Bryan Dawkins writes with what seems to be the solution to the query that Steve Thompson had earlier. It's Breakfast With Les and Bess, a 1985 TV-Movie starring Dick Van Dyke and Cloris Leachman. Mystery solved!

Once upon a time — back when new artists rarely turned up in the pages of Marvel Comics — a kid named "Barry Smith" abruptly drew an issue of X-Men. And not too well, I might add — though in hindsight, it looks a lot better today than it did then. He was a Kirby imitator at first. Then as Marvel gave him other gigs, he began branching out from Kirby, attempting designs and fascinating perspectives and styles of storytelling. In record time, he seems to have found an individual artistic identity and developed a style so original and fully-formed that others would soon be imitating him. This occurred not long after he'd gone from being Barry Smith to being Barry Windsor-Smith, and you can see some of his recent and splendid work at his website. Do this now.

Clear your damned voice mail so I can leave you a message!

Frank Rich explains why the fervor over things like The Matrix is distracting us from important matters.

Occasionally in comic-type magazines but also in publications and advertising of all sorts, Mitch O'Connell has distinguished himself. He has a fresh-yet-retro, clean-but-complicated style. Matter of fact, he has many styles. You can see some of them over at his website. Enjoy the purty pictures.

Weblog software such as I use to maintain this site works like this: As I post items, the software builds a page of that day's postings arranged from latest to earliest. It also builds the front page which displays the last few days of postings.

Previously, the front page displayed a whole week's worth of postings but I've been posting a lot lately. Seven days of messages made for a long page…too long for folks who are on slow connections. So now the front page only displays four days of postings. To read earlier news items, click on the right arrow at the bottom of the page.

If that doesn't make sense, don't worry. All you have to know is that when you come here, read down and keep clicking the right arrows until you come to messages you've read before.

As you've probably heard, Democrats in the Senate are filibustering some of Bush's nominees to the Judiciary. If you're interested in the history of this tactic, and in what it might mean if Republicans reconfigure the rules to eliminate it as an option, John W. Dean explains.

I probably should write a little more about Tom Terrific. A lot of the cartoon shows of my youth do not, to put it simply, hold up too well. I can sometimes retain affection for them in the same way that I remember the enjoyment of Franco-America canned spaghetti when I was ten. That is not necessarily faint praise for a cartoon because obviously, its primary purpose is to please children. If it achieves that in its time and bores the hell out of us as adults, it is not unsuccessful: It did what it was supposed to do. There are a number of cartoons — all the Warner Brothers and Jay Ward productions, most of the MGM and Disney, the early Hanna-Barbera offerings, a few others — which amused me then and which amuse me now. With some others — like most Walter Lantz productions, Terrytoons, and Mister Magoo, to name a few — well, they just aren't as good as they used to be. I can respect the obvious skill involved in some of them and occasionally laugh at a bit, but to me as an adult, the appeal is largely nostalgic. The later Popeye cartoons, for example, are like Franco-American spaghetti…only not as funny.

Which brings me to Tom Terrific. I was five when the Captain Kangaroo program debuted on CBS. (Years later when I worked with Bob Keeshan on a project, I told him I vividly recalled watching the first episode. He said he was flattered but I got the idea that he was just being polite; that everyone in my age bracket tells him that, and that he doesn't believe it. In my case, I really do.) I liked the Captain and Mr. Green Jeans and Dancing Bear but only up to a point. Years later when I watched some old kinescopes, the only part of the show that held my interest was the daily installment of Tom Terrific.

There was a certain simplicity to the show that was irresistible, though I have to wonder if it wouldn't be highly resistible today; whether the absence of backgrounds and color and real music wouldn't cause a lot of kids to feel that someone had slipped them a cartoon made in the back room of the 99-Cent Store. But everything else about it would work today. Tom was a corny but lovable hero, utterly devoted to his dog, the lethargic Mighty Manfred. The bad guys were unbelievably sinister and/or looney, and there was a fine sense of Silly over the entire enterprise. The cartoons were also bang-bang short and their rapid pace made a nice contrast to Captain Kangaroo's gentle, slow-paced delivery. Best of all, the cartoons had a unique voice and style — maybe the first Terrytoons that ever did. I wish whoever owns them now would release them. If I understand, they're controlled by Viacom, which has leased the home video rights to Universal, which has no intention of doing anything with them. If and when they do, maybe you'll see what I saw in Tom Terrific.

