My mother loves to play Video Poker. Loves to play it in Vegas and loves even more to play it at home where she can play without fear of losing her son's inheritance. Years ago, I got her a little toy Video Poker machine. It was about a foot tall and ran on batteries and you didn't have to put coins in. You just pressed a button and it "dealt" the cards just like the machines in Vegas.

She played it for hundreds and hundreds of hours. She played it so much that she once got a Royal Flush on it. A Royal Flush is the rarest of all poker hands and the odds of getting one are one in 40,200, so you don't see them often. This thrilled her but presented a problem: She couldn't bring herself to push the button that would wipe the Royal Flush off the screen and deal the next hand, so she couldn't use her beloved Video Poker machine. I finally solved things by taking a Polaroid camera over, snapping some shots of the Royal Flush, then pushing the button for her.

This brings us to another of my infamous Public Appeals…

That machine was worn out and junked long ago. She would like a new one but I can't seem to find the perfect one. You can get computer software that will replicate a Vegas Video Poker machine but she doesn't have a computer. You can buy little handheld, battery-powered Video Poker games but the cards are too small for her to see. I can't find a toy to buy that doesn't require coins and has a large display. Anyone here know where I can get such a thing?

(Sarah…if you read this, please don't tell her about it. I want to surprise her.)

Here's a belated obit (on account of, I just found out) for Robert C. Bruce, who died August 24, 2003 at the age of 89. Mr. Bruce was a voice actor in many cartoons of the thirties, forties and fifties, most notably as the narrator of silly travelogues and newsreels. You know all those great Looney Tunes like Detouring America and Of Thee I Sting with a serious announcer who sounded like a real travelogue host? Well, that serious announcer was usually Robert C. Bruce. He was an announcer and actor on KFWB, a radio station then owned by Warner Brothers (note the "WB") and housed on the studio lot, not far from where they made Warner Brothers cartoons. He appeared on many shows for the station but the most famous was probably The Grouch Club, which also featured Arthur Q. Bryan, the voice of Elmer Fudd.

Bruce was heard on many radio shows and on what some call the earliest cartoon made for television. It was called NBC Comic Book and it consisted of several radio actors voicing what were very close to still drawings. Later, he had a company that produced TV shows that were not unlike real travelogues and newsreels. In the late sixties, he retired to a home in South Carolina.

Information on Mr. Bruce has generally been a bit elusive, in part because he has often been confused with his father, who had the same name. Robert C. Bruce Sr. was a cinematographer and still photographer whose work included some of the earliest silent travelogues, and he passed away in 1948. The Internet Movie Database has a page that confuses the two men to the extent of saying Robert C. Bruce died in '48 but kept on voicing cartoons until 1959.

That's about all I know about the man. But I sure know that voice and if you like great cartoons, so do you.

I spoke to Julius Schwartz this evening. This was not easy to do as his hearing is bad, though it is expected to improve. I did manage to make him understand that I'm mailing him a few hundred "Get Well" wishes from his fans on the Internet. He was concerned because he has no way to respond to them but I assured him you didn't expect replies.

You can still send mail to schwartz@newsfromme.com but please…don't ask questions that he'll feel should be answered. And no attachments.

So far, I've received about 100 e-mail messages infected with the MyDoom virus, (aka W32.Novarg.A@mm) and the address I set up for Julius Schwartz has received about ten. Norton Anti-Virus has been catching them like Willie Mays on a good day, but it's still an annoyance.

Quick prediction: Both Democrats and Republicans are planning major online campaigns in the coming election with weblogs, mass e-mailings, websites, etc. Betcha we'll see some charges that each side has engaged in the planting of viruses and the use of "spyware" (programs that spy on your computer activity). In fact, zealous hackers of both persuasions will probably do exactly that. There will be a George Bush Virus and one for whoever the Democratic nominee is.

That's what they called Jack Paar, who died this morning after a long, lingering illness. I'm just barely too young to recall his version of The Tonight Show and thanks to the lunkhead at NBC who threw out all but a few tapes, I've never had the chance to see more than a few clips. But I do recall the hour-long Friday night program that Paar then did for three years as The Jack Paar Show. It had many wonderful moments and when I heard Paar speak about ten years ago, he remarked that most people confused the two, recalling moments from the latter (probably, better) show as having occurred on The Tonight Show. On both programs, he trotted out fascinating conversationalists, most from a short list of "regulars" that included Oscar Levant, Alexander King, Peter Ustinov, Hans Conreid, Jonathan Winters and Bea Lillie. He also showcased many new comedians and occasionally welcomed a Richard Nixon or Bobby Kennedy to his guest chair.

