This is a video from a company that calls itself "America's Test Kitchen." I don't recall America voting to select a test kitchen but maybe it's like Michael Jackson declaring himself "King of Pop." I'd start calling myself "America's Blogger" but I want to wait and see what America does this November. I may not want to associate myself with this country if it does the wrong thing.

For this video, America's Test Kitchen evaluated a number of different pasta sauces that come in a jar and declared most lousy but two, they could recommend. I'm embedding this video because the one they picked as the best is the one I've picked as the best. I'll give you a subtle hint as to the winner…

They show a jar of it in the 24 ounce size and say that it's "almost ten dollars." It ain't cheap and some online sites charge even more than that, which may have something to do with variable supply lines. I ordered a case of it directly from the company website and they charged me $10.00 a jar for the 24 oz. jars (shipping included) which it took them a little over a month to deliver. Meanwhile, my local Ralphs had and still has the 24 oz. size for $8.99 while my Costco has the winning deal — two 28 oz. jars for $13.29.

In case you're too lazy to do the math: 24 ounces for $8.99 is a bit under 37 cents an ounce. 56 ounces for $13.29 is a hair over 23 cents per ounce. And in case you're interested, the price at Amazon has gone up and down like Rudy Giuliani's eyebrows but as I type this, it's $23.95 for two 24 oz. jars, plus if you're not Amazon Prime, there's shipping.

Rao's actually makes eleven different pasta sauces that come in jars. I've tried the Marinara, the Bolognese and the "Sensitive Marinara" Sauce. The last of these was too weak 'n' watery for me but I love the regular Marinara, which I guess you'd call their Insensitive Marinara Sauce. The Bolognese is great but I've only found/obtained it via their website…and it's also a lot greater if you brown some ground beef and add it in.

Here's the video. I have no financial stake of any sort in the company and if I find a better sauce tomorrow, I won't hesitate to recommend it instead. But this is a time when a lot of us are preparing meals at home and I find it really handy to have a lot of this stuff in my cupboard…

I know this is the website that the whole world comes to for news about baby pandas so…

Mei Xiang, the female giant panda housed at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. The 22-year-old panda gave birth to a cub on Friday night. That makes Mei Xiang the oldest giant panda to ever give birth in the United States. She's also the first in the U.S. to give birth after the use of frozen semen. You can just barely make out the new arrival in this footage…

Tomorrow afternoon, I'm hosting a live online YouTube version of The Business of Cartoon Voices, a panel I've been hosting every year at Comic-Con International. For the last umpteen years, my Sunday at that convention has gone as follows. Unless there's a business-type meeting elsewhere, once I get to the convention hall, I go upstairs and stay there until the convention is over.

I start with the 10 AM panel, which is the Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel in Room 5AB. That ends at 11:15, whereupon I hike down the hall to Room 6A and host the Sunday Cartoon Voices Panel, the second of two such presentations at the con. That's over at 12:45 and by the time I get the panelists out of the room, it's at least 1 PM.

One of the hardest parts of moderating a panel, especially in one of the big rooms, is ending it on time and clearing out so the next panel can begin on time. Audience members rush the stage at the end to meet the panelists up close and personal and to ask for autographs while I try to do two things. I have to get the panelists in a group so photographers — amateur, freelance and shooting for the convention — can snap off some shots. Then I have to get the panelists to physically leave the stage and exit the hall while the stage crew resets for the next event. That is sometimes more difficult than you'd imagine.

I then have an hour before my next panel. The con is nice enough to provide me with an assistant who usually has my lunch waiting but I may have to wolf it down while giving an interview or discussing business. No matter what, I have to get myself down to Room 25ABC, which is quite a schlep, to set up for the Cover Story panel which starts at 2 PM. If you've never seen Cover Story, it's kind of "shop talk" for artists who create covers for comic books. I invite some good ones to participate and we discuss design, color, art supplies, lettering, logos…even how the cover illustration is cropped.

At 3 PM, I get to stay in the same room for The Business of Cartoon Voices. I have a couple of voice actors and an agent or two and we discuss how one goes about getting into the business of speaking for animated characters. This panel evolved out of the Cartoon Voices Panels I've been doing at Comic-Con for a couple of decades. If you've never seen one, six that I've done online since The Pandemic started can be found on this page. They consist of oft-heard Cartoon Voice Actors demonstrating their art (or craft; it's a little of both) and the panels are very funny and fascinating, not because of me.

