TO: The London Times

Sir, I hope that I am not the only person in the creative arts who feels great disquiet about the proposals outlined by the Home Secretary in the Commons today, to introduce legislation to outlaw what has been described as "incitement to religious hatred" (reports, October 16). Having spent a substantial part of my career parodying religious figures from my own Christian background, I am aghast at the notion that it could, in effect, be made illegal to imply ridicule of a religion or to lampoon religious figures.

Supporters of the proposed legislation would presumably say that neither I, nor any of my colleagues in the comedy world, are its intended targets, but laws governing highly subjective or moral issues tend to drag a very fine net, and some of the most basic freedoms of speech and expression can get caught up in it.

I have always believed that there should be no subject about which one cannot make jokes, religion included. Clearly, one is always constricted by contemporary mores and trends because, after all, what one seeks above all is an appreciative audience. However, how would a film like Monty Python's Life of Brian, criticised at the time of its release for being anti-Christian, be judged under the proposed law? Or that excellent joke in Not the Nine O'Clock News all those years ago, showing worshippers in a mosque simultaneously bowing to the ground with the voiceover: "And the search goes on for the Ayatollah Khomeini's contact lens"? Not respectful, but comedy takes no prisoners. However, in period and in context it was extremely funny and I believe that it is the reaction of the audience that should decide the appropriateness of a joke, not the law of the land.

For telling a good and incisive religious joke, you should be praised. For telling a bad one, you should be ridiculed and reviled. The idea that you could be prosecuted for the telling of either is quite fantastic.

Yours faithfully,
ROWAN ATKINSON

• Government Must Put Safety First, Profit Second by Ronald Brownstein, Los Angeles Times
• Kangaroo Courts by William Safire, New York Times
• Time to Think of Re-Regulation by Michael A. Bernstein, Newsday
• How to Handle Bin Laden by William F. Buckley
• An Alternate Reality by Paul Krugman, New York Times
• Wait Until Dark by Frank Rich, New York Times
• Big Government Becomes Big Brother An interview with Nadine Strossen, A.C.L.U.
• Mr. Ashcroft, Let's Not Repeat Past Mistakes by Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate

The above links are to articles that the operator of this website believes are interesting and which contribute to the national debate. He does not necessarily agree with all or any of what they say…and you won't, either.

In the picture above, the person…er, creature on the left is Scorch, a very silly dragon.  The creature…uh, person on the right is Ronn Lucas, who is probably the best ventriloquist working today.  That's a larger field than you might think, because we so rarely see ventriloquists on TV these days.  But there are a lot of them out there working clubs, cruise ships, conventions, etc., and Ronn is at the tip-top of any list.

Don't believe me?  Then go to Las Vegas, where Ronn is currently booked for an open-end engagement at the Rio Suites Hotel.  It's an afternoon show, which means it's reasonably-priced, even if you don't factor in the amount you're not losing in the casino instead of attending the show.  I haven't seen him there yet but I've seen him elsewhere, and it's really one of those shows where you realize you're in the presence of someone who's doing what they do about as well as it could possibly be done.

Ronn is mentioned in an old column that I just posted to this site — one I wrote in 1996, right after the first time I met him.  But the piece is really about the greatest practitioner of them all, Dr. Paul Winchell.  Click here to read about the both of them.

Have you lost too many working hours playing the Solitaire game that comes with Windows?  Haven't we all?  Well, then you need Solitaire Cheat.  It's basically the same game except that it gives you the power to cheat.  You can download it here.

The game is free but has a harmless advertising banner on it.  Also: If you want it to look like the standard Windows Solitaire game, you'll have to do one little fix.  Windows Solitaire stores its card designs in a file called CARDS.DLL which you probably have in either your Windows directory of your WindowsSystem directory.  You will need to copy (don't move it — copy) that file into the same directory where you install Cheat Solitaire.  Then rename the file CARDS32.DLL.  This way, Cheat Solitaire will give you the same card designs that are in Windows Solitaire.

