little?

I'm really enjoying a new website by Pietro Shakarian. It's devoted to the Columbia Cartoon Studios, a much-neglected producer of theatrical animation. Go there now.

Every e-mail check these days brings an inquiry or two about when we can expect to see the next new tale of Groo the Wanderer, the long-running idiot comic character by Sergio Aragonés and Yours Truly. The answer requires that I explain that Sergio and I have been busy with a couple of projects, individually and collectively, that have kept us away from our silly barbarian longer than we'd anticipated. That is finally changing and in the next week or so, we expect to get started on no fewer than two (maybe three) Groo comic book projects. It will probably be a month or so until I can announce release dates and then those release dates will probably be late this year or early next, but whenever that happens you'll read about it here.

We thank you for your loyalty and for missing us, and we'll make it up to you as soon as we can. We've done something like 160 issues of Groo so far and have no intention of stopping now. Not until we get one right, at least.

Here's Frank Rich with a piece called "The Festering Vietnam Culture War."

Garry Trudeau gets into the issue of George W. Bush's National Guard service. And puts his money where his mouth is.

Mark Fiore does wonderful little animated online political cartoons all the time. But this one, which reveals "The Gay Agenda," struck me as uncommonly on-target. (You do have Shockwave installed on your computer, I trust.)

As a kid, I listened to a lot of records over and over, but mainly records that were both funny and musical, like the output of Stan Freberg and Allan Sherman. And often I listened to the folk-singing trio known as The Limeliters. When they tried to be serious, they weren't all that different from umpteen other folk-singing acts then on the circuit. But when they were silly, they were especially wonderful. I saw them perform live around '64 and I still remember what a good time I had, especially when they seemed to be playing and ad-libbing to amuse each other. The group consisted of Alex Hassilev, Lou Gottlieb and Glenn Yarbrough, and they began performing in 1959. In 1963, Yarbrough went off to try and establish a solo career and he was replaced by Ernie Sheldon.

Around 1965, they drifted apart and that seemed like the end but throughout the seventies, a series of reunion concerts showed that there was a still an audience eager to hear The Limeliters. In 1981, Alex and Lou officially started the act up again, tapping Red Grammer to take Yarbrough's slot. Grammer left in 1990 or 1991 and was replaced by John David and then Rick Dougherty. Gottlieb died in 1996 and his position was assumed by Bill Zorn.

Often when you see these resurrected groups with one original member, you're seeing medium talents coasting on the stardom and/or luck of others. Sometimes, groups re-form around one player and then that guy is replaced so you're watching an act that has only slightly more moral right to use the name than you would. A few years back, I visited with a man who booked talent for an "oldies" revue in Laughlin, Nevada. An agent was on the phone offering him the current incarnation of an act that had had one hit in the sixties, and the agent was swearing on his mother's grave that he would deliver at least one performer who had actually played on the record. The talent booker muttered, "Well, that would be a refreshing change."

All was open and above board with recent appearances of The Limeliters — or The Fabulous Limeliters, as they've sometimes been billed. You knew you were only getting Alex Hassilev and in some ways, that was enough because he was the primary producer and arranger for the original trio so their sound was largely his sound. But he'd also brought in not guys who were cheap but guys who were very good…so what went on the stage under the Limeliters imprint was wholly worthy of the name. I can't think of another act that went through so many changes of personnel and accomplished that.

Things seem to be changing again. The official Limeliters site announces that when they finish their bookings for next month, Dougherty and Zorn will split from Hassilev. They appear to be going off to perform with Yarbrough in another "Limeliter Reunion," though I'm not sure if "reunion" is quite the proper word here. I just hope some permutation of The Limeliters endures for a while, preferably with at least one of the two surviving founders. Yeah, we have all those great albums to listen to forever, and most of them are available on CD. But there's something very life-affirming and reassuring to think that no matter what happens in the world and no matter how musical tastes change, The Limeliters are on a stage somewhere singing, "There's A Meeting Here Tonight."

[NOTE: This posting was updated at 1:25 PM to correct some misinfo. And probably to add in more.]

Here is the link to the press release announcing that "Stuttering John" Melendez will be Jay Leno's new announcer, effective March 29. In my first post on this, I suggested this was a bad idea…and I guess I still think that. But I also reminded myself that I don't like it when folks "review" a movie or show before they've seen it, and especially not when it hasn't been produced yet. So with a fair amount of skepticism, I wait to see how this will work.

By the way: I am assured from two separate sources close to the situation that the departure of Edd Hall as Jay's announcer was entirely Hall's idea. Usually in show business, when someone leaves a steady job and doesn't go immediately to something better, the assumption is that they got fired or at least nudged out the door. This was apparently not the case here. Hall really does want to investigate other career opportunities. So good for him for having the courage to make the change, and I hope he succeeds.

If you'd like to know more about the battle between Michael Eisner and Roy Disney for control of the Disney empire, this New York Times article will tell you plenty.