I didn't think much of Al Gore's appearance tonight on Saturday Night Live but I'll be surprised if it doesn't get monster numbers.  The show's been doing great (ratings-wise) even without the stunt of someone like Gore hosting.  Folks who like Gore probably tuned-in to support him.  Folks who don't like Gore probably tuned-in hoping he'd embarrass himself.  I think that covers everybody in the country.  Gore seemed more at ease than one might have expected.

Of course, he wants to run again someday.  They all want to run again, including the ones who lose with fewer votes than the other guy.  Right now though, he's got to do what the press repeatedly and probably unfairly accused him of doing throughout the last election: Reinvent himself.  So he's just doing whatever seems likely to shake up his image and cause anyone anywhere to say, "Hmm…maybe I was wrong about that guy."  My guess is it'll take a lot more than this, but maybe it's a start.

Anyway, I didn't much enjoy the show…but then, I didn't expect to.  The segment I liked least didn't involve Gore.  It was Robert Smigel's parody of A Charlie Brown Christmas, which I couldn't enjoy because I know how much it would have enraged Charles Schulz.  The piece I thought had the most unrealized potential was the Stuart Smalley interview of Al and Tipper, and I was surprised that Al Franken's character is still hanging in there.  Good for him…but isn't it about time to retire that Phil Hartman voiceover intro?

Pop culture gadabout Bill Sherman (that's the name of his fine weblog) calls my attention to the "other side" in the matter of The Youngbloods not appearing on Johnny Carson's show.  An article about the group can be found here and I'll quote the relevant line…

Although [group leader Jesse Colin] Young at times would get annoyed with record companies that did not promote his albums enough and although he walked out on the Tonight Show when Johnny Carson went back on a promise to let the Youngbloods perform two songs, the singer enjoyed a fairly idyllic life in West Marin.

It's always possible there was a misunderstanding but I find it hard to believe The Tonight Show promised two numbers to a musical act of such limited stardom.  With most performers, even one wasn't guaranteed if the show was running long.  At best, they'd tell an act to rehearse a second song just in case Johnny decided the first had left the audience eager for more.

This story has gotten a small amount of attention in the press — and, come to think of it, that's about all it's worth…

The Australian grunge band The Vines was doing a sound check in advance of a scheduled appearance on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno shortly before the taping was to begin. When things did not go well, the band's lead singer, Craig Nicholls, apparently went crazy, knocking things over and wrecking equipment. When Leno heard, he cancelled their appearance on the show immediately, reports the New York Post, citing a report in the Los Angeles Times.  [link to full report]

What my Compulsion To Add Trivia To Everything can't resist noting is that a similar situation occurred around 1969, back when Johnny Carson was hosting The Tonight Show.  A rock group called The Youngbloods had been booked, almost as an experiment to see if acts of that sort could draw in younger viewers.  (One book on Carson ascribes this incident to The Young Rascals, which was a completely different group.  But the best sources say it was The Youngbloods.)

During sound check, the story goes, the performers became abusive towards Johnny's musical director and booth director.  Carson caught a little of the proceedings on the monitor in his office, marched down to the stage and told the group, "Wipe your noses and go home."  I'm not sure if the reference to their noses was because they were acting like babies or ingesting drugs.  Either way, that group never appeared and the industry buzz about the incident did much to make what probably would have been a brief career anyway even briefer.

It was a long time before another rock act graced Johnny's stage.  When one finally did, it was very well behaved.

William Saletan, a writer I usually admire, presents a surprising defense of Trent Lott.  I don't buy most of his argument but there are a few good points in there, and I'm inclined to think a bit less unfavorably of Lott than I did before reading it.  Just a bit.  Here's the link.

And, hey, Kissinger as chair of the 9/11 investigating committee didn't last long, did it?  Given the choice of quitting or disclosing his business interests, he went for the bucks and the secrecy.  Who, apart from everyone, would have imagined such a thing?

My amigo, Sergio Aragonés, recently received another award for his cartooning skill.  (I think he was getting worried…it had been almost two weeks since his last one.)  This one was in Mexico and here's a website that has an online video of the ceremony.  It's in Spanish and the audio isn't great.  But there it is.

A friend of mine who works at Marvel writes, "People who are upset that Marvel is imposing a controversial, adult storyline on an old character are missing the point of this new Rawhide Kid series.  If they're going to be upset, they should be upset that Marvel has decided, 'We don't know what to do with this old strip so let's turn it into a parody.'  The big idea here was not to make the character gay but just to make him a joke."

Two men have been found guilty of making off with funds from the brief shining light of Internet businesses known as Stan Lee Media, and face at least four years in prison.  Read all about it.

