A veteran is appalled at Bush's swaggering "Bring 'em on" and at the way his administration is treating servicemen. Here's the article.

Here's the weather forecast for San Diego this coming week. It basically says we're looking at partly cloudy conditions with areas of fog in the morning and at night. Highs 75 to 85 with a slight cooling trend kicking in (maybe) on Saturday. Lows 55 to 65 throughout. Here are a couple of tips…

If you're looking for a hotel at this late date, try Travelaxe. This is a piece of free software you download from their website. You tell it what city you want to visit and give it the dates and it then searches a dozen or so online travel agents and finds you all sorts of deals. The first time you use it, you'll see the advantage because it will show you wide discrepancies between what different agencies can do for you. Usually, the prices it ferrets out are cheaper than if you book through the hotel itself. This is a wonderful service to consult at any time, though it's probably most effective at times when a city isn't jammed and the travel agents are afraid of getting stuck with unsold rooms. Still, it may help you find something in San Diego. And if you fiddle with it, there's even a way to get Travelaxe to display its list of hotels in geographic distance from a given location.

Three or four blocks north of the convention (depending on how you count) there's a very large, well-stocked Ralph's Market. It's open 24 hours at the corner of G Street and 1st, and it's a great place to buy snacks, beverages, Tampax, Pringles, toothpaste, sandwiches or whatever you need. Every time I've gone into it in the evening, it seems like half the convention is wandering around in there. In fact, last year I actually found myself in a business discussion next to the frozen foods.

Parking at the convention stinks but there's an excellent shuttle bus system which is explained on this page of the con website. In fact, the whole con website is full of valuable info, including ways to get to the con that you probably didn't think of.

I have some other tips over on this page. But if you're new to conventions and in need of an introduction, I refer you to Thomas Reed, who's an old hand at these things. Over on his website, you can download an excellent, all-inclusive guide to attending a comic book or science-fiction convention, including travel tips and a lot of common sense advice.

Lastly, I'll be a nag about this and suggest you consult my list of the convention events I'm hosting. Most of them are shaping up to be great program items…and not at all because I'm moderating. (It's kind of the other way around. I claim the best events to host.) The Seduction of the Innocent panel on Thursday at 1:00 should be an amazing view of the book, Dr. Fredric Wertham and the Senate subcommittee investigation of comic books. We have rare video footage of the hearings and an interview that Dr. Wertham gave in 1966 which has never been seen anywhere since then. Al Feldstein, who was the man behind EC's horror and crime comics will be joining us to discuss the book and the footage — and even he hasn't seen some of the tape I've come across.

The Jack Kirby Tribute Panel (Friday at 11:30) will have some surprises you won't want to miss. So will the Quick Draw Panel later that day at 2:30. And the Cartoon Voice Panel (Saturday at 4:00) is going to be one of the largest gatherings ever of the top performers in the art of animation voicing.

And I should make special mention of the panel I'm hosting just before it — on Saturday at 3:00. Ray Bradbury, Forrest Ackerman and Julius Schwartz have collectively logged about 230 years participating in the world of science fiction and fantasy. Julie co-published the very first science fiction fanzine ever and its first issue featured the first index anyone had ever compiled of science fiction motion pictures. This list was compiled by Mr. Ackerman in 1932. Later, Julie became an agent and in 1941 sold Bradbury's first professional story. Last year, a packed house loved hearing just Ray and Julie reminisce. This year — with Ackerman added in — should be 50% better.

You can also consult the convention website and here you'll find a list of all the panels, including the ones I'm not moderating. But you'll only want to attend those when I'm not doing one.

I haven't caught Stan Lee's new animated series Stripperella yet. But like you, I've heard this report that a former stripper in Florida is claiming she came up with the idea and pitched it to Stan while giving him a lap dance in a local club about a year ago.

I know Stan pretty well, I think. The idea that he would go to a strip joint in Florida and get a lap dance strikes me as more incredible than anything he ever put in a comic book. Besides, what man ever really listens to an attractive woman while she's taking off her clothes?

This whole thing with Bush's State of the Union address and the bogus uranium story is amazing. I've tried to follow all the different scenarios and not a one of them makes a lick of sense. I think Democrats are being disingenuous to claim that the now-discredited info was a major reason for going to war in Iraq. But I also think the Republicans are being disingenuous to insist that because the head of the C.I.A. has taken the blame, the president is off the hook and the story is over. I don't know about you but I find the prospect that Bush knowingly lied less scary than the notion that he could actually believe such a serious report when so many people around him knew for months it was at least dubious, if not outright untrue.

I've never bought the notion that "I didn't know" was an acceptable excuse for the President of the United States, especially when it involves something as serious as Americans being sent off to fight and die. I didn't buy it when Lyndon Johnson told us the Pentagon had phonied up reports to him; didn't buy it when Richard Nixon said all the unethical deeds were committed by overzealous underlings without his knowledge; didn't buy it when Ronald Reagan and the previous President Bush claimed to be "out of the loop" on the whole Iran-Contra affair, etc. Maybe I'd have bought it if they'd fired and/or prosecuted the people who did all those criminal or foolish things behind the presidential back…but they never do, because those people really did not do anything they didn't want done, and might say so if they were cut loose. Is Bush about to sack George Tenet for allowing the Oval Office to believe and disseminate a discredited report? No, according to the New York Times, "President Bush said today that he retained confidence in Mr. Tenet and that he considered the matter closed."