Before The Tonight Show, Paar was the All-American Fill-In. He hosted quiz shows, panel shows, morning shows, everything. He was the guy they hired when they didn't know whom else to hire. It was an industry joke that every summer, he would turn up as the star of some low-budget summer replacement series, then disappear again at the first sign of Autumn. When NBC tapped him for Tonight, it was almost out of desperation. When Steve Allen gave up The Tonight Show, everyone expected the job to go to Ernie Kovacs, who'd been hosting the show almost as often as Allen. Instead, NBC tried a Godawful mess called Tonight: America After Dark hosted by a tag-team of newspaper columnists. When it flopped, the network tried to get Kovacs back but he was off doing movies, so they went to Paar…but not to host a talk or variety show. The idea then was to fill the 105 minute time slot with three game shows, all hosted by one guy. When it became apparent they couldn't pull the game show idea together in time, they let Paar do a talk show.

That was pretty much how Paar's entire career went: Accidents, mistakes, things being done out of desperation. Somehow, it usually worked.

The Tonight Show under Steve Allen had not been a talk show as we now know them. It had interviews but it also had sketches, stunts, games, lots of music, a stock company of comedy players and even (for a time) a real newscast. Paar usually did a monologue, then either a prepared comedy piece or some sort of demonstration of new products. The rest of the show was conversation with the occasional music number or stand-up act. Both Allen and Paar ignored other antecedents and claimed their version was "the first talk show," leading to a life-long argument that now is sadly moot. Obviously, it all depends on your definition but there's no question that between them, the two shows set the template for all that followed.

Paar was emotional. He engaged in on-air feuds, mostly with newspaper reporters. He cried occasionally on camera. He would sometimes chuck the monologue, sit on the edge of his desk and talk from the heart to America about what was bothering him. And once he even walked off his own show over a silly censorship squabble…an incident which too often is all that people recall of his show.

Paar left television for the most part in '65, then returned in 1975 to do one week a month for ABC late night. The new show didn't work, in part because it was the old show: Paar remained more or less stuck in 1959, trotting out his old regulars (those who'd survived) and telling stories about having Adlai Stevenson on his old show. In later years when he surfaced for the occasional interview, he still hadn't advanced much. He criticized "current talk shows" for eschewing witty guests for dizzy starlets…an odd criticism from one who gave so much air time to a woman named Dody Goodman whose mouth never once connected with her medulla oblongata. He also devoted a lot of TV hours to chatting with Genevieve (a French starlet who didn't speak English well), Reiko (a Japanese lady who didn't speak English well) and the Gabor sisters. I suspect that, like a lot of old TV shows, the Paar Tonight Show is legendary in part because the shows aren't available to be seen and fairly evaluated.

Still, there were more than enough wonderful things to earn Paar his place in television history. It's right there between Steve Allen and Johnny Carson, which puts him in fine company.

Fred Kaplan parses David Kay's report on the elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Quick summary: Back when Kay was still reporting to the Bush administration, he said there were no weapons but did so in the manner least likely to displease the Oval Office. Now that he doesn't report to them, he's a little more candid.

Here's a short but interesting interview with George Carlin.

Some people think most comedians are liberal because they go after rich people and those in power. I don't think it's usually a matter of politics. It's just the nature of comedy to deflate the privileged and the powerful. It was the Marx Brothers tormenting Margaret Dumont, not the other way around. Lately, Dennis Miller seems to be trying to reverse this principle.

I used to really like Miller, though not all the time. One of the "not" times came after I saw him perform years ago at the MGM Grand in Vegas. Rita Rudner was the opening act and she was funny and fresh and giving it her all. Miller came out next and did horribly dated "topical" material — nothing I hadn't heard him do a dozen times — with an attitude of, "Gimme my check and let me get out of here." Gauging the size of that check based on the price of the tickets, I expected a tad more effort. Later on, I warmed to him on the first season of his HBO show but thereafter lost interest. A lot of his "targets" seemed easy, a lot of his beefs seemed trivial and forced. After 9/11 when he became a cheerleader for George W. Bush, a lot of folks seemed to have changed their opinions of the guy, some for the better, some not. Long before then, I'd stopped setting the TiVo for his appearances.