It's kind of fun watching all the role reversal in the Trent Lott matter: Republicans, who two weeks ago embraced him as a vital mover and shaker of their party, want him gone.  Democrats, who stand for everything he's against (and vice-versa), see him as — in the phrase of Joshua Micah Marshall — "the gift that keeps on giving" and want him to stay.  The thing I find fascinating is based on my belief that most public political figures are basically dishonest and pander to whatever faction they believe will come through with money and support in the immediate future.  I think most of them say plenty of things that are appallingly disingenuous and/or reveal unpleasant aspects of their personal morality.  Certainly, as is now coming out, Lott has been saying such things for decades.  Usually, they pass unnoticed but every so often, the Quote Fairy comes along and arbitrarily decrees that the nation make an issue of one unfortunate remark.  Then, everyone seizes upon it to advance their interests.  Will Lott stay or will he go?  It was probably quite candid of Paul Begala, yesterday on Crossfire, to say that as an American, he thought the man should be out but, as a partisan Democrat, he wanted him there to run against.  That's the kind of moral dilemma that drives American politics, and the choice that will aid your party invariably wins out.  My guess is the Republicans' need to be rid of him will ultimately trump the Democrats' desire to retain him as their Boogeyman.  But that's just a guess…

I've been posting a lot here lately but now must turn my attention to a mess of deadlines.  So, barring those late-breaking news stories, don't expect to see much that's new here for a few days.  But rest assured you'll be in my heart and mind…

About 30% of the hits this site receives each day come to us via search engines — about half from Google, another chunk from Yahoo! and the rest from the rest.  You might be interested in what folks were searching for that brought them here.  This is the top 20 for the past week…and except for that last search term, it's fairly typical…

• nude scenes
• mel blanc
• garfield and friends
• sam kinison
• rod hull
• jack kirby
• soupy sales
• how to make a comic book business
• nude movie scenes
• lorenzo music
• povonline
• mark evanier
• paul winchell
• bob kane
• nude actresses
• beatles
• free stuff in las vegas
• famous nude scenes
• warner bros
• milton berle's penis

"Nude scenes" has been at the top of the list every week since I put up the one article I have here on the subject.  This means that an awful lot of web surfers have been very disappointed to arrive here and find a lot of stuff about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and almost nothing about nude scenes.  Still, it's a good lesson on how to increase Internet traffic.  And if the ongoing restoration of Mad World ever turns up racy footage of Milton Berle and Ethel Merman, I'll be able to appease most of my visitors at the same time.

That handsome gent is Joe Sinnott, one of the most-admired comic book artists of the last half-century.  Joe is a dear friend and a very nice, classy guy who is currently semi-retired.  When he was working, a lot of folks called him the best inker in the business — meaning that others would draw the comic in pencil and then he'd go in with a pen, brush and India Ink to trace, interpret and otherwise finish their work.  He made poor pencilers look good and good pencilers look better and you're probably wondering where I got that photo of him as a teen-ager.  Well, I tweaked it a bit in Adobe Photoshop but I got it off an eBay listing where someone is auctioning off Joe's 1947 high school yearbook.  There's a curio for his many fans.

The Smoking Gun (a wonderful website, indeed) has posted the platform statement for Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential bid — the one Trent Lott praised.  Have a look.  And then go over and read Paul Krugman's latest.

A fine writer-friend named Peter David recently became a father again.  He and his wife Kathleen named their new daughter Caroline after a friend of ours named Carol Kalish who died way too young.  Realizing that some folks who recently came to comics might not know who Carol Kalish was, Peter has written a fine article recalling this fine lady.

An attractive and serious magazine called Comic Art has just debuted, with great features on Frank King, Noel Sickles, Gary Panter, Daniel Clowes and many other important folks of the art form.  I'll probably write something for an upcoming issue but I'd be recommending this classy publication even if they hadn't asked.  R.C. Harvey's piece on Sickles and his artistic relationship with Milton Caniff is, all by itself, worth the nine bucks to a serious student of comic strip illustration, and there's plenty more beyond that.  Find out more over at the magazine's website, www.comicartmagazine.com.  Better still, order a subscription.  I'd like to see this thing come out more often than quarterly.

CNN fixed the Stan Lee Superman/Spider-Man gaffe about 90 minutes after it was posted.  (By the way: What I was posted was not me retyping what they posted.  It was a screen capture.)

Stan did okay on the show, floating nicely above a rather silly argument about a rather silly publicity stunt.  I have the feeling dealers are going to order a ton of this comic…and get stuck with most of them.

In the meantime, a lawsuit that Stan's former partner, Peter Paul, filed against Bill and Hillary Clinton has been dismissed on the grounds that you can't demand justice when you, yourself, are a fugitive from it.  Here's a link to a news story about this.

If you want proof of how good a host Bill Maher is, just catch the Politically Incorrect clone, Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn, that's currently getting a trial run on Comedy Central.  It's the same show but the four panelists are all stand-up comedians and Quinn fires topics at them, presuming they have the material with which to respond.  Granted, the show is just starting up, but it wasn't this awkward Maher's first week.  He got his guests talking to one another, and going for more than the fast one-liner.

