Oh, my God. I hope you didn't watch — here's the entire, official title — Comedy Central Presents The NY Friars Club Roast of Chevy Chase.  If you did, you saw one of the all-time great train wrecks in television history.  If you didn't and you enjoy feeling ill at ease, it airs again December 6, 7, 14 and 24.  As a piece of entertainment, it's truly amazing — a "comedy roast" that is largely devoid of humor, affection or even big stars.  Steve Martin, Nathan Lane and Martin Short appear via a segment taped elsewhere but otherwise, Mr. Chase is called an untalented, drug-addicted moron by a lot of folks, few of whom have any real connection to him.  Talk about shows that make you wonder how they could have happened.

One assumes Chevy was chosen for the honor because someone figured that superstars would flock to participate.  They didn't.  The Martin/Lane/Short piece looked like a later drop-in engineered by producers who knew they didn't have much of a line-up based on those who actually showed up for the event.  Of all the performers who worked with Chevy on Saturday Night Live, the only ones in attendance were Al Franken, Laraine Newman and roastmaster Paul Shaffer.  Beverly D'Angelo was there from the Vacation movies…but that was about it for Chase co-stars.  Instead, the dais was padded out with comedians who barely knew him…and didn't have anything particularly funny to say about him.  Gilbert Gottfried and Kevin Meaney, who have been known to be hilarious elsewhere, were among the many who apparently performed but were edited from the tape.  Others, like Richard Belzer, were included but obviously had large chunks of their speeches trimmed in the editing room.  Given what stayed in, you have to wonder about the material that couldn't be used.

But the big squirm was seeing Chevy Chase, who seemed to hate every moment of it — and who wouldn't?  A line of strangers and slight friends paraded to the podium to announce that he was a doper, a jerk and a performer in crappy movies…and very little of this was said with the kind of loving twinkle we used to see when Don Rickles told Sinatra his voice was bad.  Past entries in this series (Hugh Hefner, Drew Carey, etc.) featured a lot of character assassination but you got the idea that most of those on the premises really liked the guy they were smearing.  Not here.

What could possibly have been on Chevy Chase's mind when he agreed to this?  He'd been roasted once before at the Friars so he knew the drill.  He must have had an inkling that it wouldn't be an evening of Danny Aykroyd and Goldie Hawn reminiscing about what a kick it was to co-star with him.  Throughout, the roastee sat wearing sunglasses that failed to mask his discomfort, and feigning slight laughter at an occasional line.  He looked for all the world like a man undergoing a painfully slow root canal, sans Novocaine.

Folks have wondered how he could have accepted certain movie scripts and the gig on his short-lived talk show…but at least those can be explained by money.  Someone was shoveling millions of dollars at him.  So why sit for this public stoning?  Given the books and articles that have recently portrayed him in a bad light, you have to guess he either had some terrible, terrible advice that this would help his image…or that it's all true, and he felt the need for some public humiliation as a form of punishment.  Either way, the result is pretty much the same.

And here we are, back home again on the left coast.  Can I mention one last time what a terrific gathering the Mid-Ohio Con is?  My thanks for the invite to its operator, Roger Price, who really knows how to do things right.

There's unpacking to do, e-mail to catch up on, and I'm still operating on Ohio time.  So I'll just confirm that the Garry Trudeau interview is Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and Wednesday night/Thursday morning on Up Close.  Nighty-night.

The gent on the right is my longtime partner, Sergio Aragonés.  The man on the left is Al Feldstein, whose many achievements in the world of comic art were noted here yesterday.  In fairness, I should mention Mr. Feldstein's one moment of utter shame: In 1962, when Sergio wandered up to the MAD offices, he was an out-of-work, needy cartoonist, newly arrived in this country and, so far, unable to make much of a buck selling his pantomime cartoons.  When he left the MAD offices, he was one of The Usual Gang of Idiots, about to begin a streak of appearing in every issue, and becoming one of the world's most honored drawers of silly pictures.  (Well, to be accurate, he missed one issue of MAD since then due to a bad case of flu — but only one.  Even with one miss, it's still an amazing record.)  Feldstein and his associates decided that day in '62 that the man with the mustache had something special to offer the world of humor.  And Sergio's been fooling them ever since.

