…to the Hawaii Five-O question. Thanks to all of you who wrote in with answers and suggestions.

Local commitments are keeping me away from Mid-Ohio Con this year. But I wanted to say that if I could get away, I'd get away to Columbus, Ohio next weekend for Roger Price's annual gathering of comics, TV and film fans. Having attended comic book and s-f conventions across the continent since '70, I've gotten jaded and bored by a lot of them, but Roger hosts one of the friendliest gatherings I've ever attended. The spirit reminds me a lot of the late-seventies San Diego Cons which were just big enough that there was always something to do but not so big that they felt unconquerable. Go here to see the guest list and how to get there. And Roger…sorry I won't be there but I'll try to make it next year.

If you're even vaguely in the Los Angeles area, I highly recommend Totally Looped. This is a terrific show of improvisational comedy that occurs not nearly often enough. (I didn't phrase that properly but you know what I mean.) The next edition is this coming Friday, November 21, and you can find out all about it at this website. If I can get away, I'll be there. Read my report on an earlier performance and you'll understand why.

A friend has a question and it's beyond my expertise to answer. We're trying to identify an episode of Hawaii Five-O and all he remembers about it is that it involves a serial killer murdering women all over The Island. There's no explanation as to how he gains entrance to their homes and no seeming connection between his victims until McGarrett (or someone) figures out that all but one had their cars washed at a certain car wash. The killer worked there, picked his targets and secretly duplicated their house keys while their autos (with the keys in them) were going through the car wash.

The reason my friend needs to know about this episode is boring and would be of no interest to anyone. But he needs to, and we're hoping someone reading this is enough of a Five-O buff to tell us which one it was.

I'm experimenting with font sizes to see what will be most readable on this weblog. If you can read this page okay, do nothing. If you find this difficult to read, please drop me a note and tell me what's wrong with it. Thanks.

We call your attention to a new 3-DVD set of episodes of You Bet Your Life starring Groucho Marx that is now available. If you need a reminder of how funny this show was, go to this page of the website for the company bringing them out and click on the video preview links at the bottom of the page. They have a few choice moments from one show, plus the original opening which you may not have ever seen. Most of you who remember the show at all probably remember the opening put on them when a block of episodes were placed into syndication. The 18 programs on this set are not from that block. They're episodes that haven't been available since their original airings, and they've been mastered from quality prints and augmented with loads of special features, including racy outtakes. Sounds like a must-have for us Marx mavens. I'll give you a full report once I get my copy but if you don't want to wait for that, here's a link to order yours today. And tell 'em Groucho sent you.

Frank Rich offers an interesting view on the controversial Reagans mini-series, especially as compared to the upcoming HBO mini-series based on Tony Kushner's Angels in America. [New York Times registration required.]

For those of you interested in cartoon voices, we have here a good interview with Rob Paulsen, one of the best of the current crop. I worked with Rob once on a series and couldn't have been more impressed with his talent and professionalism.

TV Land just finished running, as a tribute to Art Carney, a "marathon" of all 39 filmed episodes of The Honeymooners. I caught a few of the less-familiar ones and again marvelled at how good he was on that show. A year or three ago, I got a few folks all hot and bothered in an Internet discussion of Jackie Gleason by saying that I felt his rep as "The Great One" was overrated; that the best thing Mr. Gleason ever did for television was to hire Art Carney and not completely blast him off the screen. A star can do that…cutting down the other actors' roles, telling them not to do this or that. Berle was famous for that and so was Gleason, though Jackie never fully mastered the art of keeping Art in a strait-jacket. A Gleason show was woefully under-rehearsed: They did it until Jackie felt he had his part down, and then it was every man for himself. To my knowledge, Carney never went public with his belief that he was being deliberately handicapped but it was common knowledge within the business.

You can almost sense it in some episodes. The dullest ones keep Norton in the corners and out of the spotlight. The best ones give him something to do, preferably something physical and/or exasperating to Ralph: Norton poaching in the Kramden apartment to watch TV, Norton teaching Ralph how to play golf, Norton and Ralph rehearsing to do a TV commercial, Norton and Ralph handcuffed together, Norton and Ralph deciding to get drunk together, Norton prepping Ralph to go on a TV game show, Norton competing with Ralph in a costume competition, Norton sleepwalking, etc. Gleason used to say that The Honeymooners was the story of a couple that lived in near-poverty but kept going because of their love for each other. He was wrong. The Honeymooners was the story of friendship between a bus driver and a sewer worker, and it was the sewer worker who made it a classic.

Having recently done a big "Bah, Humbug!" to Halloween, we now turn our attention to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is no great deal to me, and really hasn't been since about the time I got out of school and it no longer yielded a four-day weekend. When you're self-employed, you're like the atheist who is dismayed at the lack of holidays in his life. We work when we have to work and taking four days off just puts us four days behind. Then there is this matter of parades. Once upon a time, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was a joy carried on both CBS and NBC.

One year, one channel was almost exactly a half-hour ahead of the other so if I saw a float I liked on NBC at 8:42 AM, I'd make a note and switch over to see it again on CBS at 9:12. The parade was festive and colorful and if it was freezing in New York, as it usually seemed to be on Thanksgiving Day, I could sit in sunny Los Angeles and watch other people shiver and exhale visible breath. But the last few times I tuned in to the Macy's festivities, they were only on one channel, they were truncated down to supposed highlights, and what was there was pretty much a marching infomercial for upcoming movies and TV shows, toy promotions and videogames. I suppose there was always some of that but it had gotten too prevalent and pushy for me to enjoy.