This may just be a matter of awkward wording but this item on The Comics Journal's fine weblog, ¡Journalista!, makes it sound like Doonesbury's move to Slate is why the formerly-free archives of the strip now cost money to access. I believe there are two separate business relationships here. Trudeau seems to have made a deal with UClick My Comics Page to add his library to their service. This is a subscription deal where you pay to have your favorite comic strips e-mailed to you or available for online browsing. That Trudeau has also made a deal to move what was formerly the rest of www.doonesbury.com over to Slate is, as I understand it, a whole 'nother deal. (I mention this because weblogs complaining about this seem to have read it as Microsoft now charging to read old Doonesbury strips online. I don't think Bill Gates gets a cut on that…except, of course, to the extent he gets a cut on everything any of us does involving a computer.)

Remember a day or two ago, when there were reports that the Department of Homeland Security had improperly been used in an attempt to track down those AWOL Texas legislators? Well, if that tale interests you, Joshua Micah Marshall has been all over it. And he ain't letting up until he digs up enough to get the mainstream press to judge it a major story — something he helped achieve with Trent Lott's remarks about segregation.

And I don't mean to suggest that this is unfair or wrong of Marshall. No matter what public figures do, it doesn't seem to become a scandal until the press is willing to accept it as such, which is why Clinton's Whitewater deal was, and Bush's baseball stadium isn't.

While we're clarifying anecdotes, Steve Thompson writes with a question I am unable to answer…

I recall seeing a TV movie (or taped stage play. Seems like it was on video as opposed to film), possibly made for PBS, in which Dick Van Dyke appeared as a man who had fought in World War II. As he was heading off to war, he lamented that he might die without ever reading the classic works of literature. At the train station, he purchases a copy of Anna Karenina. On the trip, however, he meets other guys and plays cards. He carries the book all through the war. Afterwards, the next time he finds himself in a train station, he remembers but does not have the copy with him so he purchases a second copy, which doesn't get read either. By the time the story takes place, he has a bookcase full of copies of Anna Karenina, a book he's never even read. I don't think this was a Van Dyke and Company sketch but it might have been. The PBS part is strong in my memory, though. Seems like mid-seventies. Do you have a clue what this might have been?

No, I don't. But I'll bet someone reading this does.

Shelly Goldstein, chanteuse and Beatles historian extraordinaire, writes to correct the story I alluded to of John Lennon getting thrown out of a Smothers Brothers performance…

You must check with me on your John Lennon arcana.

At the famous Troubadour incident (during the "Lost Weekend" of Lennon's life in late '73 til early '75 when he and Yoko separated and he lived with May Pang) Lennon was never "thrown out" of the place. He was drinking his beverage of choice at the time, Brandy Alexanders, which tasted like milkshakes to him, but packed a dangerous punch. It was a big important show for the brothers and by time they hit the stage, Lennon was shitfaced. He was with Pang and, I believe Harry Nilsson, no slouch himself in the carousing depatment.

Lennon heckled during the show; not to be mean, just because he was so wasted. At one point he went into the women's loo (toilet in 'Murrican) and came out with a kotex pad on his head. These things happen to rock stars on a bender.

The waitress tried to get him to quiet down so the Bros Smos could get through their now chaotic show. Lennon looked shocked at her reprimand and said, "Do you know who I am?"

She replied, "You're an asshole with a Kotex on your head."

Lennon later felt horrible about the whole thing, sent a massive apology to Dick and Tom, which I don't believe was ever accepted. It was a horrible, embarrassing night that Lennon felt awful to have caused. But he was never thrown out.

Well, he should have been. Actually, following our trend here of fact-checking anecdotes — or at least seeing how many different versions there are out there, I just did an Internet search for various permutations of the words, "Lennon," "Troubador," "Smothers" and "Kotex" and found a wide array of reports: Lennon was tossed out, he wasn't tossed out, it happened there, it happened at another restaurant after they left the Troubador…one even said it was a Tampax, not a Kotex. I, of course, believe Shelly. But it's amazing how many different ways this story is told.

