Here's another one of these…

There are news stories (like this one) that Al Jaffee, who has been drawing for MAD since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, is retiring. Actually, Al retired a number of months ago but it's being announced now because MAD has an issue out this week devoted to Mr. Jaffee.

The Washington Post piece leads off with "MAD magazine's iconic back-page Fold-In is about to fold it in." I don't think that's the final word on it forever. MAD has already run one Fold-In by someone else and even if the current editors don't want more by artists who aren't Al Jaffee, I'll bet there will be some someday. This special issue has one that Al drew some time ago to be his last one but they held it until now. With the mix of old and new material that now fills the magazine, it has not been too noticed that all of Jaffee's work in the magazine lately has been reprints.

Some of us noticed it…and it saddens us, though we can completely understand. Al's longevity and devotion to his work is the stuff of which legends were made. Children who hear of it in the future will not believe a human being could do much fine work for so long. Pick up the new issue this week and see a tiny sampling of all he's done.

Here's a great little short film about the making of the Beetle Bailey newspaper strip. It includes footage of the late Mort Walker, who in his day usually had a couple of strips going at the same time and entertained an awful lot of people around the world…

The Lincoln Project is a group of Republicans, many of whom helped elect Donald Trump but now feel that he has to go before he destroys their party and maybe the country as well. And they have someone who's really good at making (I think) effective commercials like this one they dropped this morning…

Last Saturday, there was a protest rally over at Pan Pacific Park, which is located near CBS Television City, Farmers Market, The Grove and other notable locations here in Los Angeles. I've spoken to several folks who were at the protest and they all said it was peaceful and inspiring and exactly what something like that should be…

…until they showed up, "they" being a contingent of people who were intent on causing destruction and looting. Things got very ugly and not far from where I live, there were clashes with police, broken windows, a few cars and buildings set on fire, some injuries and a lot of anger. Some of it found its way to nearby commercial areas and it was a very horrible, unsettling day here in my city.

Similar unsettlement happened elsewhere, all around the country…and I don't want to make this all about Trump but you sure got the feeling that he looked at all the civil unrest and thought, "I must stop this from hurting my re-election chances" and that was the only thing he thought.

The looters and rioters have been scary…though maybe not as scary as some of the forces put out on the streets to control them. What happened outside the White House when Trump decided a photo op outside a nearby church would help his poll numbers was the kind of thing we point to in news footage from countries ruled by dictators and say, "Thank God that could never happen here."

I try not to be distracted by all this. Really, I try but it's difficult. One moment when my face must have looked like the Edvard Munch painting "The Scream" came when I saw — as we all saw — protesters fleeing from projectiles and gas…and why? Because Trump wanted his photo so he could look "tough." People who do things to look "tough" are almost by definition not "tough," especially when they need to have an army clear the way so they can do them.

And then we have this week's Presidential Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisting no tear gas was used and demanding that the Fake News retract reports that it was. The explanation is that they used Pepper Balls (a form of tear gas) instead of other kinds of tear gas. It reminds me of the scene in The Odd Couple where Oscar tells Felix to get his spaghetti off the poker table and Felix laughs and says, "It's not spaghetti, it's linguini!"

I know I shouldn't feel sorry for Presidential Press Secretaries. Their boss orders them to go out and lie and they have to stand there and lie, no matter what the reporters offer as proof that it's a lie. It reminds me of something I once heard someone say about porn stars: "It's a great job for people who will do absolutely anything for money." I guess it also applies to people who'll do absolutely anything to get in front of a camera, too.

Anyway, today I was over in the area near me where a lot of the looting and destruction occurred — not the worst of it perhaps but some. I was impressed with how close to normal it all seems. A lot of storefronts are still covered in plywood. Most of the graffiti is covered up, some of it with crude temporary paint jobs but the whole outside of Farmers Market looks like it was completely repainted in the last few days. Parts of it look better than it ever has.

