Polls like this one are saying that if the next presidential election were held today, by a slim margin, registered American voters would vote for an unnamed Democrat over George W. Bush.  This is good news for the Democrats but, given their track record, they'll probably blow it by eventually naming someone.  Then watch their advantage plummet.

It's bothered me for a few days that I erroneously recalled that Fred Allen died while walking his dog.  It probably isn't worth two thoughts, but I was sure I'd read that somewhere.  Turns out, I did.  The producer of What's My Line?, Gil Fates, wrote a book about the history of that show.  In it, he says Allen was walking a dog when he suffered the fatal heart attack.  This is apparently wrong, but at least I can stop wondering why I thought that.

I had great fun writing the Garfield TV cartoons for many years.  Here's your chance to write the Garfield comic strip.  Over at the cat's website, they've installed Garfield's Comic Creator, an online tool that allows you to put together your own Garfield strip.  Mix and match characters and backgrounds and props, and type in your own dialogue.  (And to answer an oft-asked question: No, I don't know when any of the Garfield cartoons will be issued on DVD in this country.  The producer seems to be in a state of perpetual negotiation for this to happen.)

I agree completely with this article by Roger Ebert on the Pledge of Allegiance.

I have to make time to say a few words about a very funny man named George Miller.  I just got two simultaneous e-mails from stand-up comedians telling me that George (one of their own) passed away yesterday, presumably from the leukemia he had been fighting for some time now.  I did not know George well but back when I was hanging around the Comedy Store, I saw him achieve two truly amazing distinctions.  One was that when he went on, all the other comedians would stop and listen.  Even in the back, where they talk incessantly about their own careers, they'd shut up and watch George.  And the other astounding thing was that they all liked him, personally.

His act was low-key and totally his own.  The material was not screamingly funny but it was unique.  He'd start slow and just when people were starting to wonder, "Who is this clown and where's the men's room?" he'd wallop them with a punch-line, not just out of left field but clear outside the stadium, out somewhere in the parking lot.  His pace didn't work all that well on television — though Mr. Letterman loved him and had him on often.  But in a club, when he didn't have to get a laugh every X seconds, he did just fine.

George had been ill for many months, and the rumor mill says that his medical bills were covered by one or more of his more successful friends.  I can believe that because, like I said, everyone liked him.  They liked his act but they liked George more.

I'm swamped with no time to write anything tonight, so here's a little oddment — a 1949 check actually signed by Walt Disney to move $600 into some special account.  I used to know a little something about handwriting analysis but I've forgotten every bit of it.  Still, doesn't that look like the signature of someone who would be highly creative and determined to make his name very famous?  The man almost wrote his name like it was going to be a company trademark.

Just something to think about.  Back to deadlines…

A reader named "Chaz" asks a Thundarr question that others have wondered about…

I noticed when I watched Thundarr that the letters "XAM" kept appearing on walls and old billboards.  In that show's post-Holocaust world, I always figured this was some sort of planted story point and we would someday meet Xam or find out that Xam was their God or something.  Since this never happened, I wonder if maybe the guy who painted the backgrounds was named Max and he just signed his work with his name backwards.  Can you inform me?

I can.  Ruby-Spears Production — the company that brought you Thundarr — sub-contracted a lot of its animation work to a studio in Utah named Ahern-Marshall, or A-M Productions.  At some point, a group of A-M employees broke off and formed their own animation company called "XAM!" (as in, "Ex-Ahern-Marshall").  The new operation also wound up animating a lot of Ruby-Spears shows, and someone there liked to slap the company's name into their output.  It turns up in a lot of other studios' cartoon shows of the eighties, as well.  Years ago, someone sent me a work of amateur fiction based on the premise that "Xam" was an alien Julius Caesar who had conquered the Earth in a scenario that linked together the worlds of Thundarr, G.I. Joe, Dungeons & Dragons, Spider-Man, Punky Brewster, and other disparate cartoon shows in which the author had noticed "XAM" signs.  Quite a crossover.