The photo was taken a few hours ago, during the closing moments of Mid-Ohio Con here in Columbus, Ohio.  As they say, a wonderful time was had by all.  I enjoyed spending time with, among others, Jeff Smith, Dick Ayers, Tony Isabella, Dick Giordano, Paul Ryan, Steve Lieber, Dan Mishkin, Tom Mandrake, Bob Ingersoll, Roger Stern, Thom Zahler, Paul Storrie, Don Simpson, Alan Burnett, and I'm probably leaving out Someone Really Important.  So please forgive me, Someone Really Important.

Oh, I know: Len Wein and Marv Wolfman were here and they specifically asked to be mentioned on this website.  Okay, guys.  Now what?

Anyway, at the risk of repeating what I said yesterday, this is a great con.  If you can make it next year, do so.  I'm certainly going to try to make it.

The line about Steve Marmel quoted in a recent item here was in Fortune, not Forbes, as I wrote when I originally typed it.  As you'll note, I've corrected it.  Also, Andy Ihnatko points out to me that the piece in that magazine wasn't so much a review of Steve as an assertion that "edgier" comics like Marmel and Bill Maher were having trouble getting booked on mainstream TV since 9/11.  That's a little different, but it's still wrong.

Fire alarms aside, everyone is having a wonderful time here at Roger Price's annual Mid-Ohio Con in snow-flocked Columbus, Ohio.  Matter of fact, the snow began falling just as a fire alarm forced the brief evacuation of the hall.  It was, so far, the only complaint about the con and some thought it was fun, seeing all those dealers in their shirt-sleeves, waiting outside for the All Clear.

I'm having a great time seeing friends, moderating panels, and autographing comics that I'd rather forget.  This is, as usual, one of the best-run conventions in the nation…and I've been to enough at the other end of the spectrum to know the difference.

Today, I interviewed Alan Burnett (producer-writer of many Warner Brothers cartoon shows, including Batman: The Animated Series) and, following Alan, Al Feldstein.  The latter Al was the editor and writer — and occasionally, an artist — on the great EC horror, crime and science-fiction comics.  Later, he edited MAD Magazine for 29 years but we were so busy talking about EC, we never got around to that.  He is now retired and doing amazing paintings, many of which we viewed in a slide show he presented.  You can get a nice sampling over at his website, www.alfeldstein.com.

The convention today was mobbed.  Tomorrow, they're expecting a bit less of a turn-out so maybe I'll make it all the way through the dealer's room.

For about two weeks in 1972, newsfolks were enraptured on the topic of a forthcoming book from McGraw-Hill: The Autobiography of Howard Hughes.  The elusive billionaire had long been so maniacal about his privacy that he hadn't been seen or heard in public for decades, and had forfeited at least $100 million because of lawsuits that he could have won, had he just walked into a courtroom and appeared before a judge.  So had Hughes really forsaken his passion for secrecy and dictated his autobiography?

No, said his business representatives, none of whom had even met their employer in person.  Yes, said McGraw-Hill, explaining that one of their authors, Clifford Irving, had developed a friendship with Hughes, persuaded him to tell all, and conducted a hundred hours of in-person interviews.  For a time, the weight of the argument was on the publisher's side: Hughes was so unpredictable that he might not have told his people.  McGraw-Hill had a manuscript that had convinced all who'd read it, plus they had handwritten correspondence from Hughes.  Two of the nation's leading handwriting analysis firms had verified the authenticity of the documents.  One cited the odds on the letters not being Hughes as "a million to one."