The in-person ones used to end with me taking questions from the audience but I stopped doing that some years ago. All the questions seemed to be from folks asking the panelists some version of "How do I get your job?" For reasons of time and mood, that did not seem to be the place to sufficiently answer those questions.

And I'll be honest with you: An awful lot of the questions wound up being from wanna-be voice actors wanting to turn their moment at the microphone into their audition. They'd talk about their careers and what they'd done and they'd start doing voices. Often, they wanted to "work with" (sort of) the panelists. If June Foray was on the panel, at least one audience member would want to do his Bullwinkle impression and have her do Rocky. If Rob Paulsen was on the panel, someone who thought he did a much better impression of The Brain than he did would want Rob to do Pinky so they could have a little exchange.

As a moderator, I always keep an eye on the audience. That's as important as anything else you do when you're hosting something like this. And what I saw when the audience-questioners were trying to make it all about them was members of the audience rolling their eyes, yawning and walking out. It ended those panels on a low note.

At the same time, I had another concern…

Hollywood (and I'm not just using that word in a geographic sense) abounds with wanna-bes…people who dream of careers they may or may not ever attain. It also therefore abounds in people who seek to profit from those dreams. Exploitation seems to materialize in any situation when there are people leaving themselves open to be exploited.

If you're one such person who wants to be a successful, working voice actor, they want to charge you for photos or for coaching or for participating in "showcases." Showcases — which always seem like scams to me — give you the opportunity to pay some serious bucks to perform in front of people who may or may not have the power to hire you to be in a movie or on a TV show. Please read the following paragraph carefully…

There are coaches and photographers and teachers who are honest and good and helpful and you may be able to benefit mightily from their services. Most folks who do make it in the business have studied with good ones. There are also people who will tell you that you have talent and potential, especially if you don't have much of those but do have money. About all they'll do is take that money while moving you no closer to the career you seek. You need to be really, really careful to avoid those in this second category.

I have seen some heartbreaking instances of preying on Aspiring Talent. Often, it takes the form of a parent shelling out cash they can ill-afford to try and give their beloved child the career that the beloved child wants oh so badly. This bothers me and it bothered a great friend of mine named Earl Kress.

Earl passed away in 2011 and I miss him every day. Here is the obit I wrote for him back then and it still makes my eyes damp when I read it. He was a writer but also at times a voice actor. We were introduced by another lovely, talented person I miss a lot…Daws Butler. One of the best voice actors who ever lived.

Earl had co-hosted a few Cartoon Voices Panels with me and we talked a lot about the above two concerns — the Q-and-A segments and what they'd become, and also the predatory gougers of newcomers. He as much as I came up with the idea for the Business of Cartoon Voices panels and he was involved in the first one. I think I wrote here once that those panels were my way to try and lessen the predatory practices. If I said it that way, I was wrong. I should have said our way.

So every year, I don't take questions from the floor at the Cartoon Voice Panels but I do host this seminar. I am very pleased that we have seen audience members — a few, please understand — go from being audience members to being working cartoon voice actors. At least two have even appeared with me on Business of Cartoon Voices Panels to serve as instructors for the kind of folks they used to be.

It's the last program event I do each year in San Diego. It starts at 3 PM and runs 90 minutes…then panelists and audience move out into the corridor and we talk in little groups and one-on-one for at least a half-hour. By the time I get away from that, the convention downstairs has closed so that is how my Comic-Con International always ends. It is always very satisfying for me.

For tomorrow's online version, I've asked two of the best voice actors (and coaches) working today…Debi Derryberry and Bob Bergen. And I've lassoed two of the best agents…Cynthia McLean, who represents some stellar voice actors at SBV Talent, and Paul Doherty who is the "D" in CESD Talent. There are also bad agents in this business and if Cynthia and Paul are too modest to explain why they are among the best, I will.

The panel is live at 4 PM tomorrow. That's Pacific Time so you can figure out what it is in your Time Zone. You can watch it on this site but if you want to ask questions while it's in progress, you'll need to watch it live on YouTube, which you can do via this link. If you miss it or miss part of it, don't fret. It will rerun here and there on demand for a long, long time.

Just think of it as yet another Public Service from newsfromme.tv.