Over the years, Paul Terry's cartoon studio produced hundreds of what they called Terrytoons — first for theatrical release and later, after Terry sold out and retired, for television. With the possible exception of Columbia, no animation company of the period managed quite as poor a track record. There were occasional joys to be found in the adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle but you don't exactly see film historians lining up to praise the work; not the way they salute Warner Brothers, Disney or even MGM cartoons.

Maybe the best thing to ever come out of the operation was a TV cartoon produced on the lowest-possible budget. How low was the budget for Tom Terrific, which ran from 1957 to 1959 on the Captain Kangaroo show? Well, the music was done by one guy with an accordion, backgrounds were practically non-existent, and the entire voice cast was a man named Lionel Wilson. He performed the roles of Tom, Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog, mad scientist Isotope Feeny, chief badguy Crabby Appleton and everyone else. It was a pretty good show and obviously, Mr. Wilson was one of the main reasons it was so entertaining. I never crossed paths with him but he appeared on other cartoon shows, including The Mighty Heroes and the recent Courage the Cowardly Dog, and always did fine work. Sad to see his obituary in tomorrow morning's New York Times but it's nice they noticed.

(More info on Tom Terrific, Terrytoons, and the world of animation can be found over at the website of Gene Deitch, the animation producer-director who was running Terrytoons during Tom's era. There's also an amazing treasure trove there for fans of John Lee Hooker. Mr. Deitch has also posted a book he wrote about animation over at this website. It's full of info on his career — before, during and after Terrytoons — including production breakdowns on Tom Terrific.)

It's been a long time since The Smothers Brothers played Los Angeles. How long has it been? Their publicist tells me that Tommy thinks their last L.A. gig was the infamous time at the Troubador when John Lennon got himself thrown out of the place for being too rowdy. That is not likely to occur at their upcoming local appearance but, assuming they're as good as the last time I saw them perform, the audience will still enjoy the evening. Tom and Dick are in that select list of comedians who have been around for years, never failing to make the customers laugh, perhaps being taken a bit for granted since they've been such a part of our lives…and by now, you're probably wondering what upcoming local appearance I'm talking about.

Well, they're playing the Comedy Store up on Sunset from June 3 to June 5 — their first L.A. stand in at least twenty years and a rare opportunity to see two masters at work. When I saw them a few years ago at the Orleans in Las Vegas, I was sitting next to some redneck from the midwest who spent the pre-show moments grumbling that he didn't expect to like these Smothers guys because he'd heard they were left-wing punks. He announced to everyone around that he was only there because the ticket had been comped and that if he didn't like the show, he was going to walk out on it and get back to the crap tables. They won him over almost from the opening number…and at the end, he was among the first up for the standing ovation. Get your reservations now for the Comedy Store and you'll see why.

Augie DeBlieck Jr. does a column on comics over at Comic Book Resources — which is safe to visit now, by the way. They got rid of the most annoying pop-up ad in the history of the Internet. Augie's column is here and he also has a weblog you can reach here. Anyway, Augie writes to me to say…

One minor correction: Computer lettering is largely done with Adobe Illustrator, and not Photoshop. Illustrator is a vector-based graphics program and does a much better job with resizing and moving letters around as need be. (Larry Young at AiT/PlanetLar uses Quark, but that's due to his publishing background. If it works for him, who's to argue?)

The more contentious debate these days isn't between computer and hand-lettering, but between mixed-case and all-caps lettering. Marvel's reasons for adopting it are rather spotty, but they've thrown their lot behind mixed-case completely. The results are mixed, to say the least In a few cases, mixed-case lettering has worked. (Understanding Comics and From Hell come to mind.) But across the board at Marvel, or even DC? Perish the thought.

He's right about the software, and I should add that some PC users report good results with another vector illustration program called Xara-X, which is good for a lot of things. Almost all the graphics you see on this website were built in Xara-X. Augie is also right about the debate between mixed-case and all caps. I don't know why upper-and-lower case lettering looks so wrong on most comic art but it does.