Over at IGN, Roy Schwartz wrote a pretty good article about the resemblances between the character "The Thing" in Fantastic Four and the guy who designed and drew him, Jack Kirby. Almost all the heroes Jack created or co-created, including even some villains, have a certain amount of Kirby in them. Some, like Ben Grimm (aka The Thing), Nick Fury and just about any protagonist in Jack's Fourth World, are more obvious than others but there was a lot of autobiography in there. And like I'm quoted in the article saying, I often re-read a Kirby comic I've read a zillion times and suddenly spot a dose of self-reference in it I'd never spotted before.

The article contains a reproduction of a Hanukkah card that historians cite to prove that in Jack's mind, The Thing was and is Jewish.  I suspect Jack must have said that in some interview once, as well.  But some people don't know the history of the card.  They think it's something the Kirbys designed and printed up to send to all their friends. Or something Jack issued to declare the character's faith to the world.

Nope. There was only card like this and it was sent to a good friend of the Kirby family, David Folkman. What happened was that David sent a Hanukkah card to the Kirbys and they — Jack and Roz — decided to reciprocate. Roz bought a printed Hanukkah card in a store and Jack added the drawing. I don't think Jack intended it as a public declaration of Ben Grimm's religion. It was just something they sent to Dave Folkman who later shared it with the world.

Here's another great juggler — Kaito Tanioka…

If you were in San Diego this last weekend, you saw many a big building covered in a wrap that advertised something — usually a movie. And hey, do you want to know something interesting about those giant wraps? They're illegal!

Did you ever see Alexander Koblikov juggle? You should…

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claims that there was a "treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government" to make it seem like Russian forces interfered in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump. And of course, Trump constantly insists that the "Russia, Russia, Russian Hoax" has been thoroughly disproven. As Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post notes, it ain't been disproven…quite the opposite.

It now seems that one of the major distractions Trump is counting on to shift attention away from his own scandals is some sort of trial of Obama, Biden and others for treason in this matter. And given his recent remarks about Beyoncé, Oprah and Kamala Harris, he seems to think that campaigning against Donald Trump is an act of treason.

FactCheck.org and the Assocated Press say much the same thing as Glenn Kessler.

And Factcheck.org has yet another story about how Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn't understand his own job.

Meanwhile, the folks at Snopes do a deep dive into Trump's brags about walking into the dressing rooms at beauty pageants when the contestants were undressed. Some of what he said has been misrepresented but there's enough there to cause the kind of Conservative we used to have in this country to declare the confessor unfit for any public office and to demand jail time.

Daniel Dale over at CNN notes that Trump continues with the outright lies about what inflation in this country was and what it is now. And Politifact notes that Trump is still claiming that during the last presidential election, Democrats paid Beyoncé eleven million dollars — which, of course, is chump change to Beyoncé — to endorse Kamala Harris. There is, of course, no proof of this whatsoever.

Sorry this is so long but I've been away. And Trump lies a lot.

I'm home. I'll be spending the next few years sleeping and unpacking, sleeping and unpacking, sleeping and unpacking, etc. Eventually, things will return to normal on this blog and I'll finish the story I started. In the meantime, you might want to download your very own PDF copy of the convention souvenir book — or at least, read it online. You can do both those things at this link.

Here's a little less than nine minutes of one of my favorite comedians, George Carl. No, not George Carlin. George Carl. George Carlin was also one of my favorite comedians but he had to say funny things to get laughs. George Carl, who performed all around the world for decades, didn't have to utter a word to be funny. He just was funny. I saw Mr. Carl do about twenty minutes in Las Vegas many years ago at the now-extinct Stardust Hotel and I don't recall laughing harder in my life. I also saw Mr. Carlin in Vegas at what was then called Bally's and he was pretty great too but he had to talk. Here's George Carl. Ignore the silly short cartoons that bracket his performance…

…and in the middle of the night, no less. I enjoyed every nanosecond of this year's Comic-Con International and those of you who thought it was knuckleheaded beyond belief to agree to moderate or be on nineteen panels…well, next year I may go for twenty. I enjoyed every one of 'em and over the next few days, I'll tell you the what and why of the experience. It had a lot to do with liking how much the audiences liked what we did, especially the Quick Draw! game and the two Cartoon Voices panels. More on this to follow…

I'm not going to wait until I get home. Like many of my friends, I can quote or sing many of the weird and wonderful songs of Tom Lehrer, who died just the other day at the not-unimpressive age of 97. And like a lot of us, I wish he'd spent less of his life teaching math and more of it writing and recording joyous and subversive songs like "The Masochism Tango" and "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park."

