Here's William Saletan with one logical way to look at the speech Bush gave last night. Another is that it might be simpler just to give half of the 87 billion directly to Halliburton.

I'm not sure I even know how to describe the Degree Confluence Project. Its goal is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. You'll understand better what that means if you visit the site. (Don't thank me for this one. Thank David Feldman, King of All Imponderables. I'm just passing it along.)

And as Marv Wolfman reminds me, there's a cover gallery online for every issue of MAD Magazine. It's right over here.

Jason Bergman sends me this link to a gallery of covers for Vogue Magazine. Great stuff.

He also sends this link, which will sort the above gallery to just show you the Vogue covers by Carl Erickson, one of our great stylists. Greater stuff.

And he sends this link to a complete gallery of covers for Playboy Magazine. Revisit that year when the women really looked good. (Hint: You were 14 at the time.)

Due to good weather, all of the announced events for Sergio Aragonés Day had to be cancelled. Instead, a small group of Sergio's friends went to his home where he cooked us a big paella. Above is a picture of said paella. You can find out more about this exquisite feast by going over to Sergio's website.

Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead, writes to say I've misunderstood his position…

You make a basic error in assuming that I (Bill Griffith) believe the absolutist argument put forth by Griffy (my inner ranter) that only a "solo" cartoonist is a "real" cartoonist. Once again, I'm inclined to believe that only the Lithuanians know what I'm doing.

I'm sorry if I missed the distinction, Bill. But you can kind of understand how that happens.

I am happy to report a full schedule of activities planned for today as the entire world celebrates the birthday of my friend and partner, Sergio Aragonés. It kicks off at 10 AM with the Annual Sergio Aragonés Day Parade down Hollywood Boulevard, which has been renamed Sergio Aragonés Boulevard for the occasion. There will be floats depicting scenes from his marginal cartoons for MAD Magazine, giant helium-filled balloons of the characters from the Groo comic book, and 27 marching bands with a combined membership of 741 musicians, every one of whom has grown a genuine handlebar mustache for the event. That includes the women.

At Noon, the governor of the great state of California, whoever it is today, will cut the ribbon that opens the new Sergio Aragonés Library in Griffith Park which contains over 27,000 books without a single word in any of them and drawings in all the margins. At 2 PM is the kick-off as the top two football teams in the land compete in the Sergio Bowl, and I'm happy to say that Señor Aragonés himself will be passing through the crowd throughout the game, signing autographs and selling chili dogs, and that the half-time entertainment will include the usual Arnold Schwarzenegger Egg Toss and the George W. Bush Dog-Dropping competition. At 6 PM, we all gather for the traditional Aragonés Feast, the highlight of which will be a life-size replica of Sergio made completely out of three-bean salad. I don't know how they do it, either. At 8 PM, ABC airs a new Peanuts special in honor of Sergio Aragonés Day, "How Fast Do You Draw, Charlie Brown?" Immediately following that, Johnny Carson comes out of retirement to host the Sergio Gala at Hollywood Bowl, which will include performances by Barbra Streisand, the two surviving Beatles, Madonna (performing her socko Lesbian Kiss act), Luciano Pavarotti, some guy doing card tricks, and Jennifer Lopez and her All-Husband Orchestra. At the conclusion of the event, attendees will exchange their Sergio Day gifts as they enjoy the stupendous Sergio Aragonés fireworks display. Last year, it took 5,000 pounds of explosives just to form the image of his jaw in the sky.

Forgive me if I sound enthused but I've been waiting all year for Sergio Aragonés Day. Ever since last June when the stores put up their Sergio Aragonés Day displays and the Salvation Army set up Sergio Aragonés impersonators to ring bells for donations in every shopping mall, I've counted the minutes. It's so exciting that next year, I may skip this crap and just buy the guy a present.

Mike Guerrero (who has his own weblog here) writes, in reference to my previous item…

I think what bothers me is the fact that if you work on a comic book, there's usually a box of credits that list who did what, i.e. pencils, inks, and even breakdowns and finishes. Articles in newspapers will usually list others who contributed along with the actual writer. But a comic strip usually has just one name, leading one to believe that one person thought up the idea for the strip, drew it, inked it, and lettered it. I don't really care if the strip was a team effort or not, but there is a slight case of misrepresentation going on here. Probably none of those artists mentioned would deny that they don't have help creating their strips. But they probably don't make too much noise about it, either. When the strip says "Mother Goose and Grimm by Mike Peters" shouldn't it be true? Or should there be an "executive producer" credit instead?