I've usually liked Colin Quinn, and would prefer a half-hour of him just bitching to the camera.  He's funny, and I always get the feeling he really believes what he's saying and isn't just groping for a joke.  That has not been the case with most of what he's extracted thus far from his guests…but I suspect there's a good show in there somewhere.  Hope they find it before their two weeks are up.

Breaking news: Stan Lee is on CNN's Crossfire this evening to discuss the Rawhide Kid learning to ride side-saddle.  But that's not the big scoop.  Here's the guest list as it's currently posted on the CNN website…

My God, that Stan Lee created everything!

Two of the funniest comedians I've ever worked with are currently touring in a variety revue entitled, "A Tribute to Ed Sullivan."  John Byner (left) was on Mr. Sullivan's show many-a-time, often doing a hilarious impression of the host which, one assumes, is seen to full advantage in this current venture.  Pete Barbutti (right) holds the world's record for the most appearances by a stand-up comic on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.  I've seen both gents live in the last few years and laughed my not-inconsiderable derriere off.  The show also features the lovely Annie Gaybis (Mrs. Byner), singer Anna Maria Alberghetti, The Amazing Platters, and a couple of other acts, including a trained dog.

I can't find a website listing the entire schedule but they seem to be all over Southern California the first month of 2003 — in Orange County on January 12, in Thousand Oaks on January 15, in Glendora on January 19, in San Diego on January 24, and in Palm Springs on January 25.  There are probably other gigs but these are all I could find with a fast Google search.  I'm going to try to make it to one of these.

Michael Kinsley has an article today about one of those topics that particularly interests me — plea bargaining and what it does to our justice system.  This is one of those "wrongs" that is so wrong — that will require so much correction and apology — that it's easier to just pretend it doesn't exist.  There are also people out there who seem to have an odd love of the Death Penalty, and don't want to have that venerable pastime tainted by the suggestion that maybe the wrong people sometimes get executed.  (I had an ex-friend who used to turn magenta at the suggestion that anyone on Death Row didn't deserve to be tortured and then killed in the most painful manner, then tortured again.  And if you pointed out to him that punishing the wrong guy for a crime means that the real wrongdoer goes completely unpunished, my ex-friend would refuse to hear you…because that minor detail did too much damage to what he fervently wished to believe.  If you suggested that courts ought to only convict people who are really guilty, he'd accuse you of coddling criminals and being "soft on crime.")

Anyway, read Kinsley.  However you feel about the Death Penalty and the justice system in general, this is an anomaly that isn't going away.  As DNA testing proves the innocence of more and more convicts — including many coerced into confession — the elephant in the living room will get bigger and bigger and bigger.  And a certain segment of the population will strain harder to say, in the immortal words of Mr. James Durante, "What elephant?"

In comics, we do a lot of work with other folks' creations, taking over their books and characters or just doing work clearly inspired by others.  If you have the slightest sensitivity to the notion that you're poaching on someone else's creativity — and, sadly, some writers and artists either don't, or don't care — it raises issues.  Over in his column at Comic Book Resources, my pal Steven Grant deals with some of this in this week's installment.  I agree with his views and, if anything, feel they don't go far enough.

Correction: The version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas running on StarZ is the live-action one with Jim Carrey.  You don't want to watch that.

Do you receive a lot of e-mailed photos of weird things from friends?  Then you might want to take the Hoax Photo Test.

I'm going to bitch again about the problems that network scheduling creates for those of us who record TV shows via TiVo.  (This also applies, though not as severely, to folks who employ one of those primitive, Paleolithic-era "video cassette recorders.")  How long is The Tonight Show with Jay Leno?  No, it's not an hour.  TiVo says it's 1 hour and 2 minutes long.  It runs from 11:35 PM to 12:37 AM.  How long is Late Night With Conan O'Brien?  Says TiVo, it's 59 minutes.  It airs from 12:37 AM to 1:36 AM.

Now, even these numbers are about fifteen seconds off but let's ignore that.  When I record both shows via TiVo's automatic selection, all is right with the world…that is, as long as I don't wish to record a show on another station that starts at 1:30 AM or even 1:35.  I wish to do this tonight so what I had to do was to cancel my one-touch recording for Conan, then do a manual recording from 12:40 to 1:30, with the "start" time padded by three minutes.  I'll lose the last six minutes of the show, but that's unavoidable and acceptable, since it'll just be commercials and thanking Bruce Springsteen.  Still, in a world where most video recorders work in five minute increments, why can't TV be programmed that way?

Even better would be if everything started on the half-hour but I guess the local stations will never give up the extra minutes of ad revenue they score by having the late night shows start at 11:35.  Years ago, I heard an NBC exec say he was going to push to have The Tonight Show run from 11:35 to 12:45, followed by Late Night from 12:45 to 2:00 AM, with Later and other programming to follow on the half-hour.  I'd be curious to know if that was ever seriously discussed.