Want to help get Eric Idle's new movie released? As noted, the folks at Warner Brothers presently have no plan to release Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch. Perhaps they'll come up with one if enough of us write letters to…

Mr. Eric Frankel
Warner Brothers Television
4000 Warner Blvd.
Burbank, CA 91522

When you write such letters, the important things are to (a) be polite, (b) not sound like a form letter and (c) suggest that you will purchase or patronize the item and that you believe your friends will, as well. What I usually write is something like…

You are probably buried in letters from people who are eager to spend money on Eric Idle's new film. If you aren't, it's probably because most Eric Idle fans don't know where to write, because there certainly are a lot of us. Anyway, here's another one for the pile.

Will it work? Maybe. Some day they'll wise up and put it out and when they do, you'll be able to tell yourself that your letter was the one that brought Time-Warner to its knees.

As I mentioned here some time ago, the Imperial Palace hotel in Las Vegas is trying something new. In one section of the casino at specified hours, they have Blackjack dealers who are also celebrity impersonators. You can have your money taken from you by Elvis, Madonna or even a Blues Brother. They call them "dealertainers."

Here's an article about this. The thing I think is especially funny is that one of the dealers is playing Ray Charles. It's humiliating enough to be wiped out at the tables. But to be beaten by a blind guy–?

Many hotels also offer a line of slot machines that feature the real Ray Charles and his voice. As I mentioned in that piece, you kinda hope that when it takes your last coin, the machine doesn't start singing, "Hit the road, Jack."

Last Saturday, a local film festival held the world premiere of Eric Idle's The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch. The infamous Monkeyspit gives us a brief I-was-there account.

When I saw the film two years ago, it was close to 75 minutes. The current cut is around 55, which is the preferred length for a possible BBC telecast. What I viewed was very funny with a few weak spots which I presume are now relegated to what filmmakers used to call "the cutting room floor." Now the preferred term is, "We'll include it on the DVD." Either way, I can't imagine the 55-minute version not being a joy.

But most of us will have to imagine or not for a while longer. Apparently, the lovely folks at Warner Brothers still have no plans to release Mr. Idle's film anywhere at any time. Petitions like this one are springing up to convince them that there's a market out here for this funny film. (I don't think online petitions do a huge amount of good. On the other hand, they don't do any harm, either, nor do they require great effort to sign. There's always the chance that if the folks making the decision are really and truly on the fence, something like this could nudge things over to the proper side. Nudge, nudge.)

In the meantime, the illustrious Idle is about to kick off another tour, singing his silly songs all across this great land of ours. This one is called The Greedy Ba$tard Tour and when I hear about a schedule being posted, I'll let you know. I saw him in his last go-round and had a very good time, even during the live, on-stage liver transplant.

I just looked at the column on Salon where they offer up AP news and found the following headlines:

• Cell phone burns Dutch woman's face
• Thai man dies while laughing in sleep
• Schwarzenegger convenes economic summit

I'm not sure which of these things creeps me out the most.

I love my TiVo but I don't love the fact that so many TV networks play fast and loose with start/stop times. I have, of course, a recent example…

This evening, since Leno and Letterman are in repeats, I set my TiVo to record an episode of the old Banacek show off the Hallmark Channel. The episode was scheduled to run from 9:00 to 10:30, which was what TiVo recorded. If the Hallmark folks had actually broadcast the show from 9:00 to 10:30, all would have been swell.

But the start of my recording was the last few minutes of Son of Flubber, which was what was on just before. The Banacek episode didn't commence until around 9:04.

At its close, Mr. Banacek was just about to reveal whodunnit when the recording ended. I'm guessing the show actually finished around 10:35.

This was not a huge loss for me since Dick Van Patten was playing one of the suspects. If Dick Van Patten's in a mid-seventies Universal mystery show, you can just about bet the farm that he's guilty. (And also, I'd seen the episode before and remembered that.) But there had to have been some folks out there who had never seen the show, set a TiVo or VCR for it…and didn't get to find out how it ended. Yes, you can program your TiVo to record a few minutes beyond the scheduled end time but (a) who thinks to do that? And (b) that limits your ability to record another show right afterward on another channel.

I've groused about this before and will probably grouse again in the future. Perhaps if enough of us grouse, TV networks will start airing their shows when they say they're airing them. I don't see how they benefit from the way it is now. The folks who recorded Son of Flubber didn't get the whole thing, either.

Hmm…Quick Comment #2 wasn't so quick. No wonder I'm behind on this assignment.

The Internet is lousy these days with worms and viruses and trojans and things that want to sizzle your cable modem. The folks at Microsoft allowed some features into Windows 2000 and Windows XP that have made life way too easy for those who think it's fun to invade or crash others' computers. If you want to learn a lot about the problems and can deal with some high-tech lingo, visit Steve Gibson's website. For years, Mr. Gibson has been warning about these vulnerabilities and is now politely saying, "I told you so."

Even if you can't understand most of what he posts there, you can use an online service he provides called Shields Up! When you run it, it will attempt to contact your computer and, in effect, break in the way a malicious intruder might. It will alert you to potential weaknesses in your system and possibly send you in search of a good firewall program.

On the 'net these days, you need a good firewall (preferably, a hardware firewall) and a good virus checker. And it's becoming more than a matter of your own safety. If you allow yourself to be vulnerable, you make yourself a menace to both friends and total strangers.