I never thought the Clinton underlings who went out and repeated the "he did not have sex with that woman" denials really believed them. I doubt I'm going to believe the Bush backers who will now say "It was wholly Tenet's fault" really believe it, either. The name of the game here is not to get at anything resembling the truth. It's to give your supporters something to say so they don't look too stupid defending you.

Here's a long but interesting piece by Congressman Ron Paul, who believes the current "conservative" movement is uncommitted to shrinking the size of government and protecting personal liberties. I don't agree with everything the Congressman says but I agree with a lot of it, even if I don't think he's ever going to get his way. (Thanks for calling my attention to this piece, Fred Rupnow.)

Herb Trimpe is a lovely man who drew for Marvel for years, primarily on The Hulk. I would like to direct you to four pieces relating to him. This link goes to Herb's own website, which doesn't have all that much up yet but is worth a visit. This link goes to a recent interview, which is very interesting once it gets going, especially his comments on the Hulk movie. This link goes to an article that Herb wrote for The New York Times about how his career in comics ended due to apparent ageism…

And this link is the real find, though it has nothing to do with the Hulk. Proving himself a greater super-hero than any he drew, Herb pitched in after the 9/11 tragedies and worked at Ground Zero for the Red Cross. I heard him speak of this over dinner last year and was fascinated and moved, and you'll understand why when you read this piece. Even the non-comics folks who come here should check it out.

Our long national nightmare is over. Jerry Beck has the details.

In the time it took me to post the preceding message, the information became false again. Time for a new slogan…

"CBS…if you don't like the news, just wait a minute. It will change."

What a difference twelve hours makes. Yesterday on the CBS News Website, the headline was "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False."  Today, it's "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was Dubious." Check over there a little later and see if it's undeniably true yet.

This afternoon, as they often do, all three local Los Angeles TV stations preempted their regular newscasts to cover a high-to-medium-speed chase that wove its way through Southland highways and byways. The situation in Iraq and Africa, the hurricane about to destroy Yucatan, the Congressional battle over funding for AIDS research…none of that was as important as a bunch of cop cars following a guy around for more than two hours. And like a jerk, I got caught. Started watching and just couldn't turn it off until it reached its conclusion.

I'm not sure what fascinates us about these things. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that our television is usually so plotted and predictable, and even the so-called "reality" shows are scripted in certain ways, pre-taped and edited. Watching a chase, we're actually watching reality. It's also interesting to wonder about the guy in the fleeing vehicle: What's going through his mind? He has eight police cars following him and a half-dozen helicopters overhead. Does he really think he's going to get away? I suppose a lot of people watch because they think they might see a bloody crash.

I have one other reason for watching these things: I'm fascinated by coverage, and by how badly a lot of professional, highly-paid newsfolks are at ad-libbing. Admittedly, they sometimes have to fill a lot of air time — around two hours, today — without much to say about it. But you'd think that with one of these chases occurring in town every month or two, someone would have figured out more than about five things to say about them. (Today, the biggie was to explain that the Highway Patrol often stops fugitives with spike-strips, but that this chase was under the jurisdiction of the L.A.P.D., and they don't use spike-strips. I think I heard that about four hundred times.) All during it, you can almost hear the folks in the control booth squirming over the fact that they thought they were cutting to ten minutes of exciting live footage and now it's going on two hours without commercials. But of course, they can't ignore it or go back to the normal broadcast because the competing stations are covering it, and everyone will just switch over to them to see the conclusion.

I also love the fact that we're watching someone fleeing from the police (which is a crime), running stop signs and traffic lights (ditto), driving recklessly (ditto) and sometimes causing accidents and endangering lives (big crime). And all this time they're referring to him as a "suspect." We once had one of these guys firing a gun at the cops and the newsguy actually said, "The suspect is shooting at the policemen." It reminds me of that great cartoon Charlie Rodriguez once drew for the National Lampoon. It had one man shooting another on live TV from about three inches away…and superimposed over the gunman was the label, "Alleged assassin."

Jack Shafer proposes an important journalistic reform.

This is about the time every year I start to fantasize that they'll announce the Comic-Con in San Diego is being postponed for two weeks. Everything and everyone in my life revolves around getting this or that done "before the con" and you start to look at everything on your To Do List in terms of, "Can this wait until after the con?" My list is pretty long, they're not likely to delay the con, and yesterday's power outage made things worse…so posting here will be light for the next week or so. Forgive me. If you have nothing better to do, just poke around. There's gotta be stuff here you haven't read.

The full schedule of events for the convention is up, by the way. You might think you don't need to consult it since you'll be going to all my panels. But there are a few moments when I'm not running some great, fascinating event…so take a look over there and figure out what you want to do with that time.

I'm not putting up the Campbell's Cream of Mushroom right now because I will be posting for the next week. Just not as often as I like. Normal content should resume after I get back from S.D.

Back on! Yay!

And while I'm at it, I thought I'd see if I could post via an even less sophisticated connection. I am currently typing on a Targus collapsible keyboard which has been uncollapsed and connected to my little Jornada 540 handheld palmtop into which I have inserted a Targus flashcard modem which is then connected to the telephone line and a very slow dial-up connection. This is probably how they connected to the Internet in Ben Franklin's day. Which reminds me: The way things are going here, I may have to get a kite and wait for a thunderstorm to see electricity around here again.

This message is kind of a test. The electricity is out for about ten blocks around me, rendering my desktop computer and cable modem about as useful as Nigerian yellowcake uranium. So I'm on the laptop and a dial-up connection and I thought I'd see what it felt like to post to my weblog this way. It feels rather prehistoric — about on a par with pounding laundry on a rock by the river to wash it. But if you're reading this, it works.