You see a lot of silly animations on the Internet but occasionally one really impresses you. Last year on my other site, I recommended you take the time to visit this Christmas cartoon, and it's still one of the cleverest things I've seen. Try clicking the deers off and on in different patterns.

And this year, they have the sequel! Go have a look.

These are offered up by a web company called ICQ but I have no idea who actually devised and created these wonderful little animations. I searched the 'net to find that info and couldn't locate that information. I captured the Shockwave files to disk and dismantled them, figuring that the artistan(s) might have secreted a signature within. If they did, I couldn't find it. So I dunno who should get the credit but hey, if you're out there, nice job!

Governor George Pataki of New York has granted a posthumous pardon to Lenny Bruce for saying naughty words on stage. Here's the news report.

I was never much of a fan of the Dennis the Menace newspaper strip by Hank Ketcham. It was nicely drawn but there was something about its attitude towards children that struck me as needlessly condescending. At times, it was almost like Dennis was not a kid but a pet in need of better housebreaking. This attitude extended to the TV show with Jay North but only occasionally to the comic books, which are among the most overlooked of great comics. Ketcham didn't write or draw the comics (nor his strip's Sunday pages) and they were generally the work of writer Fred Toole and artist Al Wiseman. (That's Fred above with the mustache; Al's the guy in the photo at right.) The stories were very clever and some were long enough that you could make a case for them as among the first graphic novels. In an article on his weblog, Fred Hembeck explains what he loved about them. I'm not sure he's right in identifying Owen Fitzgerald as the Dennis artist whose work he once didn't like, but otherwise he pretty well summarizes my thoughts. (Hembeck is a darn good cartoonist, himself. Browse around his site and see for yourself.)

Starting in a week or so, Comedy Central loses their package of Saturday Night Live reruns to the E! network. As a last hurrah, the former is airing what they're billing as "The 50 Greatest SNL Episodes" in five 10-hour blocks, one block per day starting tomorrow. It probably won't be the fifty best since E! already has custody of the first five seasons, and Comedy Central doesn't have the last few years, either. So I guess it's actually the fifty best of the years 1980-2001, as ostensibly determined by this online ballot at the Comedy Central website. (The voting seems to be closed now, judging by the fact that the voting function on that site is no longer operative.)

So what will Comedy Central be running? So far, they seem to be keeping it a secret but I wouldn't mind seeing some of the episodes they haven't rerun in a long time. The shows done during the absence of Lorne Michaels have rarely been seen the last few years. For some reason, both Comedy Central and the NBC All Night rerun (early on Sunday A.M.) have occasionally announced an episode from those seasons and instead aired one from the Michaels years. It was like they tried to sneak one in and got caught before they could broadcast it. They've also given the shortest of shrift to shows from 1986-1993, airing only a couple of selected ones over and over.

No word yet on which ones E! is going to run, but the channel seems so fixated on who's hot this week, you suspect they'll concentrate on the ones spotlighting current stars. I hope not because there was some really good work on episodes featuring people who don't have a big, heavily-promoted movie or CD coming out next week.

The eBay auction of my pilot script and bible for Dungeons and Dragons is rolling along. Up over a hundred bucks now with several days yet to run. Let's see how high this thing will go…

Here's Robert Scheer with one side of an issue that has me genuinely on the fence. Increasingly, government officials are leaking stories to reporters that turn out to be either not quite true or not at all true. The leak is calculated to advance the official's agenda and may even be a crime…but the ethics of journalism are supposed to protect the leaker: The reporter is honor-bound not to reveal who told him or her what they printed, in effect covering for someone who may have broken the law. There seems to me little doubt that someone in the government, figuring they could hide behind that shield, planted phony stories about Wen Ho Lee, the scientist who was locked away in solitary confinement for nine months and hit with all sorts of espionage charges that later evaporated. The stories were obviously intended to scare the accused into some sort of plea bargain and confession to a crime for which there was otherwise insufficient evidence. Should the reporters who printed those stories be compelled to reveal their source? One doesn't want to see that kind of sleazy trial-by-phony-leak tactic go unpunished but one also doesn't want to see the mechanism put in place to uncover legit news sources. So I dunno…

Same thing with the Valerie Plame leak. Someone may have broken the law by "outing" a C.I.A. operative but if so, that someone can never be caught as long as the reporter who received and published the leak can claim First Amendment protection. I see both sides of the argument in this one. Anonymous leakers and sources have helped the press uncover enormous amounts of wrongdoing and scandal…but they have also created a lot of it, as well.