If the above doesn't work, it means you have a 16-bit CARDS.DLL on your computer.  Cheat Solitaire needs the 32-bit version.  You can find a copy of this pretty easily by using any search engine (like google) to search for CARDS.DLL and download a more recent version.  Put it in your Cheat Solitaire directory and rename it CARDS32.DLL.  If that doesn't work, you downloaded the wrong version of CARDS.DLL, so try again.  This is all much easier than it sounds and, besides, it's worth any amount of hassle just to beat that damn Solitaire game.

Okay…so anyone know where I can download a copy of Cheat Minesweeper?

• I Love America…Do You? by Harry Browne, WorldNetDaily
• Liberty Is Dying, Liberal by Liberal by Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times
• Business as Usual by Senator John McCain
• The Opportunist's Friend (and Foe): States' Rights by Garrett Epps, New York Times
• Clinton Speaks, Pundits Spin by Bryan Keefer, Spinsanity
• The Final Word? by Michael Isikoff, Newsweek
• Recounting the Media's Florida Recount by Jack Schafer, Slate

The most interesting thing about the above articles is to note that the staunch Libertarian, Harry Browne, wrote a column very much like the one by the staunch Liberal, Robert Scheer. Any issue that can unite those two guys is not to be treated lightly.

• How to Lose a War by Frank Rich, New York Times
• How to Be Tough on Terrorism by Robert B. Reich, American Prospect
• The Wrong Strategy by William Kristol, The Weekly Standard
• With Powers Like These, Can Repression Be Far Behind? by Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times
• The Daily Howler (latest dispatches) by Bob Somerby

The articles I recommend above are about current events. I have one I'd like to recommend to you that is somewhat out of date but when I first read it in 1996, it made a very big impression on me. It concerns Senator John McCain and I'd like to think that the portrait it presents of him is accurate and still valid…but I have to admit that some of his actions and statements in the last few years have caused me to wonder. Anyway, I recently found it on-line and here's the link to it. If you don't have time to read it all, read at least as far as this passage, which had a major impact on me…

Here, [McCain] pauses, and I figure he's finished. But he's groping behind his aviator sunglasses for the point of his anecdote — that forgiveness is ultimately less self-destructive than the bitter desire for vengeance. Or perhaps that there is no such thing as vengeance.

I do not believe that forgiveness is always preferable or even possible. But this article set me off on a lot of thinking on the topic and that, in turn, has led to a belief that, more often than we might like to think, vengeance is a form of self-deception and that the thirst for it can be a major form of self-destruction.

In the coming months, we're going to see some permutation of this discussion across the country. An awful lot of folks are revved-up and horny for the moment we can celebrate that we have avenged the attacks of 9/11 and "gotten even." Right now, they don't want to hear that bombing the hell out of The Enemy is anything but right and proper. They don't even want to hear any explanations of why other countries might not love us, as they might lessen the Good Guy/Bad Guy karma of it all. I think we're all going to be giving the concept of "getting even" a lot of consideration.

By the way: If you read the article I recommend, you might want to also read this news item which sadly buttons the story.

Want to visit some stars' websites?  Here's a list of some sites that are either run by famous stars or, for those who are deceased, their heirs…

Buddy Ebsen, Tony Curtis, Ann-Margret, Rudy Vallee, Theodore Bikel, Abbott & Costello, Glenn Ford, Burgess Meredith, George Carlin, Pat Boone, Yvonne Craig, Patti Page, Eddie Cantor, Frankie Laine, Frank Sinatra, Trini Lopez, Ray Conniff, Frank Gorshin, Porter Wagoner, Robert Goulet, Wink Martindale, Lainie Kazan, Johnny Crawford, Julius LaRosa, Adrienne Barbeau, Jack Benny, Sid Caesar, Jerry Vale, Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Peter Marshall, Jim Nabors, Tony Martin, Ken Berry, John Davidson, Leon Askin

The most intriguing bit o' news I gleaned from any of these was over at the official Frank Gorshin site, which bills itself as "The ONLY officially authorized and guaranteed Autograph Collectibles Website, personally endorsed by Frank Gorshin."  There's a schedule there for a touring company of The Sunshine Boys which is playing one-nighters in towns like Elyria, Ohio and Lakewood, New Jersey and which, the website announces, stars Mr. Gorshin and Dick Van Dyke!

