Spent a lovely last evening at the Hollywood Bowl, listening to one of the great jazz pianists, Chick Corea, who was performing with various "friends" including vibraphonist Gary Burton, saxophonist Michael Brecker and vocalist Flora Purim.  What was on stage was great, though the event was marred a bit (for us) by audience members talking to one another and into cell phones.  The fellow behind us alternated between telling them to quiet down and committing the same sin for which he was scolding others.  I fear home video has gotten folks in the habit of talking while a performance is in progress.  We need to get militant about these people and start hitting them with large blunt objects.

Shelly Goldstein, who knows as much about the Beatles as I do about Mark Evanier, corrects me: Apple Corps was not a charitable foundation, at least not primarily.  It was mainly the boys' own management/recording company with a few charitable aspirations vaguely down the line.  Silly me: I was recalling the version that The Rutles formed and confusing parody with reality.  Which, these days, is easy to do in all walks of life.

Mike Rieder sends in this link to an article that lays out the case for the legality of George W. just charging off to war with Iraq without Congressional approval.  I'm not convinced and neither are a lot of prominent Republicans, even.  But it may all be academic because while G.W.B. may not need a Congressional declaration of that war to act, he also doesn't need the criticism and divisiveness that would come from not obtaining it.

Guy Gilchrist, sometimes in tandem with his brother Brad, produces terrific newspaper strips, including the current version of Nancy.  Here's a link to a great two-part interview with Guy in which he discusses his strips and the problems of both syndication and self-syndication.  And don't miss the second part.

Thanks to the many of you who've recently clicked on our "donate" buttons and sent this site some money.  I'm way behind in sending personal gratitude but will attempt to catch up soon.  Or so I claim.

The deadline is dead. Long live the deadline.

In the meantime: Does George W. Bush have the legal right to plunge us into war with Iraq?  It probably doesn't matter since if he tells the planes to go drop bombs, the planes will go drop bombs and — ta-dah! — we're at war, Constitution or no Constitution.  I happen to feel his administration has unhesitatingly ignored that document in other areas and I don't see why this should be any different.

If however, you're interested in why he probably doesn't have the legal right, here's a link to a simple explanation by law professor Jeff Cooper.  If you come across an equally straightforward counter-argument, let me know so I can post a link to it.

James Traficant's in jail. Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney and Gary Condit all were defeated.  What in God's name is happening to our long and glorious tradition of nutcases in Congress?  Oh, sure, we still have Charlie Rangel and Dana Rohrbacher…and Tom DeLay can always be counted on to say something really, really stupid and outrageous.  But I'm worried.  What if we lose a few more of those guys and C-SPAN starts to look a little less like the Sci-Fi Network?  This is not a good trend, people.  We have to do something about it…and soon.

Were he still with us, Jack Kirby would have been 85 years old today.  He's been gone since '94 and still, not a day goes by when I don't find myself talking about or at least thinking about him.  Those of you who met Jack know that he had an odd way of speaking, forever making unusual connections and leaping from one seemingly-disconnected topic to another…though if you really thought about it for a while, you could usually figure out the segue and see the brilliance of how he got from here to there.  I am still just coming to understand things he said to me in 1971 and being amazed at their wisdom.

Also born on this date was my other great early supporter in the world of comics, Chase Craig.  Chase was the executive editor for Western Publishing Company — for their Dell and later, Gold Key Comics — for several decades.  Before that, he was a wonderful gag man and cartoonist, as I attempted to explain in this obituary from earlier this year.  This is another one of those columns I removed from this site because it's in my new book but I'm putting it back up for a few days, just so you can read about this wonderful man.

In 1968, back when The Beatles were fab, John Lennon and Paul McCartney appeared on The Tonight Show to announce the formation of their new charitable foundation, Apple Corps.  Alas, Johnny Carson was not hosting that evening.  Sportscaster/game show host Joe Garagiola (of all people) was behind the desk from which he did a spectacularly awkward and uninformed job of interviewing John and Paul.

