If I were in New York on Sunday, I'd probably brave the crush and attend "Broadway on Broadway," a free concert being performed in Times Square starting at 11:30 AM. Almost every musical playing on Broadway (and a few about to open) sends over a couple of performers to do a number from their show, and they're sometimes quite wonderful. Here's a list of the tentative line-up.

All of the announcements say that the concert will be taped and chopped down to an hour for broadcast on NBC4 New York on Tuesday, September 9 at 7:00 PM. This should mean that thanks to my satellite dish, I'll be able to pick it up. But so far, no one has told TiVo about this event. It still thinks Extra is airing at that time, followed by Access Hollywood. I may have to settle for watching (but not hearing) via this link to a webcam that's pointed at the stage.

One man was killed and ten other folks were injured this morning when something went amiss on Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster. It's sad, it's shocking, it's awful and you just know Disney execs are convening, even as you read this, to discuss how much it's going to cost them in lawsuits and bad p.r. The park has a pretty good track record for safety (though I believe there was one previous accident on this particular ride) and they'll probably take steps to make it even better.

Nevertheless, they ain't getting me on one of them things. I don't mind a gentle Haunted Mansion or Pirates of the Caribbean but the whole concept of a roller coaster strikes me as masochism of the first order. A roller coaster, to me, is where you pay money to have them do something to you that, if it happened on a bus, you'd sue the company.

The rhetoric of roller coasters always reminded me of recreational drugs. I used to have acquaintances who'd offer me stuff and say, "Here, try this. It'll make you feel like your entire stomach is leaking out of your ears." My reply was usually along the lines of, "You know…I think I just might be able to live my entire life without experiencing that." Other friends (and even some of the same ones) would try to get me to go on roller coasters by saying, "On the way you feel like your head is inflating and on the way down, it's like someone stuck a pin in it." The descriptions always made me wonder what they'd say if they were trying to convince me it would be unpleasant.

I'm sure there's some kind of joy there for some, but I'm afraid it eludes me. I also don't understand why apparently rational human beings get pierced or tattooed or jump out of airplanes or eat squid, smoke cigarettes or go to Pauly Shore movies.

Here's David Greenberg in the Columbia Journalism Review on how reporters cover presidential lying.

The script I'm working on will be twenty minutes late because that's how long I spent this evening browsing the Esquire Magazine Cover Gallery, an online display of every cover in that publication's robust history. Of special note are the ones from the late sixties when George Lois was in charge and coming up with incredible designs and cover concepts. (The insides of the magazine were pretty good back then, too. But it was often worth buying just for what Lois put on the front of it.) The cover I picked out to display above left from October, 1969 wasn't one of the cleverer ones but it was by the wonderful Marie Severin and it adorned the issue that contained a wonderful feature on Marvel Comics, back when the whole world hadn't heard of the X-Men. My favorite was probably the one above right from May, 1968 with Nixon in make-up for that year's presidential run. But I also liked March, 1969 (fake paparazzi photos of Howard Hughes) and April, 1968 (Muhammad Ali as St. Sebastian). And look around. A lot of them are wonderful.

Alan Simpson gives us a rather reasonable view of gay rights. At least, it's reasonable for a former Republican senator.

Coming up in the Doonesbury comic strip is a sequence about masturbation that some newspapers are choosing not to carry. In this interview over on Salon, Garry Trudeau talks about such controversies. And if you don't subscribe to Salon or don't feel like sitting through its advertising to read the last two paragraphs of this short piece, Trudeau says some of the same things over at Daryl Cagle's comic strip weblog.

Thousands of imitations of MAD Magazine have come and gone: Sick, Nuts, Up Your Nose, Blast, National Review, Crazy, etc. The longest running, which is still hanging in there, is Cracked. It started in 1958 and still manages to push out an issue once in a while. Here's a link to the magazine's website. Here's a link to a gallery that claims it will eventually display every single cover from the magazine. And here's a link to an article about the current publisher and the state of his magazine. I admire the endurance and at times, even the contents.

It's a little out of date but here's a video link to Lewis Black's commentary on the New York blackout. RealPlayer required and all that.

I always enjoy a visit to Jim Hill Media, a fun site devoted to cartoons — primarily Disney but others, as well. You'll find a lot to read there but I'd like to recommend…

• A report on the recent ASIFA tribute to the late 'n' great Daws Butler. I was unable to make it to the evening, which was also a kick-off party for a new book of scripts that Daws wrote for his acting workshops. (You can order the book over here on Joe Bev's Daws Butler website, by the way.)
• My old pal Jim Korkis was once commissioned to author a history of the American comic book. It didn't get printed then so he's serializing it here. Here's a link to the first part.
• Jim Korkis also authored this piece about Walt Disney and his appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
• The story of how Splash Mountain at Disneyland came to be.