Well, I read this and I thought, "Dick Van Dyke!?  I love Dick Van Dyke!"  But it struck me as odd that a star of his magnitude would be touring those little towns.  I also had a hard time imagining him in either of the leads of The Sunshine Boys.  So I did a little research and came across this a website for the producers of this production.  You can reach it by clicking here but you don't have to.  Just understand that it cleared things up for me.

Attention, Frank Gorshin: The man you're playing opposite is DICK VAN PATTEN!  It is not — repeat: not — DICK VAN DYKE!  Dick Van Dyke was the star of The Dick Van Dyke Show, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, Diagnosis Murder and a lot of movies.  Dick Van Patten was the star of Eight is Enough.  Your official website does not seem to know the difference.  And I also have a suspicion that Mr. Van Patten thinks he's starring with Kirk Douglas.

Glad I could clear that up.

During the fifties, Jack Kirby did a brief, frustrating stint as the artist and creative impetus of Green Arrow, which was then one of DC Comics' second-string features.  Jack had no love of the character and neither, from what I can tell, did anyone else for a few decades.  But it was work at a time when he needed it so he signed on and attempted — without his usual success — to "build it into something."  That was the way Kirby approached almost everything he touched: I have to build this into something.

Though comic sales were then in the toilet, Jack's attempts to revamp the strip were met around the office with an attitude of, "No, we like it the way it was," and his rather modest proposed innovations were tempered.  One of the problems was that Green Arrow had been co-created by a burly, egotistical DC editor named Mort Weisinger who had never liked Kirby's work or the notion of artists doing anything more than drawing what they were told to draw.  Weisinger was not then the editor of the strip — Jack Schiff was — but Weisinger wielded enough influence over it to keep it more or less the way he wanted it.

For a relatively short time, Jack was doing that strip, the occasional story for DC's mystery anthology comics and his ground-breaking book, Challengers of the Unknown.  Then he got into a business squabble with Schiff and was bounced out of DC and told his services would never be welcome there again.  And for twelve-or-so years, they weren't.  During that time, he worked at Marvel, where Stan Lee was a bit more receptive to the Kirby style and to allowing Jack to try and build things.  That worked out quite well…

If you'd like to see what Jack did with Green Arrow — trying and failing to make it a better strip — DC now gives you that opportunity.  You can now purchase, for about six bucks, a slim volume that contains every Green Arrow story Jack Kirby ever did…and you get a foreword by me, to boot, and a "new" Kirby cover.  It's a drawing Jack did of his western archer hero, Bullseye.  With the blessing of the Kirby estate, Mike Royer, one of Jack's favorite inkers was commissioned to take that drawing and alter it to be Green Arrow.  The whole thing is a nice, inexpensive package that you might want to seek out.

Game Show Network just skipped over the infamous Michael Larsen episodes in their sequence of rerunning Press Your Luck.  Mr. Larsen was the unemployed air conditioner repairman who figured out how to beat the game board for over $110 thousand smackers, resulting in one of the most amazing programs I've ever seen on the tube.  CBS thereafter preferred to forget about Larsen and, when USA Network reran PYL a few years back, they steered clear of the two Larsen episodes and all those around the same time.  GSN does reportedly have them in its current package and skipped them, not because they were burying them but because they're saving them for special, promotable exhibition.  Soon as we know when that might be, I'll post it here and fill in some more info I learned about the event.  (I investigated it at the time because I wanted to turn it into a TV-movie.  One of the obstacles was that CBS was still sore about it and trying to promote the notion that, though they'd broadcast it to all of America, it had never really happened.  And by the way, to those of you who've written to ask if I need a tape…thanks but, yes, I have a copy of those episodes.  They're on Beta but, yes, I have them.  I just want others to see them…)

Designing this website has forced me to learn all about a strange and mysterious language called HTML.  It is the lingo in which this and most websites are written.  Did you ever get a e-mail that was full of odd markings in brackets like <BR> and <p align="center">?  Well, those are HTML codes and often, someone writes an e-mail message in that language but your e-mail reader will for some reason read it as a straight text message.  That causes you to see all them codes that are supposed to just format your message and then get out of the way.

