The Los Angeles Times poll on the California recall says that the removal of Gray Davis is favored by 50% (boot him) to 47% (keep him). Since the margin of error on this poll is plus or minus three points, it's a statistical tie. On the second half of the poll, they have Bustamante at 30%, Schwarzenegger at 25% and McClintock at 18%. Here's the whole thing.

Meanwhile, the Stanford University/Knowledge Networks Survey has the recall winning 62% to 38%, Schwarzenegger at 40%, Bustamante at 28% and McClintock at 8%. This poll (here are the details) has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 points.

Meanwhile, another poll (the one local station KABC is using) has Davis being dumped by 62% and kept by 37%, Schwarzenegger at 39%, Bustamante at 29% and McClintock at 16%. This one is plus or minus 3.7% and here's the full thing.

And the Field Poll has the recall passing 55% to 40%, Bustamante at 30%, Schwarzengger at 25% and McClintock at 13%. Margin of error: 4.5 points. Here's that one.

So which one is right? No one knows, but if you cruise the political discussion boards, the answer's simple: The one that says that what you want to have happen is likely to happen.

Only two things interest me about these totals. One is that their wide variance ought to remind us how approximate polls are. If two people do the same math problem and come up with two different answers, the logical reaction is that at least one of them is wrong. But we often believe polls in spite of that.

Secondly: The Field Poll says that if McClintock drops out, almost all his votes will go to Arnold. If McClintock is really 32 points behind him (as per the second of the above surveys), then he might as well. If he's seven points behind him, he probably won't. So one of these polls, suspect as its accuracy may be, could influence the election. That's above and beyond the fact that polls have a certain self-fulfilling tendency, energizing this or that group to turn out, donate or stay home.

My pal Buzz Dixon just sent me a link to the online version of the cover story in the current Esquire. It's called "The Falling Man," it's by Tom Junod, and it's about the attempts to identify a certain victim at the World Trade Center who was caught in one haunting photograph. The article is also about what that photograph symbolizes and about our own complex feelings for the people who died that day and in that way.

Here is a link to the article but I want to warn you: It's a long piece and after you read it, you'll probably be in a very odd mood…not necessarily good or bad but odd. As I am at this moment. Part of me wants to move past the horror of what was done to so many people that day. And part of me doesn't. The "move on" part will inevitably win because it has to, because grief is such a non-constructive human condition and to triumph over it is constructive.

But every so often, you can't help but pause and remember. And shiver.

Here's David Corn on how little has been done in the cause of "homeland security."

What I find interesting about this issue is that, apart from a few broadside assurances from folks like Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft, I don't see any rebuttal to this point of view. It's one of those topics where if you confront a Bush supporter with it, they kind of change the subject, cough, attack the messenger and wave the flag for victory in Iraq.

Seriously, I'd love to be convinced this is an erroneous viewpoint. If anyone out there comes across an article not clearly by an administration flack that says we're doing enough to secure chemical plants, nuclear facilities, airports, etc., please send me the link so I can post it.

This article in The Philadelphia Daily News asks some simple but largely-ignored questions about what occurred in this country on 9/11/01 and in its aftermath. I think a few of these questions probably have easy, non-controversial answers and to think that they don't is to descend into the crazier conspiracy theories. But I think some of them are good questions, deserving of better responses than we've gotten from the current administration or from the media. And I think we'd all be better off if all of them were answered in full, even the screwier ones. (Thanks to Jim Keegan for the pointer.)

Here is a website devoted to the nearly 3000 people who perished on 9/11/01. If nothing else, you might want to just scroll through the list of names to remember just how many human beings that is.

The cover of just about every monster magazine ever published except for Famous Monsters of Filmland can be viewed here.

Many of the covers for Famous Monsters of Filmland can be found here.

The covers for Life Magazine can be viewed here.

The covers for a great many issues of TV Guide are over here.

The covers for Time Magazine can be viewed here.

Did you like those little Bazooka Joe comic strips that come wrapped around Bazooka Bubble Gum? Then this is the website for you.

Did you like Wacky Packages, those little stickers that came with gum and parodied well-known products? Then this is the website for you.

Did you like Garbage Pail Kids, those cards depicting gross monster kids, many of whom were drawn by the great John Pound? Then this is the website for you.

Do you like trading cards with pictures of monsters on them? Then this is the website for you.

Over on Slate, Jack Shafer raises an issue that has interested me: How much of our current reporting, especially about Iraq, 9/11 and the Saudis, is based not just on anonymous sources but on anonymous sources of extremely dubious merit.