Also: Someone wrote to ask if there was ever a Thundarr comic book.  Well, sort of.  Western Publishing contracted for the property in 1981.  (You know Western better as Gold Key Comics, but by that time, they were changing the name of their line to Whitman Comics.)  They had at least three issues written and drawn of a standard-sized comic book and also assembled one issue in a small, pocket-sized format with which they were then experimenting.  Alas, Western was having distribution problems at the time.  I'm told they actually published a small run of the pocket-sized issue, but I don't think I've ever seen a copy.  They definitely did not get around to putting the regular-sized books out.  Those were postponed several times and then, when Western learned the show was going off the air, they scrapped the comics altogether.  At least one of the issues was written by John David Warner and drawn by Winslow Mortimer, and they may have done the other issues, as well — and no, I have no idea what became of that material.  A Thundarr newspaper strip was proposed, and Jack Kirby drew up a couple of sample weeks, but that never went anywhere.  Samples of that material were published in an old issue of The Jack Kirby Collector.

Thundarr the Barbarian was an ABC Saturday morning cartoon show I worked on at the beginning of the eighties.  The series was a minor hit and would have run more than two seasons but for Garry Marshall.  At the time, he had the three hottest prime-time shows on ABC — Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy — and he (or maybe Paramount) wanted animated versions of them on Saturday morn.  At that moment, if Marshall had wanted all the ABC executives to dance naked on his front lawn, they would have.  To make room for Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, they cancelled Thundarr.  (The following year, there was a Laverne & Shirley cartoon show and the year after, Mork & Mindy.  None of them did as well as the shows they displaced.)  The 21 episodes enjoyed some minor syndication as part of a package of other short-term shows but basically, Thundarr the Barbarian disappeared into obscurity.

But not forever.  As often seems to happen, a new generation catches on to a show and it comes back from the void in some form.  Thundarr went off in 1982 and just two years later, if you'd suggested that some company issue action figures or other merchandise, you'd have been laughed out of Toy Fair.  It was a dead, forgotten series that wasn't all that popular when it was on the air.  And yet now, twenty years after the last Thundarr was made, action figures are coming out from a company called Toynami, and other goodies may be forthcoming.  Those are the action figures below…

I really can't explain why the show is making a bit of a comeback.  True, they've been rerun on Cartoon Network and more recently on Boomerang, but they didn't attract much attention there; about as much as their earlier syndication did.  And also true, the kids who watched the show when it was originally on are now old enough to have kids of their own…but do youngsters ever watch a show because their parents liked it?  I think the answer may be that it was just a neat idea — a good-looking character with a good name and premise.  Since I only wrote one, I can also say that the scripts were generally pretty strong.  My friend Steve Gerber was the story editor and he really made that end of the production work.

One thing it did not have was good animation.  Alex Toth designed the three central characters, and Jack Kirby designed everything else.  So you had a lot of terrific art that was then processed by the cheapest-possible animation house.  When I see the shows now, I can't believe they put some of that stuff on the air, but they did.  At the time, the "bar" for acceptable animation on TV was a lot lower than it is now.

Still, the show has its fans.  Here's a link to one fan site where you can find news, images, an episode guide, and an interview with the producers, Ken Spears and Joe Ruby.  There's also a petition to try and get Time-Warner — which now owns the show, as they will eventually own everything — to release the old shows on DVD.  Since Time-Warner doesn't even want to put Bugs Bunny out on DVD, I doubt they'll do Thundarr, but odder things have happened.  The mere fact that anyone remembers the show is pretty odd, all by itself.

• Wending Our Weary Way Towards War by Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate
• There's More Than Just U.S. Credibility At Stake In Iraq by Joshua Micah Marshall, The Hill
• Patriotism and the Flag by Bill Moyers, Common Dreams
• Bush Pushes The Big Lie to the Brink by Robert Scheer, Creators Syndicate
• Letter to a European Friend by Rod Dreher, National Review

This coming Sunday, CBS is airing Back to the Batcave, a new TV-Movie about the exploits of Adam West and Burt Ward, back in the days they were playing Batman and Robin on TV.  Here's a link to a CBS website that tells you all about this monumental event.  And don't miss the online trailer.  You really want to know what goes on after the costumes come off.

Over on his website, Jim Hill pulls an article out of his archives about some folks who didn't do voices in Disney films — like, why George Gobel turned down the role of Winnie the Pooh.  Go read it.  (If that link doesn't go forward you to it, look for a piece called "Who's in Pooh and Satchmo's a no-show.")

Surprising the hell out of everyone, CBS is covering all three hours of this year's Tony Awards.  This is the ceremony that, every year, finishes last in the ratings, prompting rumors that the network will dump it.  Instead, they're expanding it.  I don't understand and this article doesn't fully explain it.

