Michael Kinsley on George W. Bush's unacknowledged change of mind about "nation building."

According to this news story, the world's oldest person has died…again. It seems like every few weeks when I pick up the newspaper, I read that the world's oldest person has died. If fact, just two weeks ago, the world's oldest person died. This is only a few months after the previous world's oldest person died. What is this epidemic and why is no one doing anything about it?

Obviously, being the world's oldest person is a curse. You get the title and within a year or two, you're gone. The latest holder of the title, Mitoyo Kawate, received it and before she'd even had time to enjoy it, she was dead. Is that fair?

You'll never catch me being the world's oldest person. It's way too dangerous.

David Greenberg on why that mini-series on The Reagans wouldn't have affected the former president's popularity one bit.

I think online polls are all frauds. I think they're a sleazy trick to get people to come to websites. What's more, I think everyone knows they're phony; that the sampling that votes is utterly unscientific and that many groups stuff the online ballot box, often because they figure out how to vote repeatedly. This is not usually difficult to do. Amazingly, someone has now figured out how to make an unreliable poll even less reliable than usual. This is done by changing the question that people are voting on.

Yesterday, a poll appeared on the website of Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist. Here's a screenshot of how the results looked after the thing had been up for a few hours. Note not only the totals but the way the question is worded…

Ordinarily, a poll on the website of a politician should wind up overwhemlingly reflecting that politician's position, since folks who agree with him are far more likely to visit that site. In this case, a couple of Democratic websites urged their readers to go over and push up the "no" vote on Senator Frist's poll, and droves apparently did. At the time the above screenshot was taken, it looked like Frist's view might lose on his own home page. Fat chance of that happening. Even as Conservative sites were urging visitors to go drive up the "yes" vote, the operators of the Frist site were changing the wording of the question to slant it more their way. Here's a screenshot of the same poll from later in the day…

I'm not sure if they reset the total to zero and started the count over or if they just changed the question. But either way, the first question disappeared. The new wording plus the Conservative vote-stuffing apparently did the trick because soon, Frist's position had pulled into the lead. That apparently wasn't enough for the operators of the site because later, they changed one more word in the question. Here's a screenshot of the final total…

"Perform" is an even better word to skew the vote than "exercise," since we expect our elected officials to "perform" their duties, whereas "exercise" sounds a lot more optional. In any case, I'm guessing the final result had more to do with how many people managed to vote 200 or 300 times apiece. In no way do any of these questions relate to what any fair sampling of Americans believe. In fact, the questions may not even relate to what the people who voted thought they were voting on. I'd sure be pissed if I took the trouble to rig a poll and vote 600 times and then they changed the wording on me.

P.S. Added a few minutes later: I just did a search and found that other blogs have picked up on this matter, which was called to my attention by an e-mail buddy. The mysterious Atrios claims that at one point, the wording of the poll was inverted to ask, "Should the Senate minority block the body's Constitutional duty to provide the President's judicial nominees with an up or down vote?" so that the old Yes votes now meant No and vice-versa. Here's the Atrios post on the matter, followed by readers reporting even more rephrasing. Sounds like someone's having some fun screwing with the questions to frustrate enemy ballot-stuffers. Either way, it makes my point that online polls are bull. You can vote once and have it cancelled out by someone voting twice…or even by a webmaster who reverses the meaning of the question.

One of the great individual stylists of comic books in the fifties and sixties was a gent named Jerry Grandenetti. His page design concepts reminded many of Will Eisner and with good reason. He had once assisted Eisner on The Spirit, as well as drawing several comics for which the editors consciously wanted an "Eisner look." In the early sixties, he worked primarily on DC's war comics where he did some striking work on covers like the one at left — but only for so long. As the decade wore on, he got away from combat art and conventional page layouts, taking what he'd learned from Eisner and applying it in new, then-revolutionary directions. Like most artists who departed from the conventional, his work was loved by many but disliked by some. (I suspect some who didn't like it then now appreciate it. We call this "The Mike Sekowsky Effect.")

Where Grandenetti really won me over was when he did a series of stories, mostly involving haunted houses, for Creepy and Eerie. Editor-writer Archie Goodwin thought Grandenetti drew the most atmospheric old mansions so he tailored his scripts in that direction and encouraged the artist to forget everything he'd been told by editors about what comics had to be. He did. The result was some of the most visually-arresting and controversial comic art of the period. In fact, by the early seventies, Grandenetti was working so far outside even the relaxed conventions of DC Comics that he no longer quite fit in. I thought he was a marvelous, distinct talent who wasn't precisely suited to the work he was assigned, like The Spectre, Prez and Nightmaster. He may have felt that way, too. After working for a time with his friend Joe Simon, Grandenetti finally got out of comics and into advertising — our loss. I think he was way ahead of the curve on where comics were going.

I'm pleased to say that he's recently surfaced in the comic art community, offering amazing drawings and re-creations at his website, where you can see samples of his recent work. There's also an interview and some biographical data. I just wished they showed more of his approach to designing a page, which is where he really was working without a net.