But the book turned out to be a sham and publication was canceled.  Irving and his researcher, Richard Suskind, had cobbled together a bogus autobiography via diligent research, a lot of imagination, and the luck to stumble across the then-unpublished memoirs of a former Hughes associate, Noah Dietrich.  The handwriting seemed less explainable but it just turned out that the experts weren't so expert.  Irving had concocted the questioned documents, despite being an amateur to the art of forgery.  (It may interest someone who reads this site, by the way, to know that Irving was the son of a cartoonist.  His father, Jay Irving, did the long-running newspaper strip, Pottsy.)

One of the many factors that exposed the hoax was that Howard Hughes actually broke his long silence.  He still would not appear in public but he agreed to a telephonic interview with several newsmen.  You can click below and hear an MP3 file of about a minute of Hughes denying the existence of an autobiography…

What's interesting about the clip today is not just that it's a rare chance to hear the voice of the colorful Mr. Hughes.  It's that since he died, it's been revealed that he was out-of-sight all those years because he had gone steadily out-of-mind.  He was now spending his life in a hotel room with the windows covered, usually lying naked on a Barcalounger, covering everything he touched with Kleenex in order to ward off imagined germs.  For purposes like the interview, he was capable of occasionally donning what reporter James Phelan called, "a mask of sanity," and being coherent on the phone.  Other times, he lived in near-darkness, allowing his nails and beard to grow to absurd lengths as he fiddled with insignificant paperwork and watched his favorite movies (especially Ice Station Zebra) over and over.  So if you listen to the audio clip, that's what you're hearing: A billionaire who was completely out of touch with reality pretending to be sane in order to denounce a fraud.  Who says there's no honesty in the world anymore?

Congrats to my buddy, stand-up comic Steve Marmel, who did an impressive set on Jay Leno's program last night.  I especially loved the fact that he quoted a recent review he received in Fortune, the magazine that apparently doesn't know any more comedy than it does about the business world.  Its critic, Mark Gunther, wrote, "Don't look for Marmel on The Tonight Show anytime soon."  That was in the May, 2002 issue.  Steve made it before the year was out and he scored big.  Visit his website at www.marmel.com.

Here's why you should always comparison-shop on the Internet.  My new book, Mad Art, is not yet published.  I'm told that, as of yesterday, the final proofs have been okayed and it's perhaps two weeks from coming off the presses.  Right now, you can pre-order it from Amazon.Com for $17.47…

However, this online dealer is currently offering a used copy (!) for $42.39.  I guess that's because it's so rare.

My friend Will Ryan asked that I start doing these again.  So, just to remind all: The "Recommended Reading" section recommends articles that express viewpoints I think are worth a look.  This is not to suggest some of these folks might not be at least partially full of manure. If you don't like something here, complain to Will Ryan.

• The Latest Kissinger Outrage by Christopher Hitchens, Slate
• Every Breath You Take by Paul Krugman, The New York Times
• No More Fanaticism As Usual by Salman Rushdie, The New York Times
• Inspectionitis by William F. Buckley, Jr.
• Disgraced Admiral Now a Super-Spy by Joe Conason, New York Observer
• United We Stand by Robert J. Toth, Wall Street Journal
• The Dukakis Factor by Jim Geraghty, National Review
• How the Pols Stole Christmas by Robert Scheer, Salon
• Low Income Taxpayers: New Meat for the Right by E.J. Dionne, Washington Post

This is just to confuse us: The New York Daily News is reporting — and several other news sources have picked up — the following:

ABC's Ted Koppel has made getting private personalities to open up on "Up Close" look easy.  His latest conquest comes next week when he gets notoriously shy "Doonesbury" cartoonist Garry Trudeau to speak in a two-part interview airing on "Up Close," Dec. 3-4 at 12:05 a.m.  In a candid chat, Trudeau — husband of NBC's "Dateline" anchor Jane Pauley — discusses such topics as last year's terrorist attacks and his portrayal of President Bush as an empty cowboy hat.