I'm all for honesty, but let's remember that media credits are not always complete or (sometimes) even accurate. I've written for comedians who went on The Tonight Show and did jokes I thought of, and no one stopped to say, "Oh, by the way, Mark Evanier thought of that." Major motion pictures often have many uncredited writers. On a TV show, five producers and eight story editors may have pitched in to rewrite the script and all contributed material that got on the air…but the "Written by" credit went to the first writer. Almost all forms have some tradition of ghost writing or of the credited individual receiving some unbilled help. When I see something like "Mother Goose and Grimm by Mike Peters," I don't presume it means that every word and brushstroke is Mike's work. I think it means that Mike produces the strip, and writes and draws most of it. "Executive producer" seems less accurate to me because it implies he's not writing or drawing it, and he is. For the most part.

That said, there have been strips thay were so totally the work of a ghost that it has seemed wrong to me, if not as a matter of historical record then because it looked like some guy was getting screwed. In some cases though, it hasn't seemed to bother the anonymous guy and I can think of at least one instance when he actually preferred it that way. His attitude was that he was drawing in someone else's style and subordinating his viewpoint, and he didn't want his name associated with the work in question. He only wanted his name on work that he felt was truly his.

For what it's worth, I've ghost-written for a few newspaper strips, more for fun (and to help out a friend in need) than as a job. It didn't bother me that my name was absent. Strips are cramped for space without having to cram in extra names, and for some, full credits would mean four or five names. (Supposedly at one point, the Napoleon and Uncle Elby strip was being written by two people and drawn by six others.) Since not all contributions are equal, true accuracy would require that you not just list names and that you differentiate those who did a lot from a little. For example, Milton Caniff created Steve Canyon and always wrote it. He'd have Frank Engli (and later, Shel Dorf) letter the strip, then someone like Dick Rockwell would pencil the whole strip and ink everything but the main characters. Then Caniff would ink main characters, touch up the rest of the strip and sometimes redo whole panels. I'm not sure how you'd explain all that in tiny credits and also make clear that Caniff was the auteur.

Lastly, even comic book credits do not always tell the whole story about who did what. Background inkers are frequently not in that credit box, and many artists occasionally have an uncredited friend pitch in and help them meet a deadline. Back before I did the business an enormous favor (for which I have never been properly thanked) and gave up drawing, I sometimes did anonymous art assists on comics. When I look back on those stories today, I'm not entirely sure what I did. Still, I'm pretty sure none of it was significant enough to warrant diminishing the credit of the guy who did the vast majority of the job.

The current storyline in the Zippy the Pinhead newspaper strip has its cartoonist, Bill Griffith, lecturing Zippy on the art of cartooning. (Here's a link to a page where Griffith displays recent efforts and offers the originals for sale.) In the 9/4 strip, Griffith proclaims, "Any cartoonist who doesn't do th' final drawing for his or her comics is no cartoonist at all in my book." And in the 9/5 one, which may not be posted yet, he takes off after cartoonists who use assistants and don't even do their own lettering.

So according to Bill Griffith, Elzie Segar was no cartoonist at all. Neither were (or are) Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Frank Miller, Alex Raymond, Mort Walker, Hal Foster, Floyd Gottfredson, Garry Trudeau, Dik Browne, Chester Gould, Roy Crane, Hank Ketcham, George McManus, Leonard Starr, Johnny Hart, Chic Young, Mike Peters, Harvey Kurtzman, Steve Ditko, Burne Hogarth, Neal Adams, Roy Crane and…well, you get the idea. Some of those folks did their work solo for a time, especially early on, but usually chose to employ letterers and/or assistants. Even Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragonés and Jack Davis have had others do their lettering, and Carl Barks sometimes had his wife inking backgrounds and doing lettering.

In one panel, Griffith asks, "Did an assistant drip the paint for Jackson Pollack?" Apparently not, but Rembrandt, Rubens and Michelangelo had help with some rather acclaimed work. I guess Rembrandt was no painter at all.

Actually, I think it's great when a cartoonist does his or her work without help if they're able. Some aren't, especially some of the folks who did daily strips back in the day when they involved a lot more labor than a strip like Griffith's does today. Some aren't very good at lettering and/or figure that the time they save by having someone else letter or ink backgrounds is time they can put into writing or the main drawing. Some simply find that they don't work well in isolation and that working with someone else spurs their creativity. Milton Caniff needed a letterer because he was left-handed and if he lettered his strip himself, he was always smudging the wet ink.

Griffith's sentiments cause me to wonder if he is aware how many great cartoonists haven't done it all alone, or if he really thinks none of those men produced good comic art.

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.