I've never met Mr. Grandenetti. Over the years, a number of folks have attempted without success to drag him out to a convention. I know he's received lush offers to be flown to the Comic-Con International in San Diego to be interviewed and honored, and he's declined. This is a shame because we have a long history of guys from his generation declining San Diego invites for years and years…and then finally, they accept and have what they admit is the greatest weekend of their lives. If anyone reading this can convince the man, please do. An awful lot of his fans would love to meet him, myself included.

As my Cirque du Soleil piece suggests, I am conflicted on the subject of performing animals, and I guess it comes down to a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, the animals are in a loving, healthy environment and their "act" seems to pay for that and to bring pleasure to many; sometimes, not. My pal Alan Light just sent me a link to this video of a pooch performing at some sort of dog show (you'll need Windows Media Player installed to view it) and it seems like the former. Take a look if you have a few minutes. This dog is at least as good a dancer as John Travolta.

When Walter Matthau was first offered the script of The Odd Couple, he said he'd do it but he wanted to play Felix. He was quickly talked out of this silly notion. Later on, when they made the movie, he again announced that he wanted to play Felix and he was again talked back into the role for which he was most suited. At least once, he told an interviewer that during the Broadway run, he and Art Carney had occasionally swapped parts. This is apparently not true, though it spawned a minor urban legend. Indeed, one occasionally encounters someone who swears they went to see the original Odd Couple and saw Matthau playing Felix and Carney playing Oscar, which apparently did not happen.

At other times, Mr. Matthau told reporters that it was among his life's greatest regrets that no one had ever allowed him to play the role that would have truly challenged him as an actor…Felix. It's not hard to deduce that he was kidding. After the movie, he was a superstar and there were thousands of productions of The Odd Couple everywhere, including some pretty large, lucrative ones. If he'd called any theatrical producer anywhere and said he yearned to do a run as The Neat One, they'd have sent limos full of cash. But he never did that, and he never chose many movie roles that cast him much against "type." Jack Lemmon once said of his frequent co-star, "Walter gives due consideration to every script submitted to him and then does the ones that pay the most."

As I said an item ago here, I wish I could have seen Matthau and Carney do the original Odd Couple…and especially back then, when everyone in the audience didn't already know the play by heart. It has definitely lost a lot for being so familiar. Still, I can't imagine better casting than the originals…and while the notion of Matthau as Felix doesn't interest me, I have a hunch Carney would have made a great Oscar, too. We'll never know, of course, but he had quite a range as an actor. It is said he often received scripts that described his role as "an Ed Norton type," but he was never Ed Norton anywhere but in The Honeymooners. I thought he was quite convincing as a private detective in The Late Show and as the doctor in House Calls, to name two. It's real easy for a second banana, as he was with Gleason, to get typed at that level and in those kinds of roles, but Carney made it out.

I'm thinking back on when he won the Oscar for Harry and Tonto in '74. No one expected that win, up against Nicholson in Chinatown, Pacino in Godfather II, Dustin Hoffman as Lenny, and Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express. When they called the name of Art Carney, he had a reaction I don't think I've ever seen from anyone else on the Academy Awards. It was kind of a stunned "Really?" not just at the name but at a sudden roar of approval from the audience. They liked that choice even if the recipient couldn't quite wrap his brain around it for a moment. You kind of got the feeling that he was used to being first runner-up in life and couldn't quite grasp that he'd climbed out of the "also starring…" pit. Still, being a pro, he rose to the occasion (and his feet) and did a little victory gesture that I can't describe but which seemed to say, "Hey, I did it." I don't recall what he said, other than that he was charmingly unprepared. But I remember that little gesture which said more than any acceptance speech by anyone I've seen before or since. Next time you watch anything with Art Carney in it, don't even listen to whatever he says. Just watch the way the guy moves. That's where the real show is.

I always thought Art Carney was the reason The Honeymooners was a great show. Take him away and what you had was a show about a loud-mouthed bus driver who kept lying to people and threatening to smack his wife. You would have hated Ralph Kramden. The reason you didn't was that he had this friend named Ed Norton, and Ed Norton was such a great, lovable guy that you just knew: If he was Ralph's buddy, Ralph couldn't have been that bad a guy. Carney made Norton work and Norton made the series work. He was also funnier than Gleason.

All the obits for Mr. Carney are probably dwelling on his Norton days and perhaps mentioning his fine film work, including the Academy Award for Harry and Tonto. Perhaps in passing, they'll mention that he was the original Felix Unger, playing opposite Walter Matthau in The Odd Couple. Boy, I wish I'd seen that production. I did see Carney years later in another Neil Simon play, The Prisoner of Second Avenue. He was, no surprise, superb in the part and I recall that he got some enormous laughs just from his body language — the way he stood, the way his entire frame reacted to things. Carney was one of the few comic actors of his generation who just moved in amusing ways. He could also, as that play and others proved, break your heart with a single look.