There has always been a certain conflict between the two positions. Back during the Impeachment Festivities, it seemed pretty evident that Ken Starr's office was leaking anti-Clinton info to reporters in probable violation of the law. Reporters who were printing those stories were also reporting that others were charging Starr with such leaks, and then they were publishing Starr's denials. This made for an odd situation. If Starr was not leaking, then reporters who knew the charges to be false were publishing them without comment. If he was leaking, then reporters were publishing his denials, knowing full well they were lies. Either way, someone was wrong and the reporters knew who it was and weren't telling.

Going back a few more scandals: During Watergate (and before that, the Pentagon Papers), we heard a lot about the right of reporters to protect their sources but also more discussion of the need to weigh that right against possible abuse. The Wen Ho Lee case sure feels to me like a definite abuse. Before it, I felt that nothing should ever force a member of the working press to divulge a source. Now, I'm not so sure.

Another great voice has been silenced. Les Tremayne starred in many memorable radio programs, including The Falcon and The Thin Man before becoming one of those "works all the time" character actors in motion pictures and television. His listing in the Internet Movie Database is woefully incomplete but even it will give you some idea of how many times you saw and heard this man. Comic fans will probably best identify him for his role as Mentor on the 1974-75 Saturday morning series, Shazam! and he also was heard on many cartoon shows. He was the Voice of Christmas Present in Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, the voice of Churchy LaFemme and other characters on The Pogo Birthday Special, and the villain in dozens of Hanna-Barbera shows. Here's a link to an obit and I thank Tommy Raiko for calling it to my attention.

Justin Foster (a reader of this site) informs me that Thurl Ravenscroft's narration on the Disneyland Railroad has been replaced by another voice. I will never ride it again.

Eric Idle has finished his "Greedy Bastard Tour" which means (sadly) that he's finished his online tour diary. I dunno how long they'll leave it up over on this web page but I suggest you go enjoy it now, while you still can. A wonderful read it is…and certain installments, especially the last few, will give you a good idea of why it's unlikely we will ever again see the surviving Monty Python guys reunite for much of anything.

By the way: Carol Cleveland, who played women for Python whenever they needed a real one, now has her own website.

Quite a few folks have e-mailed me links to obits like this one for Harold von Braunhut, the man who invented and marketed the "Amazing Sea Monkeys." Most of the pieces spoke admiringly of his ability to merchandise odd items, and I suppose that's worthy of a salute. But I wonder how many children were traumatized at an early age because they sent their allowances off to order the Amazing Sea Monkeys and learned that advertising does not always convey the exact truth. The Amazing Sea Monkeys were not monkeys and they did not come from the sea. Worse, they did not become goofy little families with hair ribbons and blonde hair and happy (or even any) faces as seen in the ads. (If you'd like to see what a real "Sea Monkey" looks like, go to this site.) Mr. von Braunhut's x-ray specs also did not let you see through walls or clothing, either.

As a matter of fact, if you put on the x-ray specs, you still couldn't see the joyous expressions of the Sea Monkeys, which were about half the size of ants, if that large. Neither purchase gave you more than about three minutes of semi-enjoyment, followed by an overwhelming feeling of having been taken, plus one or more parents saying, "Let this be a valuable lesson to you." That was about all the Sea Monkeys were good for, except that for a time, the Denny's restaurant chain was breading and deep-frying them and serving five on a plate with cole slaw as their Fisherman's Seafood Platter. You know, they weren't bad that way.

I had a pretty good time watching The Haunted Mansion, the new movie based on the Disneyland attraction of the same name. I liked that the special effects blended so seamlessly with reality. I liked that the film started slow and gave you the chance to get to know the people before zombies began chasing them. I liked that Eddie Murphy played a reasonably intelligent person and didn't turn into Mantan Moreland when the ghosts began flying. Come to think of it, I liked that the subtle racial aspects of the plot were never even mentioned.

I especially liked that there was a plot — a fairly solid one, given that the film was based on just about nothing, and that films that are heavy in visual effects often skip over that teensy aspect of moviemaking. (Quick summary: Murphy and his wife, played by Marsha Thomason, are realtors who get the chance to broker a huge, mega-commission mansion. They and their kids get trapped inside for a night along with a spooky butler, the master of the house who thinks Murphy's wife is his long lost love, and a mess of ghosts, one of whom is Wallace Shawn. If I tell you any more than that, I'll kill it for you.)