And also on Slate, Daniel Gross notes some of the economic predictions made in the aftermath of 9/11 that have proven faulty.

Tab Hunter comes out of the closet for the nineteenth time.

David Plotz itemizes a number of popular misconceptions about 9/11.

A lovely, talented man died this morning in his native Texas. Larry Hovis was one of those people who could do anything: Sing, dance, write, act, produce. He was also an artist and handyman. When I knew him back in the seventies, his hands were like sandpaper from the work he was doing with wood and metal in a home workshop.

Larry was born February 20, 1936 in Wapito, Washington but he grew up in Texas and always considered it his home. At age seven, he and his sister had a "kid act" singing and dancing on local radio and at state fairs. When he got too old for that, he put in several years in a vocal group (including an appearance on the TV show, Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts) and went on to a fruitful career in musical theater, mostly in and around Texas, while he went to school. Soon after he nailed down a degree in Philosophy at the University of Houston, he was "discovered" by Capitol Records, recorded a few songs for them, then moved to New York. There, he appeared in The Billy Barnes Revue and in a short-lived flop — a revue called From A to Z starring Hermione Gingold and featuring sketches by Woody Allen. That was in 1960. By 1963, Larry had relocated to Los Angeles where he landed the recurring role (two episodes) of Gilly Walker on The Andy Griffith Show. This in turn led to a recurring role in the spin-off show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and then a tour of duty on Hogan's Heroes as the hapless Sgt. Andrew Carter.

When Hogan's Heroes went off, Larry didn't miss a beat, moving over to become a regular on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. During this time, he also began to write for variety shows and other comedians, and to delve into the producing of game shows. For most of the seventies, he bounced around between several careers — writing, producing game shows (Liar's Club, for one) and doing guest spots on TV shows. Whenever he could, he also got back into musical theater. I saw him give a wonderful performance as the TV crusader, Melvin P. Thorpe, in a touring company of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

In 1989, Larry was hired to produce a TV show called Totally Hidden Video for the then-new Fox network. It was supposed to be a TV show where unsuspecting people were caught in pranks but a small scandal erupted. The claim was that the camera was not "totally hidden" and that some of the "victims" were actors who were paid to pretend they were caught. I had lost touch with Larry by then so I never heard his side of it but a mutual friend told me that Larry had "taken the fall" for others. Disgusted by the whole experience, the friend said, he had decided to leave television and move back to Texas. There, he wrote, performed in and directed plays, and taught Theatre at Texas State University in San Marcos.

I didn't know Larry that well but we worked on a few projects that never went anywhere, and I could tell he was a very bright man, and just as nice as he came across on TV. I remember that a friend of his was then struggling to hold onto a disc jockey job and had called to ask if Larry had any joke books that could help raise the humor level of the broadcasts. Larry sat down and spent a whole weekend writing fresh (and very funny) material for his friend and just told him, "Send me a few bucks if you get renewed." On the Liar's Club game show, Larry was both the producer and one of four celebrity panelists. The panelists had to give funny "bluff" answers to questions, all of which Larry wrote, and he made a point of never saving the best jokes for himself. He was a fine, generous human being and I'm sorry to hear there's one less of those in the world today.

Six weeks after the great Richie Rich and Casper artist passed away, The New York Times notices!

Fred Kaplan on how 9/11 handed G.W. Bush a historic opportunity…and how he squandered it.

You may want to hold off ordering that DVD of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Several of the DVD-buff message boards are reporting things like what they're saying over at DVDTalk…

Monty Python fans have yet another reason to fret. We've received numerous reports of problems with Universal Studios Home Video's DVD release for Monty Python's The Meaning of Life: 2-Disc Collector's Edition. Apparently there are some compression issues which effect 2 out of every 5 consecutive frames, this results in a shaky or blurry image on some DVD Players (not all).

In other words, it may or may not play well on your machine. Stay tuned for more details, and thanks to Kevin Boury for calling this to my attention.

John Cleese says that the members of Monty Python are presently too busy to do anything together. And the big castle that was seen in Monty Python and the Holy Grail has become a big tourist attraction.

Also: The DVD of The Meaning of Life came out recently but I don't have it yet. It's loaded with special features including several deleted scenes, an intro by Mr. Idle, an audio commentary by Mssrs. Jones and Gilliam, trailers, outtakes, a "Making of…" documentary, etc. Even if it didn't have all that extra stuff, I'd buy one. You can buy one from Amazon by clicking here.