Johnny Carson is finally welcoming Lennon and McCartney onto The Tonight Show but, of course, not in reality.  Currently at the New Frontier casino in Las Vegas, Carson impersonator Jeff Fairchild is starring in "On the Air, Tonight's Show," a live tribute/facsimile of the vintage talk show.  "Johnny's" guests each program include not just the two Beatles but, usually, Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis and Elvis Presley.  They obviously have a hell of a Talent Coordinator.

I am not recommending this show because, first of all, I haven't seen it.  And I'm dubious because it's at the New Frontier, which is like a very large Roach Motel with video poker machines.  It rents out its shabby showroom to a steady stream of low-budget shows, none of which last very long.  If you and I could scrape together the money, we could go in there and put on a show, praying all the while we'd do enough business to interest a real hotel.  But given the track record of shows at the New Frontier, we'd be better off pumping all the cash into those video poker machines.  At least, they pay off once in a while.

Another obituary, this one from the Associated Press…

Sony closed the final chapter of its legendary battle with Victor Co. of Japan to dominate the home video machine market, when it announced Tuesday that it would discontinue its Betamax VCRs.  Sony will stop manufacturing Betamax machines by year's end as the company refocuses its efforts on DVD and other technologies now dominating the market, Sony spokeswoman Shoko Yanagizawa said.

No great surprise there, of course.  We long ago rid ourselves of all emotional attachment to the format, as discussed in this column.  Still, it's sad to say farewell to an old friend…though it isn't a total farewell.  I still have one working Betamax in my main video setup and two more in a closet.  Once the making of home DVDs becomes practical (there's another Format War in progress on that front), we'll copy all our irreplaceable Beta tapes to them and be done with it.

The management of this website agrees completely with this article by Robert Scheer about the prospect of a Major League Baseball strike.  And is outraged if all or most of this article by Paul Krugman about Bush's forestry policy is true.

And now the management of this website is returning to its deadline.

Horror of the Crypt of Fear #12 is a new, small and limited-edition fanzine devoted to the work of the late, great comic book artist, Johnny Craig.  It was originally supposed to be a surprise tribute but, sadly, Craig passed away while its publisher, Bill Leach, was assembling articles, rare photos and drawings by a number of terrific illustrators including Al Feldstein and Marie Severin.  The zine is now a lovely memorial to one of comics' great illustrators and it's available from Bud Plant Comic Art.  (Also included in the book with my permission is the obit I wrote for Craig which is posted here on this site.  I was proud to be a part of it even if Mr. Craig didn't live to see it.)

Here's a link to an article in the Wall Street Journal by Jeffrey Zaslow about guests on late night TV shows.  I think this thing really misses the mark, in part due to faulty examples.  Zaslow's premise is that the folks who book guests on talk shows are unfairly ignoring older, veteran performers.  Here's a quote in case you don't feel like clicking over…

Such is the fate for scores of performers who once entertained America in 10-minute bursts on late-night TV. They're still alive. They still have fans who see their acts in Branson, Mo., or on cruise ships. But today's talk-show bookers often want nothing to do with them.  As David Letterman and Jay Leno fight for the same parade of young actors, the old guard yearns for a return to the couches of their youth.

There's some validity to that but, first of all, the examples are bad ones: Charles Nelson Reilly, Phyllis Diller, Soupy Sales, Buddy Hackett, Yakov Smirnoff and The Amazing Kreskin.  With the possible exception of Hackett, those are all guests that even Carson stopped booking long before he went off the air or never booked in the first place.  A check of the guest database at www.johnnycarson.com shows that though Reilly was a frequent guest with Johnny for years, The Tonight Show last booked him in 1986, and Phyllis Diller in 1985.  Johnny left the air in 1992.

Soupy Sales was never a regular guest on any of the late night shows, even when he had the hottest kid show in the country.  He did afternoon shows once in a while but even that was a long time ago.  And I'll say this delicately but I'll say it: He's not in the kind of health that would allow him to go on one of those shows today and delight his fans.  He did Rosie O'Donnell's program a few months ago and it was a short, uncomfortable interview.