So what's left to love about Thanksgiving? Well, big family gatherings to eat turkey were fun in their way, but most of my family has passed away and when what's left gathers, it only reminds us of lost loved ones. Plus, eating turkey is no big deal. Since I cut way back on red meat, I dine on turkey two or three times a week, and I'm not the only one. Year-round turkey consumption in America is way up. Lately in the market, you find it in all sorts of forms — burgers and filets and ground turkey and turkey meatballs. Someone has even brought out a turkey-and-gravy soda. If they could figure out a way to get a potato and some carrots in there, they'd have almost everything I eat in one bottle. And everything I like about Thanksgiving.

The lovely face above is that of actress June Marlowe (1903-1984) who is probably best remembered as the teacher in a number of Hal Roach's "Our Gang" comedies. She had a nice career modelling and in movies and a very interesting life. All of that is captured over on this website devoted to her, including rare photos and a nice, long biography.

I was amazed to see that Miss Crabtree only appeared in six of the "Our Gang" shorts. I've seen all those films and I would have guessed two dozen or so. I guess that's testimony to what a strong impression she made when she appeared. Shortly after she passed away, I got to spend a couple of hours with Hal Roach, who got to talking about her and who said (approximately), "She was the most beautiful woman we ever had on the lot. She could have been the biggest star in the business if she hadn't run off and married that guy."

A bit later, Mr. Roach told me a please-don't-repeat story about a lady who got roles in movies back then by sleeping with various studio execs. I didn't think he meant June Marlowe but he made a point of telling me it was not her; that there was no "hanky-panky" (his term) with June. Then, even though he was 93 years old at the time, he sighed and added, "…unfortunately." Guess that's why Miss Crabtree only appeared in six films.

Just spoke with Marvel artist Marie Severin, who was back from attending the wake for John Tartaglione. She reminded me that John had recently been inking the Spider-Man newspaper strip (the daily, not the Sunday) over the pencil art of Larry Lieber. And she said that despite a recent battle with throat cancer that had robbed Tartag of his ability to speak, he managed to finish a week of strips the day before he died. There's some real devotion to duty there, and it's nice to report that John was a working artist right until the end.

I have no details but I am informed by two separate sources that longtime comic book illustrator John Tartaglione passed away within the last week. "Tartag," as his friends called him, was born in 1921 and he received his art training at Pratt Institute and the Traphagen School of Fashion. Details on his career are sketchy — I don't recall ever seeing an interview with him anywhere — but he seems to have broken into comics around 1941 as an errand boy and production artist for Harvey Comics, followed by several years doing likewise for Bernard Baily, who was then running a studio that produced comic art for various publishers. There is then a gap in his known history but around 1954, solo Tartaglione work began appearing in Atlas Comics like Journey Into Mystery and Spellbound. For the most part, he was a "quiet" artist, generally uncomfortable with the more grisly horror or outrageous superhero features. He illustrated a great many romance comics for Atlas (which later became Marvel) and for DC, and was often called upon for special projects of an educational or religious nature. In the sixties, Tartag work turned up in Treasure Chest, Classics Illustrated and in an array of Dell Comics, including Burke's Law, Ben Casey and the Dell comic book biographies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

In the late sixties, he moved back to Marvel where he was used primarily as an inker for Werner Roth's X-Men art, Gene Colan's Daredevil work and Dick Ayers on Sgt. Fury. He did good, professional work but reportedly lamented the dearth (to him) of more uplifting assignments in comics. Again, he became the "go-to" guy when a project came along that required historical research and/or spiritual themes. He was therefore the perfect artist when in 1982, Marvel issued a comic book biography of Pope John Paul II that through various religious channels, sold well into the millions, leading to a follow-up book on Mother Teresa. During this time, Tartag occasionally worked on staff at Marvel, colored for Harvey Comics and assisted on the newspaper strip, Apartment 3-G. Mostly though, he increased his non-comic work — mostly oil painting and portraiture — and had been concentrating on that area until his recent passing.

And that's really everything I know about John Tartaglione. If anyone reading this can offer additional details, please do. It's a life and career that have gone woefully unchronicled.

Penny Singleton had a pretty long career in show business but for the most part, it came down to two roles. From 1939 until 1960, she was Blondie (from the comic strip of the same name) in a string of radio shows and 28 movies that some cable channel ought to be rerunning. Then in 1962, she provided the voice of Jane Jetson for what was then a one season, unsuccessful cartoon series. But The Jetsons lived on in reruns to the point of eventually making more of them and Ms. Singleton became quite beloved as another cartoon mother. Somewhere between her two signature parts, she also became a mover and shaker in various actors' unions, holding office in some, always fighting for better pay and respect for the bit players, the dancers, the folks without much clout in the hierarchy of show business. I met her a few times and found her to be a delightful, spunky lady who clearly loved what she did, and loved the fact that so many others loved what she did. Here's a more extensive obit.

Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul complains about the way our military men and women are being treated.