I have recently made a number of unseen changes in this website to make it as close to 100% HTML proper as humanly possible.  This means encoding ampersands not as ampersands but by typing this: &amp;

Inserted into the HTML code of a website, that should cause your browser to see an ampersand.  This strikes me as an enormous waste of bandwidth.  We are now sending you five characters' worth of data — one of which is an ampersand — instead of just sending you an ampersand.  Leave it to computer scientists to figure out a way to make an abbreviation take longer to write.

In theory, this is supposed to make the text more widely compatible.  In truth, different browsers see things different ways and no matter how I write my code, there's always someone who e-mails and says, "I'm using Schlocko Browser version 7.1a and all your apostrophes look like pieces of rigatoni."  I have finally decided that if you ain't using the latest versions of Internet Explorer or Netscape, I don't care about you…and maybe not even then.

• Security in the Air by William F. Buckley, Jr.
• Let Bin Laden Speak by Joshua Micah Marshall, New York Post
• Search and Destroy by Joshua Micah Marshall, The New Republic
• George McGovern Was Right by Cal Thomas, Tribune-Media Services
• GOP Anger at President Gore's War Actions by Bernard Weiner, Democratic Underground
• Count Down by Jonathan Chait, The New Republic

Is it my imagination or is John Ashcroft out to break Janet Reno's record of pissing off people of every possible political stripe? Reno holds a certain advantage because Ashcroft probably can't torch Waco and lock Wen Ho Lee up again. On the other hand, she occasionally convicted someone…

How I spent last week:  Why, voice-directing Squishees, of course!  This is a soon-to-be-released animated feature concocted and produced by my pal Don Oriolo, who otherwise manages the career of Felix the Cat.  You all know Felix the Cat?  The wonderful, wonderful cat?  Well, whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks.  Don has a pretty potent bag o' tricks himself, one of which is this new film which will be out I-dunno-when-or-where but the animation has been completed and this week, we had to dub in the voice track.  Yes, this is the reverse of how the process is usually done.

Squishees is the story of a little girl, her scientist father and a very nasty lady.  That's the nasty lady at right in the red dress.  The scientist's experiment opens a portal into another world where the people are multi-colored and tend to squish a lot and when one of them tumbles into this existence, the nasty lady decides to make a new toy out of him.  The result is a cute, fast-paced tale that I think younger kids will enjoy.  You can read more about it — and about Don's current Felix projects — at his website, www.felixthecat.com.

We had a terrific cast which included Mark Hamill, Laura Summer, Ruth Buzzi, Gregg Berger, Neil Ross, Anna Garduno and the always-incredible Frank Welker.  I've worked with Frank now since…well, since he appeared in the on-camera cast of a Bobby Vinton Special I wrote in 1978.  He still manages to dazzle me with his ability to instantly come through with the sound of anyone or anything.  On one show, we asked him to make the sound of angry oatmeal cooking…and he did.  I'm serious.  If I played you the tape and asked you to identify it, you'd say, "Gee, I know this sounds crazy but that sounds like angry oatmeal cooking!"

You hear Frank incessantly in movies and TV shows, animated and otherwise, and often don't know you're not hearing the person whose mouth is flapping.  Same with the other folks in our cast.  You can hear on-line demos of Gregg Berger's and Neil Ross's extensive voice work at their websites, www.greggberger.com and www.neilrossvo.com.