I watched Joe Biden's speech.  I'm a believer that any political speech could benefit by being 25% shorter but that aside, I thought it was a good one.  If nothing else, it probably relieved a fear that some of his supporters have that the Trump folks could make the "Joe has dementia" lie stick.  It was a strong speech and a forceful one and it didn't go overboard in "attack" mode — a mission best left to others. I'm not convinced there are as many Undecided Voters out there as the polls say. I think a lot of those who tell pollsters they're undecided know how they'll vote if they do. They're just undecided if they can bring themselves to vote at all. Maybe.

Earlier today, I watched Barack Obama's speech from the other night. It seemed a bit stiff but he's still a great speaker. I'm probably wrong about this but he looked a bit worried for his country and in his eyes, there was almost a subtext of "I shouldn't have to give this speech. Joe should be twenty points ahead instead of just nine."

For what it's worth, Politifact found little to correct in Biden's speech. Somehow, I have the feeling it won't be that way with Donald's.

This lovely fellow or lady. Well, at least he or she is smart enough to wear a mask…

Hi. Sorry to be doing my first Thursday post after 6:30 PM but it's been kinda hectic here today with the phone ringing and Zoom conferences and e-mails that required immediate replies. Also, the Sun seems to think my house is a chicken and is trying to cook it to an internal temperature of 165°. I think the idea is that when you get it to 160°, you let it rest a half-hour and it will get to 165° by carry-over.

I probably don't have to remind you because you're all already in the chat room waiting but at 7 PM tonight (my time), I'll be webcasting not as interviewer but as interviewee. My best friend Sergio Aragonés will be asking me questions and we'll see if he's still my best friend when we're done. I believe Joe Biden's speech tonight and associated festivities are already recorded, whereas the show with me will be live. The video of it will be directly above this message at the appropriate time.

Steve Bannon arrested? Shocking. But did you ever see a man who looked more like he ought to be?

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Early in my Internetting Days, I had an e-mail address which I was forced to abandon. This was more than twenty years ago. Some spam-advertising company got the address and I was receiving literally 500 spam e-mails a day — and I should mention that unlike a lot of people who use the word "literally," I actually know what the word "literally" means.

There didn't seem to be any way to filter or block the endless stream of loan offers, genitalia enhancement, cheap Rolex and Gucci products, absolutely-guaranteed diet aids, and proposals from overseas folks who had millions of dollars I could share in if I would let them use my bank account to smuggle those funds into America.

So I got a new e-mail address and was a little smarter about who got it and where I entered it…and it's worked fine. The old one, I allowed to disappear into the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere.

The other day, I got a furious, angry, livid, insulting e-mail from someone I never met, never heard of, never corresponded with…nothing. Total stranger. He was outraged that though he had sent me multiple e-mails asking — no, demanding that I plug his Kickstarter fund-raising drive for a comic book he self-publishes, I had not. His was not a polite, do-me-a-favor request. He seemed to think I had an obligation to help him raise funds for his publication which, to be honest with you, didn't look all that impressive based on the samples he attached.

I wouldn't have plugged it even if I'd received his repeated commands but I didn't get them. And since at the bottom of his angry e-mail to me, he copied the earlier missives, I could see what the problem was. He'd sent them to that e-mail address I haven't used since, literally, the turn of the century.

He finally addressed one to the right address and I guess didn't notice it wasn't the same address as the previous eight which he accused me of "deliberately ignoring." I actually have stopped promoting crowd-funding efforts here since I personally have been stiffed on so many of the ones I've backed. If and when I do start again, guess whose comic I won't be mentioning.

Folks are writing (and in one case, calling) to ask about the photo of me on the title card for my Conversation tomorrow night with Sergio Aragonés. It was taken by the fabulously talented Gabriella Muttone. That's a link to her website and if you prowl around in her gallery, you will find the full photograph she took of me (one of many) as well as photos by her of far-prettier people and places.

I haven't watched any of the Democratic Convention and I don't expect to be tuning in the Republican one. Thanks to things like YouTube, I can sneak up on some of the more notable speeches at some later date, if and when I'm in the mood.

There's such a thing as being too uninformed about the issues of the day and there's also such a thing as being swamped by it and having too much of it in your life and brain. I'm always looking for the Sweet Spot between those two extremes and when I think I've found it, I don't want to be shoved off it by some friend, well-meaning though they may be, who wants to talk for the next three hours about how inhumane and destructive Donald Trump is. My opinion of the man could not be lower but it does less wear 'n' tear on my soul and life to just put him on that list of Things We Just Have To Get Through.