Game Show Network's website apparently has the schedule wrong.  The Emmett Kelly episode of What's My Line?, featuring Fred Allen's final appearance, is probably airing Friday night/Saturday morning.  The following episode, featuring the tribute to Mr. Allen, would therefore run Saturday night/Sunday morning.  Thanks to Rick Scheckman for the info.

I've mentioned William Saletan of Slate is probably my favorite current political writer.  Don't always agree with him but I wouldn't trust a political writer (or my own opinions) if I did.  Here's a link to an article he wrote way back in 1999 that was right then, and is even righter now.

Correction: I am informed by several folks (including Alan Light and Kevin S. Butler) that Fred Allen died while out on a walk, not while walking a dog.  Mr. Allen did not like dogs.  If I'd looked it up instead of writing from memory, I'd have known that.  Sorry.

While I'm posting, here's a referral to an article in the New York Times about Jules Feiffer.

Tom Snyder is a broadcaster I have always liked and admired, ever since he was a local newsguy in Los Angeles.  (He was the last anchorman in a major market to work solo; that is, without another person at the desk beside him, alternating stories.)  I wish he had a show but at least he has a website.  And here's a direct link to some thoughts he published about his friend, Robert Blake.  (Thanks to "Tomalhe" for the pointer.)

VIRUS ALERT!  There are many out there, as you know.  What you may not know is that some "spoof" the address of the sender.  Example: Larry, Moe and Curly all know each other.  Larry, being a stooge, gets a virus on his computer.  The virus goes into his computer's address book and gets the e-mail addresses for Moe and Curly.  It then sends Moe a contaminated message that appears to be from Curly.  So be wary of mail, even from friends.  And don't presume that a virus-laden message is really from the person in the "From" line.

In case no one has sent you a link to this mind-reading trick, here's one.

In the past, I've raved about the shows down at the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities.  Each year, they do a quartet of fully-staged musical productions for a mere two dozen performances apiece.  This is possible largely because they work with a pool of experienced directors and (usually) cast actors who have done the shows before.  Their staging year before last of Peter Pan, for instance, was basically the long-touring Cathy Rigby production with Cathy Rigby's understudy in lieu of Cathy Rigby.  Ordinarily, shows done with minimal rehearsal for short runs look like…well, like shows done with minimal rehearsal for short runs.  With a few minor exceptions, theirs do not.

They did a superb job with their most recent offering — a production of Ragtime which I'd urge locals to run see but for the fact that the performance I caught last night was the last one.  It's a shame, if only because I think half the audience would have eagerly purchased tickets to see it again.  I would have.  Apart from slightly less fancier sets (though still impressive for a three-week stint), this was a Broadway-quality mounting.  Here's the L.A. Times review which says much the same thing but goes into greater detail.

Ragtime is a lovely show, especially if you can get past the way several disparate storylines wander until they too-conveniently intersect.  It captures something quite beautiful about the aspect of America that promises the chance for immigrant and minorities to better themselves — and it does not idealize that promise beyond reality or suggest that it will always be honored.  Ragtime music underscores much of it, and other quite lovely music underscores the rest.  Indeed, the music almost never stops, creating a symphony of human interaction.

The next show the Civic Light Opera is staging down there is Smokey Joe's Cafe and I have no reason to expect it won't be another first-rate production.  My friends who live in Los Angeles or the Valley might well go, "Redondo Beach?  I don't want to travel that far."  But it's not as distant as it sounds; about ten minutes south of LAX.  It's a very comfortable theater with good parking — two things I can't say for too many theaters in Southern California.  It's kind of disarming to realize that some of the best theater in Los Angeles isn't in Los Angeles.

Many thanks to those of you who sent birthday greetings for yesterday.  I'll get around to sending individual messages as I get the time.  Also, there are a couple of folks who've sent cash donations to this site lately but when I've written to thank them, those messages have come back as undeliverable.  (The money seems to be good; it's the thank-you note that bounces.)  All of this, please be aware, is appreciated.

That's a Jeep — the kind you can own without helping the terrorists.  The Jeep was an occasional pet of Popeye the Sailor and experts disagree as to whether the vehicle was named after the character or not.  I don't want to get into that.  I just wanted to plug a terrific website that I learned about by visiting Jerry Beck's terrific website.  The one I want to plug is the terrific website run by the Calva Brothers, devoted to the early Popeye cartoons produced by Max Fleischer Studios.  Great stuff there, with more to come.