What a joy to work with all these folks…and to spend time with the absolutely-delightful and very funny Ms. Ruth Buzzi, who voiced our villainess.  When I was a wee lad, taking the bus out to work for Disney in Burbank, I'd sometimes hike over to NBC, just a few blocks away, and bluff my way in to watch tapings of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.  The show was done in Studio 3 (wherein Leno now lurks) and only for the first few did they have a formal studio audience.  That was because they taped all day, several days a week, and you couldn't keep a live audience properly ensconced for any meaningful length of time.  So they let folks — mostly those there for the otherwise-disappointing NBC Studio Tour — wander in and fill the bleachers.

I remember thinking that some members of the troupe were very funny on-stage but not off, while others were funny off-stage but not on.  A few managed to do both…and then there was Dan Rowan, who had a pretty good career without ever managing to be either.  Ruth Buzzi, on the other hand, was funny when the cameras were on.  Ruth Buzzi was funny when they were off.  She was funny going to get a bagel from the craft services table.  She was funny sitting on the sidelines in grotesque make-ups, waiting patiently for hours for them to get to her sketches, which was how I most often saw her.  Cameo guest stars were being hustled in and smooth-talked by the producer, George Schlatter, into saying lines they feared might be injurious to their careers.

No matter how long, Ruth sat there, being patient, waiting for her moment in front of the camera which was invariably accompanied by the announcement that they were running late and she'd have to try and get it on the first take.  She usually did.  And if they allowed her a second take, she was even funnier.

Watching those old shows, I'm amazed how well they hold up.  More that a decade back, someone tried syndicating Laugh-In reruns that were chopped in half.  They attracted few viewers; not even myself, and I really loved that show when it first appeared.  I dunno if it was because they'd been slashed to 30 minutes or if it was just the wrong moment in history to see those shows again but they didn't work then and they do now.  One can also see — and this is true of the Saturday Night Live reruns — why certain cast members kept working and others did not.  This is not true of everyone but it's certainly true of some.

Ruth has worked pretty steadily since those days.  To a young generation, she's not "Ruth Buzzi of Laugh-In" but "Ruth Buzzi of Sesame Street."  Or maybe the lady on that soap opera — I forget which one.  They hire her because they've learned what I just learned.  She's a wonderful person, relentlessly dedicated to her craft and fun to be around.  And boy, is she funny.

Much to my surprise, the membership of the Writers Guild has voted to accept three of the four proposed changes to the credits manual…and the margin of loss for #4 (the most controversial change) was much smaller than I think anyone expected.  The complete vote totals are available here.  This will probably mean that the committee that drafted these proposals — or some successor-in-interest to that committee — will begin drawing up some more.  Most likely, they will cautiously visit some of the more extreme suggestions that have been talked about but never formally proposed.  These would include some sort of acknowledgement, probably in the closing credits, of writers who participate in the rewriting of a screenplay but who don't qualify for the traditional up-front credit.

In any case, the news here is that WGA members — who said an overwhelming no to the last vote on changing the credit rules — now seem more open to the concept.  That presumably will mean more changes, some of which could genuinely change the way the industry works.  Stay tuned.

Several of you have e-mailed me copies of this column by William Safire which seeks to alert the world to the clear and present danger presented by the Bush Administration's snooping on the citizenry.  I've got to admit I've come to disbelieve anything Mr. Safire writes.  This is the man who was dead certain that Hillary Clinton (and maybe Bill, too) would be indicted in Whitewater, Filegate and Travelgate.  This is also the man who claimed that our government had proof of an "Iraqi connection" to 9/11 conspirator Mohammed Atta.  Perhaps he's right this time, but I sure hope not.

I flipped through a copy of the new MAD at the newsstand.  The parody of The Onion was written by Scott Maiko.

We've spoken here before of Brad Oscar, who is subbing (matinees and some evenings) for Nathan Lane in The Producers on Broadway.  Brad is now getting reviewed by the New York critics and, so far, they love him.  Here's one review and here's another.

Just added a column about my little buddy, Billy Barty.  Read all about him here.