Let's see…what else did I like? I liked the fact that in the end credits, long after everyone had left and the ushers were sweeping up popcorn boxes around me, I saw the filmmakers make special recognition of the late Paul Frees and the still-with-us Thurl Ravenscroft. Paul, of course, was the narrator of the Disneyland ride, and the opening lines of the film are uttered by Corey Burton, flawlessly imitating Paul. Thurl Ravenscroft is one of Hollywood's great vocalists, best known for providing the voice of Tony the Tiger, and for singing "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," in the Chuck Jones animation of How the Grinch Stole You-Know-What. Thurl, who will be honored with a special trophy at the Annie Awards in February, was the bass voice on hundreds of records and film soundtracks during his career. This website chronicles a small percentage of his amazing body of work.

Thurl is heard all over Disneyland — on the Disneyland Railroad, in the Pirates of the Carribean, everywhere. In the Haunted Mansion, Thurl is heard as the main voice in the song, "Grim, Grinning Ghosts," and his face is seen on one of the singing busts. (The busts are in the movie, by the way. In fact, they provide a couple of the best moments.)

I don't have a lot more to say about the film because, like I said, you'll enjoy it more if you go in, not knowing what to expect. But it's been a while since I saw a movie so filled with special effects that made me forget I was looking at special effects.

Phil Sears is an autograph collector who specializes in genuine signatures of Walt Disney. Over at his website, he's posted a long, handwritten letter by Walt. It was penned in 1923 and it's to the parents of the little girl who played Alice in his semi-animated films. It's an interesting look into the mind of Mr. Disney and you can see it here.

Still getting things repaired. We are running on the new 2.65 version of the Movable Type weblog software, which was released today. (The reason it took so long was that rather than install the previous version, I decided to wait for 2.65.) Anyway, I have to finish an assignment and then I'll get the Search function working again and all will be reasonably back to normal. Thank you for your patience.

…then things are almost fixed here.

In 1983, I had an amazing ten-day period during which I wrote the pilot scripts and bibles for three Saturday morning cartoon shows…one for ABC, one for NBC and one for CBS. (A bible, by the way, is an overview of a prospective series that tells who the characters are, how they function, where they live, etc.) Amazingly, all three shows "sold" to some extent. I wound up taking my name off the ABC one, and the NBC one was announced as on the schedule, then bumped by a last-minute deal with Mr. T. NBC had wanted to do a cartoon show with him but he wanted too much money, so they tentatively bought this other show which I developed. A day or two later, someone decided to meet Mr. T's price and my show went away, which was probably just as well.

The CBS show was called Dungeons and Dragons, based loosely on the role-playing game. Others, especially a clever gent named Dennis Marks, had worked out characters and an overview of how to turn the game into a cartoon show, but the network folks were not happy with either the bible or pilot script, which is how come I got the call. I literally finished the ABC pilot one morning and started on the CBS one the same day. For more on this, you might want to consult this article. I had relatively little to do with the program after the pilot and one other episode I wrote, but some fine writers and artists made it into a three season hit that still has an amazing following.

The show spawned at least two urban legends that have ricocheted around the Internet. One is that it was cancelled due to pressure groups that were upset about the content and/or about the game on which it was based. This is not true. It was cancelled because the ratings were dropping steadily throughout its third season. The other legend is that a "last episode" was produced which wrapped up the ongoing storyline of the series. This also is not true, though I have encountered many folks who swear they saw one. My pal Michael Reaves, who was one of the writers on the show, did write a script for a "last episode" but it was never produced. You can read it over on Michael's website. It's not how I would have ended the series but everyone can decide for themselves whether or not they want to consider it part of the canon.

Last year, one of the other writers who worked on the show sold his Xerox of my bible on eBay for a helluva lot of money. This prompted a couple of the unsuccessful bidders to write to me to ask if I could sell them copies or even my originals. I was uncomfortable with the whole notion so I gave my originals (of both the bible and the pilot script) to a charity-type project and now, months later, they've found their merry way to the Marketplace of America, eBay. Here's the listing and at the moment, it's up to $12.75. This is several hundred bucks short of what an unsigned Xerox copy of just the bible sold for so maybe there's a terrific bargain to be had. The money doesn't go to me but I'd still like to see it go for a little higher price than this.