Meanwhile, the Yahoo online TV listing (tv.yahoo.com) says that the first part of the Up Close interview of Mr. Trudeau airs Wednesday morning, December 4 with part two following 24 hours later — in other words, the thing runs Dec. 4-5 instead of 3-4.

What we seem to have here is the old TV Guide convention of treating shows that air within a few hours of Midnight as being part of the preceding day.  The Leno and Letterman shows tonight start at 11:35 PM.  The O'Brien and Kilborn shows that start an hour later are actually tomorrow morning and if you set your VCR or TiVo to record Conan or Craig, you have to program tomorrow's date.  But in TV Guide and similar listings, those shows are part of today's listings.  Tomorrow starts around 4:00 AM.

This corruption of the clock probably made sense years ago, when everyone watched TV shows only when they were broadcast, and when most stations went off the air in the wee small hours of the morning.  To most viewers, 1 AM felt like part of the preceding day so why not list it as such?  But most TV channels are now 24/7 and a lot of us are setting recorders that insist on treating a Tuesday morning show as if it airs on Tuesday morning.  Maybe it's time for all the listings to recognize this.

Folks keep writing to ask when we're going to actually set up a site over at www.sergioaragones.com.  Answer: One of these days, but certainly not until next year.  I did, however, update the "coming soon" page.

Others are asking which weblog software I'm using to maintain this page.  Answer: None.  I fiddled with Blogger, Movable Type and a few others and decided that it was easier to just learn HTML and do it manually.  The programs I tried actually took more time than just updating a page and uploading it via FTP.  (If anyone out there wants to learn this stuff, the book I found the most useful was HTML 4 for the World Wide Web by Elizabeth Castro.)

Al Gore didn't fare as well on Leno last night as he did with Letterman two weeks ago.  The segment was rushed and Jay was more argumentative than Dave.  (I know little of Letterman's political views but Leno is not as liberal as the Limbaugh crowd often assumes from his comments on Mr. Bush.  A friend of mine who knows him well says Jay is slightly right of center but ready to slam anyone if he thinks he has a good joke about it.)

I'm skeptical that Mr. Gore can rehabilitate his image with some voters in time to be a contender for 2004.  If we are to believe a recent CBS News/Times poll, he has a 43% disapproval rating and only a 19% approval.  This I suppose means that everyone who didn't vote for him still doesn't like him and that they've been joined by a lot who did but were disappointed by his handling of the recount situation and his subsequent disappearance.  A lot can change before the primaries but don't you get the idea that the former Vice-President is the front-runner only because the Democrats don't seem to have anyone else?

Here's your Thanksgiving present: A link to a website where you can listen to (or better still, download) MP3 versions of several great kids' records, including several of the classic Bozo the Clown albums.  These well-produced records starred the legendary Vance "Pinto" Colvig as the storytelling clown and and are quite delightful.  On another page over there, you can download things like "Gerald McBoing Boing" and "Little Black Sambo," and all for free.  Here's the link.  Happy Turkey Day.

Some time ago, when I was searching for a name to call this thing you're currently browsing, I happened to notice that no one had registered www.comicbookwriter.com.  Seemed like a great name so I grabbed it.  I didn't want to call this site that but I thought, "I'll figure out something that ought to be set up at that address."

Well, I haven't.  It's been sitting empty…and it's still empty, so don't bother going there and looking.  There's just a "coming soon" sign up.  I am now looking for someone who can put that great web address to good use.

I am not looking for suggestions on what someone else should set up there.  Last time I mentioned this, a lot of folks wrote to say it should be a site devoted to creator rights or to the craft of writing comic books or to how novices can break into the business.  Those are all peachy ideas, but I don't have time to design and maintain such a site, and no one else seems interested in doing so.  I am also not looking to make money off this.  I will let someone else take it over for the cost of future licensing payments if they'll do something there that seems beneficial to the field.  Heck, if the concept is good enough, I'll pay those fees.  I just want to see the address put to constructive use.

So does anyone reading this have a good, selfless idea for it?  If so, my e-mailbox awaits.