Recently, he announced that on his new CNBC show, he'll be "giving Bush a pass," meaning little or no criticism. On the one hand, I think it's ignominious for any comedian who deals in current events to declare the President (any President) off-limits. It's like the Bizarro Don Rickles saying, "I don't pick on the big guys…only on the little guys." On the other hand, all comics have their personal no-fly zones and it's almost refreshing to hear one admit it out loud.

What struck me when I saw Miller on with Leno the other night was that given the state of the world right now, a comic who decides to not joke about the President really hasn't got a lot to say. He started his Tonight Show spot by hauling out his joke about Michael Jackson and George Hamilton officially crossing on the pigmentation chart. It's a joke that has now been rerun more often than the I Love Lucy about John Wayne's footprints and one that really shows its age. I suspect that were it not for Miller and that joke, George Hamilton would not have been mentioned on network television in the last decade.

The rest of Miller's spot consisted of generic insults about the Democratic contenders all being morons. I'm guessing that works well in his stand-up appearances because he's attracting the kind of audience that just wants to hear someone bash liberals and Democrats and Clintons. Mainstream appeal requires a little more substance. I am all for ridiculing politicians, even those I may vote for, but the jokes ought to make some sort of point other than, "He's a jerk." These were for the most part, the kind of jokes you do at a roast when you really don't know anything about the Guest of Honor. You just take a line about someone being a putz and stick the guy's name into it: "I wouldn't say [name of target] is dumb but they asked him about Red China and he said, 'It goes nice on a white tablecloth.'" That wasn't one of Miller's lines but it almost could have been. By contrast, both Conan O'Brien and Jon Stewart have recently had some strong, non-generic material about Kerry, Clark, Kucinich, etc.

Miller's new CNBC show will probably fail, not because it won't be good but because it has a fatal flaw: It's on CNBC. If it has any chance at all, it will come because Miller manages better comedy than he's been offering lately. That's possible, of course, even given the handicap of declaring the President off-limits for satire. But it's going to require having something funnier to say about the other guys than that they're scumbags because they're not George W. Bush.

I've finally found a candidate for President I can support. Read his platform and check out that all-important endorsement.

Here are two interesting articles, both Bush-related, in the current New Yorker. In this one, Hendrik Hertzberg discusses the State of the Union address and notes some of the same missing words that I noted here. And in this one, Joshua Micah Marshall discusses the concept of the American Empire. None of this, of course, is as important as the announcement I just posted…

So far, our special mailbox for Julius Schwartz has received 188 "Get Well" wishes, six requests to help someone in Nigeria get money out of the country, seven messages telling him he's won a lottery in Holland and thirteen offers to sell him Viagra and/or enlarge his penis. I'm trying to decide which ones to include in the package.

Andrew Sullivan attacks Bush's domestic agenda. What's interesting but only mentioned briefly in this piece is that Sullivan is a (generally) conservative pundit who has been a huge supporter of Bush's foreign agenda. He even swoons over the macho posturing. I link to this article not because I agree with most of it (though I do) but because I think it's significant that Bush has aroused such contradictory feelings in some conservatives.

Here's another one of those cases where the headline may not quite match the content of the story…

Howard Dean Says Iraqis Worse Off Now
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

MANCHESTER, N.H. – Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean said Sunday that the standard of living for Iraqis is a "whole lot worse" since Saddam Hussein's removal from power in last year's American-led invasion.

"You can say that it's great that Saddam is gone and I'm sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone," said the former Vermont governor, an unflinching critic of the war against Iraq. "But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before."

If you punctuate the quote that way, it's at least a little arguable that the last part refers to all Iraqis. But I suspect Dean meant that the Iraqis whose standard of living is a whole lot worse now are the dead ones. The "whole lot worse" part is the key that there's a little sarcasm intended and the structure of the sentence suggests that what he's saying is that you have to weigh the sentiments of some live Iraqis against the fate of the dead ones who cannot express an opinion. Whoever transcribed Dean's remarks could have done what my teachers always told me to do — never start a sentence with a conjunction — and made the last two sentences into one. If they'd done that, it would have been clear that's what he meant.