With some of the crude temporary paint-overs, the painters added new, benevolent graffiti affirming that BLACK LIVES MATTER and added words like "love" and "peace." And on one corner, I saw two National Guardsmen in their scary combat gear…but folks in civilian garb were talking and laughing with them.

For the most part, it was business as usual…or as usual as business can be when people are wearing masks and maneuvering to stay six feet apart. You find yourself redirecting your attention from one crisis to another but I did feel that the rioting/looting in my neighborhood was history.

Then again, history can repeat itself and there is a peaceful protest scheduled for tomorrow at Pan Pacific Park. I sure hope it stays a peaceful protest. They seem to be accomplishing things.

Almost forgot to mention that Volume 6 of The Complete Pogo was just nominated for an Eisner Award in the category, "Best Archival Collection/Project — Strips." I believe this is the third nomination for the series with one previous win and one loss. The traditional awards ceremony cannot, of course, take place this year but there will be something online to replace it. Our thanks to the judges. You can order a copy of this book here…and yes, Volume 7 is still on schedule for its release in October.

From April of 2015, back when Jon Stewart hosted The Daily Show, here's a segment with a lot to say about these days…

It was announced this morning that DC Comics is severing its longtime relationship with Diamond Comic Distributors.  I have an e-mailbox full of questions asking me what this means and if I have a good idea and if I can be quoted or interviewed for news coverage.

Here is my answer: I have no idea.  Honest.  I didn't even fully understand the distribution business when I was writing and editing for DC and the business has changed a lot since then.  My opinion on this is almost as worthless as Donald Trump's thoughts on how happy George Floyd would be if he'd lived to see today's jobs report.  Ask someone who knows something.

Looking for something non-political to post here, I thought, "Let's see if the Voctave folks have a video out I haven't noticed yet." They do…a nice rendition of a song for which the eminent Charles Chaplin wrote the music. A lot of people assume he wrote the lyrics but those were actually by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons.

In fact, Chaplin wrote it as an instrumental for his film Modern Times in 1936 which, of course, can in no way now be considered "modern times." The two gents wrote the lyrics in 1954, Nat King Cole recorded it and a standard was born. Anyway, here are the Voctave vocalists vocalizing (well, lipsyncing to their own voices) from their homes. There seem to have been some changes of personnel in the group but they still sound great…

About an hour ago, I saw something I've never seen before driving past my house. I live on a fairly well-traveled residential street and it's even more-traveled when certain nearby commercial streets are closed, as they may be today. Honking horns prompted me to look out a window and I saw what I guess you'd call a Troop Truck driving by — a truck with about a dozen soldier-types seated in back wearing camouflage-type outfits and helmets…and not looking all that comfy in them. (It's 84 degrees out.)

I dunno if the troop truck was honking or if folks in cars were but attention seemed to be the point of it. Those men could have been transported in a bus but that wouldn't have projected the same "ready for battle" image as looking like World War II infantry being shuttled to the front lines. Presumably, they were National Guardsmen being driven somewhere to protect something, possibly in the Hollywood area. Then again, maybe the idea was to just drive them around and scare troublemakers.

I don't know how I feel about what I saw but it sure didn't look like any America I've ever been born in.

People keep saying how divided the nation is and I think we all agree, at least, on that. We also would probably agree with a sentence like, "This is not how we want the United States to be." It's when we get to (a) how we want things to be and (b) who's responsible for them not being like that that we get into — shall we say? — Areas of Disagreement.

Short of that, we're all unhappy with what the pandemic has done to us and the economy and we're pretty unhappy with the racial unrest and the looting unless we got a new Samsung 65" Class 4K UHD LED LCD TV out of the deal. We're unhappy that our political party (whichever one it is) doesn't have a lock on the November election and that we don't know when the virus thing will end and what will and won't be there after it does. Oh — and in the next few weeks, we're likely to be pretty unhappy with what an active hurricane season will do to parts of this country that didn't need any more misery.