Since the site uses frames, some of those links may not work in all browsers. But if you go to the site's front page, you should be able to find those articles (and much more you'll enjoy) from there.

One fun thing about watching Game Show Network's "Black and White Overnight" programming block is that you often get a chunk of history as it was happening. Last night, GSN ran a What's My Line? from September of 1959 and one of the guests was Branch Rickey, a major behind-the-scenes figure in the history of baseball. Rickey had a brief career as a player but he moved into coaching and also got a law degree. Eventually, he ran a number of baseball teams, including the Brooklyn Dodgers where he helped bust the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson. In 1959, he was engaged in an attempt to start a third major league — the Continental League, which was to compete alongside the American and National Leagues. On the What's My Line?, we heard Bennett Cerf ask him, "How about that third league?" and Rickey replied, "Inevitable as tomorrow morning." He had then filled five of the new league's projected eight-team roster. Deals were in place to launch teams in New York, Houston, Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Toronto, and Rickey said he had other cities lining up, and that the Continental League would play a full schedule in 1961.

It didn't. Though the Continental League filled out its list with projected teams in Honolulu, Atlanta and Dallas, there were battles with the already-established leagues, battles in Congress and lawsuits. A compromise was finally worked out whereby the National and American Leagues would each expand by two teams, some of them in cities that had been slated to have Continental League squads. (The planned New York team, which had already signed to play in Shea Stadium, became the Mets.) That was the end of the Continental League, and Branch Rickey died a few years later. In 1967, he was elected to the Hall of Fame, largely because of his work in bringing black players into the ranks of the major league.

Today, in lieu of buying him a present, I note the birthday of my longtime pal, Scott Shaw! I believe I met Scott at Jack Kirby's home in 1970 and, yes, he even signed his name with the exclamation point back then. Our meeting came at a time when Jack and his wife Roz had an unfortunate habit: If anyone called up and said, "I want to meet Jack Kirby," they got an invite. A few folks rather grotesquely abused the Kirby hospitality. (Once, an acquaintance asked if he could bring some of his friends along, Roz said yes, and the guy not only showed up with 20 people but expected to stay the entire day and be served lunch.) But it was worth it for Jack and Roz when, as often happened, they got to host and encourage a young writer or artist with talent, and then see that person blossom into a full-fledged professional. Such a blossoming occurred with Scott who, though he has rarely ventured near the kind of comics that Kirby made famous, certainly learned something from proximity to Jack and managed to apply it. To celebrate Scott Shaw Day, why not drop by his Oddball Comics site, read some recent listings and post a message on the message board? And if you really want to commemorate the day, take a gorilla to lunch.

Later this week, instead of buying Sergio Aragonés a present, I'll note his birthday, as well.

I'm watching the gubernatorial debate at the moment and a couple of things leap out at me. All five candidates (Bustamante, Huffington, McClintock, Ueberroth and Camejo) agree that there is massive fraud in areas like Medicare and unemployment but cannot say where it is or how to root it out. Also, all five are in favor of medicinal marijuana. Otherwise, I haven't heard a lot of consensus.

Peter Ueberroth, who had impressed me before the debate, has lost me by steering almost every question to two premises: Californians have to expect less, and we have to give businesses enormous financial incentives to relocate here. That sure sounds to me like, "Let's cut education to fund corporate welfare." Arianna Huffington seems more interested in promoting her status as a columnist and Bush-basher than in becoming governor — probably a wise move, given where her future will lie. Tom McClintock is running right down the conservative wishlist while Peter Camejo is handling the liberal one. Cruz Bustamante sounds more like a lieutenant governor than a governor.

But then so did Gray Davis in his part of the debate. As I've said here, I don't think much of him as a governor but I think less of the recall effort. It also bothers me that a lot of his unpopularity may flow, not from anything he's done in office but because he's bad on television. If you just listened to his words, he didn't make a bad case for himself but he just looked awkward and failed to project the image of a guy on top of things. At one point, he made an odd left turn and got onto the notion that people need to vote against the recall to stop the Republican Conspiracy to Steal Elections. I guess surveys are telling him that issue resonates with voters but it would be nice if he could effectively defend his own record.