I won't pretend to understand his career choices, nor is it any of my business why this gifted man didn't write more. A friend of mine who attended U.C. Santa Cruz (I think it was) took one of Professor Lehrer's math classes, at least in part because he was a fan of the man's records and was disappointed when almost the first thing Lehrer said on the first day was that at no point during the term would he be performing or even discussing his music.

That music will, of course, outlive its composer. In a sense, it almost did while he was still alive. But it will be especially available because a few years ago, Mr. Lehrer released it all into the public domain. If you want to do anything with it, go to this website and help yourself. You can even just listen to it for pure enjoyment…which it always delivered.

I’ll write about this extraordinary talent when I get home from the convention.

Committing to nineteen panels over four days seemed like insanity to many of my friends but I gotta tell you: I think it's one of the smartest things I've done all year. Not that I've had that many smart things competing for First Place.

As I sit here in my hotel room, having completed fifteen of the nineteen, I've been having an awesome amount of fun and I'm really happy about how happy most of these program items seem to have made the folks who came to see 'em. The downsides? Well, my legs hurt more than I wish they did. This blog has been neglected. Computer problems — and my lack of time to maybe fix them — are preventing me from posting the rest of the story of the Ackerman/Schwartz/Bradbury convention panel. But that's okay because I decided it could do with a bit of polishing before it'll be ready for human consumption. It shall resume shortly.

I also can't access Facebook so if you sent me a message there or someone posted scurrilous gossip about me, I can't read it. All this will be rectified but probably not until I'm home and unpacked. Oh — and I also ate something I shouldn't have eaten at a restaurant last night. My cumbersome food allergies are at their most allergic when I'm fatigued. But I'm so pleased with how the panels have been going — especially yesterday's Quick Draw! and Cartoon Voices — that it's a more than acceptable trade-off. Wait'll I tell you how yesterday's Cartoon Voices panel went.

Your patience, as Alton Brown says when he tells you how to cook something that takes a lot of time, will be rewarded.

This video has been on this site before but it was a pretty bad copy and anyway, it's been deleted. Someone got a better copy and I think they enhanced it with some A.I. technology. It's not perfect but it's better so I decided to post it.

It's a number from the 1985 special, Night of 100 Stars which was done to benefit the Actors' Fund so they were able to get an incredible number of great performers on it…well more than a hundred. Some of them were in this long dance number.  It's sad to think that today, if you could conscript everyone you wanted, you couldn't possibly put together such a collection of famous hoofers.

You'll see each star's name superimposed when he or she appears…all but Dick Van Dyke. That's because that was not his first appearance on the special. He was in an earlier section of it.

When I first ran this here, it brought a message from my pal, Craig Shemin. I've edited his remarks down but here's the important thing he had to say…

The number is a tribute to Conrad Cantzen, an actor who died in 1945. It was thought that Conrad was down on his luck, but when he died he bequeathed an estate of more than $200,000 (that would be more than 2.3 million bucks today) to the Actors Fund of America.

Here's where the shoes come in. Conrad specified that the money be used to establish a fund for the express purpose of purchasing shoes for actors. This fund continues to operate today, administered by the Actors Fund. Apparently, Conrad thought that actors should not look "down at the heels" while pounding the pavement auditioning.

In case you can't make out what everyone is saying at the end, it's a reprise of the song from the introductory section:

Starting from the bottom up, that's the route to choose.
No one ever feels lowdown at the heels
Shoo away bad news and shoo away the blues
By spending Conrad's Cash on a brand new pair of shoes.

Conrad's tale is such a nice story of an enduring act of generosity that I wanted to share it with you and your readers.

Thanks, Craig…and thanks to whoever fixed it up and put it back on YouTube. It really is an extraordinary piece of work and talent…

Dave Letterman discusses the whole Colbert matter…

Nine panels down.  Ten to go…