As for the other folks, I suspect that Yakov Smirnoff's absence from the tube has more to do with the fact that the end of the Cold War rendered his act moot.  Mr. Kreskin long ago turned into a parody of himself.  (Carson stopped booking him in 1980.)  Buddy Hackett is turning up regularly with Craig Kilborn on The Late, Late Show.

The article's thesis is almost right.  Talk shows often ignore older guests in favor of young ones.  But the cases cited are mainly folks who burned out long ago and, besides — and here's what Zaslow misses completely — that's how show business works.  Jerry Lewis and Mickey Rooney are not starring in movies and Wayne Newton does not have a record on the charts.  Some performers endure and some do not.

The late night shows often find room for Rodney Dangerfield, Bob Newhart, Don Rickles and Tony Bennett.  They never found much room for Smirnoff and even if they did once, some performers simply cannot sustain careers.  Carson stayed on as long as he did, in part because he'd decide — rightly or wrongly — that certain stars simply had worn out their welcome and it was time to stop inviting them to his couch.  If there was evidence that the mass public still loved Yakov and Kreskin and would flock to see them elsewhere, they might be right that Leno and Letterman are unfairly ignoring them.  But those guys are playing Branson and Laughlin because they can't even fill a room in Vegas.

The talk shows are just booking the folks who seem to be popular.  Maybe they're wrong at times.  Hell, I'm sure they're wrong at times.  But it's nothing new.  That's how the game has always been played.

Ben Varkentine reviews my new book, Comic Books and Other Necessities of Life over on this website.  I always knew Ben was a bright guy but I didn't know he was this smart.

I'm watching the Chabad Telethon as I chip away at that deadline.  They have radio talk show host Dennis Prager hosting this year and he's awful — stiff, humorless and often unprepared.  Does the world really have such a shortage of old Jewish comedians that we had to get stuck with this guy?

A quick note, taking time away from that deadline I should be working on:  A reader of this site named Mary Grider just wrote to help clarify the situation with the death toll of 9/11.  At the moment, it stands at 2,807 in the World Trade Center though, as this article notes, it is expected that this total will be revised downward.  Also killed that day were 125 employees of the Pentagon plus a number of airline employees and passengers plus 10 hijackers.  The count currently stands at 3,031…tragic, of course, but far below the estimates of that day which said "more than 5000" and sometimes even "more than 6000."

As I said here the other day, I think this country had spent way too much effort mourning its dead and not nearly enough solving the problems that were created or revealed on 9/11.

Thank you, Mary.  Back to work…

As mentioned earlier here, TV Land is rerunning my unfavorite episode of The Adventures of Superman early tomorrow (Saturday) morning.  It's probably on at 12:30 AM or 3:30 AM in your area, depending on which time zone you're in or maybe which time zone your cable company thinks it's in.  The episode is "The Mysterious Cube" and the reasons I think it's so silly are spelled out in two columns, the first of which you can read by clicking here.  But read fast.  These columns are only available here until Monday morning.

My TV news channels seem to be filled with New York City fire fighters and policemen who are condemning Bush and mayor Mike Bloomberg for refusing them a pay increase and, some claim, expecting them to put in more hours for the same, pitiful salaries.  I can't wait to see the attempt to portray New York City firemen as greedy and unworthy.  Yeah, America will certainly buy that notion, especially with all the 9/11 retrospectives we'll be watching the next few weeks.  The nerve of those selfish New York fire fighters…

Someone (Leno, I think) once said that Politics was Show Business for ugly people.  Lately, it's become Show Biz for people who are neither pretty nor smart.

I really like Bubbie's Pure Kosher Dill pickles.  My great friend Carolyn Kelly told me about them and I'll admit to having had a bit of skepticism.  I was buying Vlasic pickles or Claussen pickles and settling for adequate.  This seemed to be a matter of realistic expectations.  I mean, how can pickles sold in a jar in the supermarket deli case measure up to real delicatessen pickles?  Well, Bubbie's do.  I don't own stock in the company.  I just like their pickles and felt I oughta recommend them to you, if not for great pickles than as proof that you don't have to settle for adequate.  A lesson for us all.

I have the Deadline From Hell staring me in the kisser so I probably won't be updating this page or answering much e-mail until it's vanquished.  See you again on the other side.