I don't know if he's going to survive or get tossed out on his ass. But I have an awful feeling that whatever happens, it's not going to be because of how good or bad a governor he's been.

Two quotes with one kind of rhetoric…

While there are many reasons young Muslims sacrifice their lives — including the honor and money bestowed onto their families after their death — it is the martyr's afterlife that captures the imagination. […] Candidates for martyrdom were told the first drop of blood shed by a martyr washes away their sins. They could select 70 of their nearest and dearest to enter Heaven; and they would have at their disposal 72 houris, the beautiful virgins of paradise, Hassan recounted in the New Yorker.

Paul Hill, the unrepentant anti-abortion activist who murdered a doctor and bodyguard at a Florida abortion clinic, was scheduled to die by chemical injection on Wednesday in an execution he said would make him a martyr. […] "The sooner I am executed … the sooner I am going to heaven," Hill said in a jailhouse interview. "I expect a great reward in heaven. I am looking forward to glory. I don't feel remorse."

As I once wrote about such folks: If there is an afterlife, I have a feeling they're in for a big surprise when they get there. And if there isn't an afterlife, they're in for a bigger surprise.

The 2003 Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon racked up $60.5 million in nationwide pledges for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. That's a record but I wonder how often any sort of major telethon doesn't set a record. I worked on one major telethon about twenty years ago (not Jerry's) and the attitude of its operators was that at its end, they were going to announce a total of at least 10% more than the previous year, regardless of what was actually pledged. The explanation was that a telethon will ultimately collect somewhere between 75% and 105% of its pledge amounts so there was plenty of wiggle room there. No one could ever prove they hadn't received that many in pledges. The producer could have run out to a pay phone, phoned in a couple of huge fake pledges and put them over the top. And it wouldn't be his problem if the money for them never actually came in.

But Jerry's $60.5 million is probably legit and as such, it's an admirable piece of change, made all the more amazing when you consider that the telecast had some clearance problems this year. In many large cities it was either not on or was relegated to some UHF station way up the dial and out in the sticks. Many of the cities that did carry it didn't air all 21.5 hours, cutting away for large chunks to air a baseball game or even normal programming. At one point, though it was being "carried" by three different stations I get on my satellite dish, none of them had it on.

I watched intermittently, fascinated at the sometimes-odd array of acts that popped in, many of them people you just don't see on television anymore. Julius LaRosa sang a couple of numbers. So did Steve Lawrence, Charo, Jack Jones and Nancy Sinatra. At one point, I tuned in and caught Fyvush Finkel doing a rousing (i.e., loud) rendition of "L'Chaim" from Fiddler on the Roof and later, Charlie Callas made funny faces as he lip-synched the "I Remember It Well" number from the movie, Gigi. I like some of those performers, and I was delighted to see some of the better stars of Vegas, like Bob Anderson and Lance Burton. Still, I suspect if you're under 40 and not a frequent visitor to Las Vegas, you could watch for a pretty long stretch without seeing anyone you'd ever heard of besides Jer. At one point, I found myself wondering to a friend on the phone why the line-up included so few stars you'd ever see in contemporary (as opposed to rerun) television programming. The best I could surmise was that this is Jerry's show business: The stars he knows, the ones who come out of his tradition of entertainment. And since Jerry is the show, the show is Jerry.

He's awfully good at it, especially when he and/or his guests get off the topic of what a wonderful thing Jerry Lewis is doing for His Kids. For some reason, this year I found myself enjoying the little moments when a corporate executive would come out, awkwardly plug his company and proudly present Jerry with a check for some vast amount of moola. Mr. Lewis has been criticized for trampling on the dignity of folks who have afflictions and/or are confined to wheelchairs. If you browse the 'net, you'll find a number of angry essays by such people, bemoaning that he transforms them into objects of pity. I'm sure some feel that way, and of course they have every right to feel how they feel. But I also think Jerry is pretty good at making some folks feel pretty special. Those who were brought on as "victims" of Muscular Dystrophy clearly loved their moments before the camera and the feeling that they were doing something positive to help themselves, and others who are afflicted. Heck, even some of those corporate sponsors and performers who don't often get in front of a TV camera seemed to feel vital and important. I guess I used to watch the Jerry Lewis Telethon because I liked the off-beat performers and the sheer campy ego excesses that came between them. Now I think I watch because I like the off-beat performers and the fact that all those people on the screen, however effectual or self-possessed they may be, may actually be doing something to help other human beings.

We don't get nearly enough of that in this world. In fact, I'm not sure you can get nearly enough of that in this world.