It's been hot as Hades here in Southern California lately and of course, that means rolling blackouts as well as the non-rolled kind. The power outages in my area have been few and brief but they've made me think of something…

Since we all had to begin living in a Pandemic World, I've spent a lot of time saying the following to friends: Just wait it out. I understand fully the urge to complain about it and lament all the horrible things it's doing to so many lives but I think we all need to just accept it as something we (a) can't do much about and (b) just have to get through. There are many such things in our lives and I've likened this one to having the plain ol' flu to having a load of steer manure dumped in your living room.

(I have had the flu. I've never had the other thing.)

It occurs to me that the lockdown is a lot like having the electricity go out in your neighborhood. It's not your fault. It greatly limits what you can do and it impacts not just you but everyone around you. It may mean you can't do a lot of things you need to do including leaving your home. You have no idea when it will end. You need to find creative ways to work around some of it. You wish you'd been better prepared for it and you wish the government had done more to prevent it and was doing more to end it. And you can't do a damn thing to hurry it up. You just have to wait for it to be over.

This is not a perfect analogy. Power outages, for one thing. aren't that lethal. But there may be some comfort in remembering that there are things in life — bad, discomforting things — that we just have to get through…and we do.

Tuesday, August 18 at 7 PM Pacific Time
A CONVERSATION WITH KURT BUSIEK
Mark talks with his friend, the noted comic book writer Kurt Busiek about the current state of the industry and how things used to be.

Thursday, August 20 at 7 PM Pacific Time
A CONVERSATION WITH MARK EVANIER
Guest Host Sergio Aragonés turns the tables on his friend and interviews Mark about…well, Mark's writing this listing and he has no idea.

Saturday, August 22 at 4 PM Pacific Time
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES
This is the online version of a panel Mark has done for years at Comic-Con, explaining to folks who want careers in voicing cartoons what that involves and how not to get ripped-off in their quest. Guests include Cartoon Voice Actors Bob Bergen and Debi Derryberry, as well as two top agents in the field — Cynthia McLean of SBV Talent and Paul Doherty of CESD Talent.

Tuesday, August 25 at 7 PM Pacific Time
A CONVERSATION WITH MIKE PETERS
Mark talks with the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and the creator of the Mother Goose & Grimm comic strip, Mike Peters.

I seem to be a little obsessed with the post office situation. This is really a simple problem. As Kevin Drum notes, the U.S. has just about the lowest price in the world to mail what we call a first class letter. Congress sets the price, keeps it low…then complains when the post office doesn't show a profit. Amazingly, many years — before they passed that awful law that forced the postal service to pre-fund pensions — the institution did eke out a profit, occasionally a hefty one.

Take away the pension thing (which sure sounds like it was passed to deliberately make it impossible for the post office to not run a deficit) and let the price of stamps go up to the level of, say, Luxembourg or Slovakia. The entire United States Postal Service would be financially-stable and probably more efficient.

That would please everyone except for two groups. One is those folks out there who are determined to believe that The Government can't do anything right except, of course, to make war. The other group would be the entrepreneurs who are in (or want to be in) the business of private mail delivery and are thinking about how much money they could make if the post office was gone or they ran it and they could charge a couple of bucks for each first-class letter.

Thanks to about four dozen of you who've sent in suggestions about how to solve the Tech Problem in the preceding message. I apologize that I didn't say "I've scoured the Internet and tried everything I could find online" because a lot of you did similar scouring and sent me links to things I'd already tried. You folks out there are a tremendous resource…even the ones who wrote that the machine is a piece of garbage and I should just throw it the hell away.

I got thirteen years of service out of it and it only cost me $230 in the first place so I'd say I got more than I paid for. I'm disappointed that the video business has moved away from physical media to the extent that there is no replacement — no new DVD player I can buy that holds 400 of 'em. It was such a great way to store 'em and such a great way to watch 'em…especially to "binge-watch" a whole run of a show that came to me on multiple discs.

I'm going to let the machine sit unplugged for a few weeks and then give it another load of attention. Maybe the Magical Hardware Fairy will swing by in the dead of night and do one of her miracle repair jobs. If not, I'll decide what to do about it then. I appreciate all the suggestions…even the ones about throwing it the hell away.