There's a great story about one time Carney got in trouble on live TV. It was a "Honeymooners" sketch on the Gleason show, and Gleason exited a scene and ran off to his dressing room to change clothes — which he should not have done. He forgot that the scene had been rewritten and extended. He was supposed to go back in and engage Art/Ed in more dialogue but he forgot, leaving his sidekick sitting at the Kramden dining table, waiting for Ralph to return and play the rest of the dialogue. When Ralph didn't come, Art realized he had to fill — this is live TV, remember — so he walked over, opened the ice box and found there was nothing in it but an orange. He took it, sat down and did two minutes of orange-peeling. A stage manager finally got Gleason back so the scene could resume but as Jackie himself told the story, those two minutes were the funniest two minutes in the entire hour, maybe the entire season. The kinescope is apparently lost but I'm sure it was wonderful. Because Art Carney didn't know how to be anything less.

…and the great evening was had by my friend Carolyn, Richard and Wendy Pini and myself, all of us wide-eyed and clapping our fool heads off for Varekai, a touring production of Cirque du Soleil. It's camped out in downtown Los Angeles through November 23, then it heads for Pomona, Orange County, San Diego, Phoenix, Denver and elsewhere. If you've never seen a Cirque production, go. If you have seen one and this one's coming your way, you already want tickets. You can get them and the schedule through the Cirque du Soleil website.

Let's see…how do I describe a Cirque production to someone who's never seen one? There's music…live music, which adds a special note to the occasion. Acrobats often perform to recorded music and it makes a great difference, not only to the ambience but to the performance, as well. When the music is canned, the performers must perform to its rhythms and their timing is constricted. With real musicians on the premises, the performer can be more spontaneous and trust that the conductor will follow them. In Cirque, if a performer misses (as happened twice this evening), he or she will usually immediately attempt the feat again, and the conductor will adjust to accommodate it. The music is quite lovely but the best part of it is that though it is sometimes augmented via synthesizer, it is played anew for each performance.

There are costumes. Odd but beautiful costumes. I can't claim that I like or understand them all but at least you don't sit there going, "Oh, that old outfit again."

There's a storyline — in this case, something about Icarus falling to Earth and losing his wings. I haven't really understood the storylines of any of the Cirque shows I've seen…Dralion, O, or two viewings of Mystere, and I wonder if anyone does. Or cares…

…because there are incredible feats: People leaping, flying, tumbling, bouncing, spinning, falling, swinging, balancing and just generally doing the impossible. You sit there thinking to yourself, I could not possibly see what I just saw. Human beings cannot do that. But these can. My favorites were the juggler who juggled five or six balls at once, the troupe who juggled each other, and the closing in which performers swung on large swings and were flung across the stage, into large sails, onto each others' shoulders and even onto other large swings. (I also enjoyed the clowns, who were surprisingly clever.)

There are no animal acts. That's always been a policy of Cirque du Soleil and I kind of like it. In light of a certain recent occurrence, I think I like it even more.

I have to admit I don't fully comprehend a lot of what's happening on the Cirque stage…people writhing on the floor in odd costumes that I guess symbolize something…other performers wandering out just to stare at the ones in the spotlight. I also have to admit it doesn't matter. Every time I see a Cirque du Soleil production, I walk out thinking, "Gee, I want to go see another one of their shows." Right now, there are five touring, three in permanent residence in Vegas (with another on the way) and one in Florida, so I have a lot of opportunities. So do you.

A few weeks ago, a lawsuit by Fox News against author Al Franken was laughed out of court. This transcript of the court proceedings doesn't denote where the laughter actually occurred…but you can guess.

Paul Krugman lists some of the ways in which the Bush administration has been slicing military pay and benefits. I don't know how anyone can claim to "support our troops" and not be outraged at this kind of thing.

Here's a pretty good article on Zanies, a comedy club in Chicago. The piece, which was called to my attention by Bruce Reznick, is notable for a good overview of that business, and for an extremely goofy photo of Jay Leno. (Free registration is required. It's the Chicago Tribune site.)

My mention the other day of the Plastic Man cartoon show brought a lot of mail asking me about it, including the inevitable question of why the animation studio placed the stretchable hero with such an odd supporting cast. I'll write something about it when I have more time, maybe later this week. But, yes, I think all of us who worked on that series were a bit mystified by that decision, even after the reasoning was explained to us. (Hint: It had to do with a lady at the network who insisted that the purpose of a cartoon show was not to sell sugar-frosted cereals and exploding toys but pro-social values…a concept that has done more damage to kids than the toys and the cereal.) I think we'd all rather have done something closer in spirit, if not format to Jack Cole's original comic books, and I'll try to explain why that didn't happen. In the meantime, I'd like to recommend this article by the wise and sage R.C. Harvey to anyone in need of a good overview of Mr. Cole's funny comics and tragic life.

I'm starting this feature up again. One of the joys of this year's Comic-Con International was meeting Frank Bolle, a prolific artist for comic books (Dr. Solar, Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery) and newspaper strips (Apartment 3-G, Winnie Winkle, The Heart of Juliet Jones). Mr. Bolle's had one of those quiet careers, producing fine work for comics that weren't always in the spotlight but are now getting recognized. Here's a link to his website.