One other point: We should make it a matter of Internet Etiquette that you should not post e-mail addresses. One of the major sources of mailing lists for those who send out spam is addresses posted on websites. They send out "spambots" (robotic scanners) to surf the 'net and record any text that appears to be in the form of an e-mail address. So if you post someone's address, you're setting them up to receive spam and perhaps a worm attack as well. The current Public Enemy #1 in the virus/worm world is a thing called W32.Sobig.F@mm, which harvests e-mail addresses posted on the Internet and then bombards those addresses with infected messages. (For info on W32.Sobig.F@mm, including removal tools, click here.)

It is possible to post an e-mail address in an encoded form so that the spambots cannot read it. But unless you're going to go to the trouble of doing that, you shouldn't post e-mail addresses — yours or anyone else's.

Lastly: We really don't like Spyware, which is a general name for software that you get on your computer — often without knowing about it — that tracks information about you and sends it on to someone. Some free programs you download will quietly put a piece of Spyware on your computer. Sometimes, just going to a website will install it, either as a cookie or a scripted program. However you get these things, they're bad news so you might want to scan your system for Spyware. There are several programs available for free that do this but the two best are Ad-Aware and SpyBot. Neither will catch everything so I run each of them once a week or so.

Back to work…

Tomorrow (Thursday) morning, I'll be a guest on the most excellent radio program of my pal, Paul Harris. I'll be on around 10:30 AM Pacific time, which means 12:30 St. Louis time. You can listen online over at Paul's website. But if you go over there, you'll find RealAudio recordings of past guests on The Paul Harris Radio Show and you'll probably find someone there more interesting to listen to than me. All I'll be doing is talking about my book, Mad Art, which chronicles the splendid illustrators for MAD Magazine. And don't forget to check out Paul's weblog.

As you read political writings and comments, you often come across a sentence that begins, "It is undeniable that…" or "No one would argue that…" or even "It is widely understood that…"

When you come across one of those, there's a 75% chance that the rest of the thought is horseshit.

That's all I wanted to say. Back to the deadline.

And once again, the proprietor of this website finds himself up to eyebrow-level in deadlines. He apologizes to all who've sent e-mail that has remained unanswered in his inbox. And he posts a picture of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, which as we all know is the traditional Internet symbol for "too busy to update website for a while." Mark will be back to normal posting in a day or three with more comments on the silly recall and more of the other odd topics that bring you to this site even though, with the same amount of clicks, you could be looking at something educational, newsworthy and/or pornographic.

I first knew Rick Parker as one of the better letterers in comics. One day, I heard a friend in the business say he wished they'd fire Rick Parker. I asked why. The friend said, "Because he's an incredible cartoonist and he should be drawing, not lettering other folks' work." Shortly after, I saw some Rick Parker artwork and had to agree. You can see some Rick Parker artwork at his website. You'll agree, too.

From tomorrow morning's New York Times, in the "corrections" section…

An editorial on Saturday misstated the projected federal deficit over the next decade. It is $4 trillion or more, not $4 billion.

No comment.

I just received an e-mail message from someone who has this as a "signature" block, meaning that it is automatically appended to every message they send out:

The information contained in this e-mail message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the designated recipients. This e-mail message and/or any attachments thereto may be confidential, legally privileged under one or more statutes, and/or exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the person reading this message is not an intended recipient, they are hereby notified that any review, use, disclosure, dissemination, publication, forwarding or copying of this e-mail message and/or attachments or taking of any action in reliance on the contents therein is strictly prohibited. They are instructed to notify the sender promptly by e-mail or telephone, and to immediately delete the original message and all attachments from their system.

That was at the bottom of the message. Here is the entire text of the message this person sent me…

Really enjoying your reviews of the Dick Van Dyke Show comic books. Keep up the good work.

I am quoting the above just paragraph only to be in violation of the one before. Come and get me, coppers.

…to record The Smoking Gun TV, which debuts this Wednesday on Court TV. I like the website. I like Mo Rocca, who serves as host and lead reporter. I'm guessing I'll like the show.

Over at this website, you can read the statement Gray Davis has submitted for the ballot, arguing as to why he should not be recalled. It pretty much demonstrates why this guy is probably heading for the unemployment line. It's a dreadful statement…

He reminds voters of his years of service as an Army Captain in Vietnam, State Controller, Lieutenant Governor and now as Governor. But voters never doubted that the guy had a lot of experience. No one who thinks he should be recalled is going to say, "Hey, wait a minute! I didn't know the guy had been State Controller!"

He harps on the cost of the recall. That was a great reason not to have one, but it's too late for that argument. We're having one. The money's being spent, whether Davis goes or not. If he was going to bring this up, he should have said something like, "If this succeeds, it could trigger a lot more costly, wasteful recall votes."

He says, "Because there are so many candidates on the ballot, the next governor could be elected with less than 15% of the vote! And voters won't know who the replacement would be when they vote on the recall." That's not a bad point but it would be more effective if he said, "While voters must always have the right to recall elected officials who commit crimes in office, this particular recall procedure is flawed by design. A public official could be removed from office because only 49% of the voters wish to retain him and he could then be replaced by a candidate who gets 10 or 15% of the vote. That's not how Democracy is supposed to work."

Beyond that, the essence of his case is that Republicans have caused a lot of our problems. And while that may be true, it does raise the musical question, "If you haven't been able to prevent the damage in the past, how are you going to be able to repair it in the future? Especially if you survive with only slightly more than half of the electorate that doesn't want to see you tossed out?"

Before I read the statement, I thought that if Davis took an aggressive stance and vowed to track down the Enron-like guys who bilked the state of billions, he might at least be able to reverse the direction of his poll numbers. Now, I'm thinking he's just going to wither away on us.