I may have mentioned this before but on the campaign trail during the '64 election, Barry Goldwater gave a speech where he accidentally got his words confused and wound up coming out in favor of the spread of Communism. It was just bad phrasing, a flaw that every public speaker displays on some occasion. Back then, everyone — reporters and his opponents — just gave him a pass on it. They knew what he meant to say and the press reported what he meant to say, not what he actually said. Today, it's almost like they look at every utterance and wonder if there's some way to strip-quote or punctuate it to make it a hotter news story. Unless of course, it's George W. Bush and they've decided that awkward sentence structure is part of his charm.

While everyone's looking at Bush's approval ratings, I find it more interesting to look at his disapproval ratings. I think politicians are not elected these days so much as others are defeated. The latest Newsweek poll has Bush at 50% approval which is not great but not fatal. At this point in their respective first terms, Carter had a 52% approval rating and lost badly, while Clinton had a 47% approval rate and won easily.

If I were Karl Rove, the only part of that poll that would worry me is where 47% "strongly" want to see Bush defeated and I'd want to know how strongly. I get the feeling that what will be different about this election from the others I've lived through is that we will see Democrats become more emotional and fervent than usual. In the 2000 election, I never felt that one single person I spoke with or even heard on the news was that passionate to see Al Gore in the White House. I didn't think the other side cared any more about George W. Bush, but they did care about electing a Republican, if only to end The Clinton Era. In fact, the only real fervor I sensed in that whole contest came from those who wanted to repudiate Bill Clinton.

Clinton's disapproval ratings were no higher than most presidents'. At this point in his first term, it was around 40%. Still, based on nothing more than my own reading of the news and chatting with friends, I got the feeling that the 40% who disapproved of him really, really disapproved of him. Reagan, at various points in his presidency, had a pretty high disapproval rating but the folks who comprised it never seemed to feel that the future of mankind depended on the defeat of Reaganism. Similarly, I never felt Clinton supporters hated Bob Dole or the last George Bush as much as their supporters hated Bill and Hillary. (And in '88, as in 2000, I didn't think anyone was particularly passionate for Dukakis or that Bush, but the latter had people on his side who were adamant about not seeing The Reagan Years end. One might argue that neither Bush got elected on his own positives; that the first coasted on good feelings about Reagan and the second on bad feelings about Clinton.)

As I look over the Democratic contenders, I don't see anyone who looks like they can arouse any significant amount of passion in a positive sense. If it's Kerry-Edwards or Dean-Clark or whatever, most people who fight for them will merely be passionate to defeat Bush-Cheney. Given the way a lot of Democrats (and even some Independents and fringe Republicans) are coming to view Bush not just as a poor president but as someone who's genuinely destroying America, that may be enough.

The other day, I set up an e-mail address for folks to send messages to the great comic book editor, Julius Schwartz, telling him we value him and hope his health improves. You might be interested to know that close to 100 messages appeared in the mailbox before this one arrived…

I am Chief Otumba Adedeji the chairman of Contract advisory board of the Nigeria Department of Petroleum Resources (D.P.R) I am contacting you based on the esteem recommendation from a high ranking officer of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry, This business proposal I wish to intimate you with is of mutual benefit and its success is based on trust, cooperation and a high level of confidentiality. I am seeking your assistance in the Utilization of the sum US$18.5M (Eighteen Million Five Hundred Thousand U.S.Dollars). This fund came about as a result of a contract awarded and executed on behalf of my ministry the department of Petroleum Resources (D.P.R).

…and it went on from there. I was kind of impressed that the e-mail address was only operative for about 36 hours before the Spam Robots found it.

It may lead to an increase in such mail but I'm going to ask you all to spread the e-mail address around the Internet. Post it to newsgroups and on comic-related message boards. Let every comic book reader know that they can get a message to Julius Schwartz by sending it to schwartz@newsfromme.com.

And yes, when I send the packet of messages to Julie, I'm leaving in the letter from Chief Otumba Adedeji. Who knows? The Chief may have had a subscription to Justice League of America.