But we will get through it. And the silver lining of adversity is that it teaches you lessons in coping with adversity. For instance, the next time I have a disaster and I have absolutely no idea what to do, I know what to do: I'll have someone clear the street by firing rubber bullets and tear gas (and denying they used those things) and then I'll march down to some building I've barely been in and hold up some book I've never read and try to look real, real tough for any cameras that may be around.

And then I'll scurry home to change my underwear.

There is now an official Groucho Marx website run by the folks who control the licensing of Groucho's likeness and various identifying Marx and scars. You may have no occasion to make a deal with them but you don't have to in order to enjoy some rare video clips, photos and other goodies. It is, of course, at www.grouchomarx.com. And tell 'em a DeSoto dealer sent you!

Sad to hear of the passing of one of my favorite writers, Bruce Jay Friedman. Obits like this one celebrate him for his screenplays and novels, and they're wonderful, but I think of his as one of our great playwrights. In my library, I have all my Bruce Jay Friedman books with the plays, not the movie books or novels. He had a dark, irresistible sense of humor.

I never got to meet the man. I know one of his sons — the fine caricaturist Drew Friedman — but I never got to meet Bruce Jay and I'm sorry. I would have liked to tell him how much his work has meant to me. I hope he's enjoying his time in the steambath right about now.

Recently when I did a couple of webcasts about Groucho Marx, a question came up on them and in e-mails: If someone has never seen a Marx Brothers movie, what's the best one to show them as an introduction to those zany boys? For a long time, my answer to that has been: "Whichever one is being shown at a theater near you where you can take the person to see them on a big screen with a big audience." Sometimes, I would add, "…just as long as what they're showing isn't The Big Store, Love Happy, A Night in Casablanca or The Story of Mankind." And I might even exclude The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers because the crude cinematography — and often, terrible prints — detract a bit from the other glories of those films.

My feeling is that if you see A Night at the Opera or Horse Feathers or one of a couple of others in optimum conditions and don't fall in love with the Marxes, there's no point in watching a second Marx Brothers movie. You either get them or you don't.

I'm a big believer in seeing certain kinds of movies — comedies but also certain kinds of pictures — in theaters with crowds as opposed to your den with 0-4 other people present. When I started seeing my lovely friend Amber, I discovered she'd never seen a lot of movies I knew she'd like. Some of them — like The Princess Bride and And Justice For All, I decided would be fine in my den…but, for instance, I didn't show her The French Connection there.

When they showed it at the Motion Picture Academy with a great print on a big screen and with its director appearing, I took her to that and she loved it. She would have probably loved it in my den but not, I think, as much. I have not shown her It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or any Marx Brothers films or big musicals in my den.

Going to the movies is not possible to do, of course, during the pandemic. Given some of the current financial news about the big theater chains, it may not be as possible as it was once the virus is no longer holding us as prisoners. So you may have to settle for watching these films on the TV in your den.

If I were to pick a Marx Brothers movie to show to Amber or any newcomer, this would be my order of preference: A Night at the Opera, Horse Feathers, A Day at the Races, Monkey Business, Go West, Duck Soup, At The Circus…and after that, I don't think it matters. Don't write me in horror thinking I consider At The Circus a better film than Animal Crackers because I don't. If you think that, you aren't understanding what I'm saying here. Duck Soup is better than any of the MGM films but it wouldn't be my first or second pick as an introduction to Groucho, Harpo, Chico and that other brother.

Which brings me to the main point of this post, which is to let you know that on Friday evening, Turner Classic Movies is running Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Animal Crackers and Duck Soup in that order. The first one starts at 8 PM on my cable feed. If you miss Duck Soup, don't worry. TCM shows it a lot. In fact, I think this is the second time they've run it in the past week.

Sixteen singers — who I guess sing in groups of four as the Dapper Dans at Disneyland — vocalize from their homes…

• Watching the news. Does anyone know if that pandemic thing is still on?