Cancer has taken another great creative talent (and great human being) from us in the comic book and animation community. Nicola Cuti — known to his many friends as "Nick" — had been battling the disease for some time and the battle ended this morning. A person unknown to me posted on Nick's Facebook page, a much better summary of his career than I could assemble…

Cuti was born October 29, 1944. He served in the United States Air Force for four years. It was during this time that his first works were published.

An artist and comic and science-fiction writer and editor, he is best known as a co-creator of Moonchild the Starbabe and the superhero E-Man, a series he worked on with his dear friend, Joe Staton. Other creations of his included Captain Cosmos, Brightstar and Starflake the Cosmic Sprite. During his career, he worked alongside legends such as Wally Wood, Stan Lee, and Bill Black, founder of AC Comics. His works were featured in Charlton Comics, Warren Publishing, DC Comics, and Marvel Comics. He contributed to famous franchises such as Vampirella, Popeye and Creepy Magazine.

In addition to his work in the comic industry, Cuti also worked in many productions for Disney, Universal Studios, and Sony Pictures as an animation background designer. Some of the shows he worked on included Gargoyles, 101 Dalmatians and The Critic.

I knew Nick as the pleasantest of people — funny, friendly, disliked by no one. His writing was fresh and filled with passion. If the E-Man comic is not currently in print in some collection, it should be. It read like no super-hero comic before or after and walked that difficult bridge between humor and serious. And I just plain liked the guy. So sorry we lost him.

The new Blu Ray of Tex Avery cartoons is out. It features nineteen of the funniest, wildest cartoons ever made, all of them directed by the late, loony Tex Avery during his golden period making shorts for MGM. Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 1 is a must-have for anyone who appreciates a good cartoon, let alone nineteen of them. We highly recommend you get one…which you can do by clicking right about here.

Here's Lou Christie — from 1974, I think — singing his 1965 hit "Lightnin' Strikes" on Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special. Notice how this number would have been nothing without the violin player…

Who Said It: Mike Bloomberg or Donald Trump?

I watched most of the Democratic Debate last night via TiVo Delay. I wasn't really impressed by anyone and this morning, surfing the ol' web, I see a pretty wide range of reactions to it. F'rinstance, Matt Yglesias thought Mike Bloomberg did himself a lot of damage but Kevin Drum thought Mayor Mike did OK.

A check of the fact-checking sites (like this one) shows that every single candidate up there — including yours, no matter who he or she is — said something utterly untrue about one or more of their opponents. A few of them got pretty big applause from their supporters with false charges…and one of the things those supporters hate about Trump is that he says false things to get applause.

Wrestling as I am with the challenge of marking my ballot, I was kinda hoping my opinion of one of them would soar and that didn't happen. I love Elizabeth Warren when she bests her opponents by being smarter and better-informed than they are. Last night, I thought, she was scoring her points by being more strident and outraged…and, if all the fact-checkers I've read this morning are right and I think they are, accusing Bloomberg of some things he didn't do.

And Bloomberg did not impress me with the way he dealt with the many attacks made on him. I thought one point in his favor would be that if he got the nomination and if Trump was willing to debate, he'd mop the floor with him. Based on last night, I think my cleaning lady is doing better mopping with our Swiffer WetJet®.

Did anyone remind these people that an important part of all their platforms is that Trump is such a dangerous, horrible president that Goal Numero Uno is that he must be defeated and they all think anyone — including their opponents for the nomination — would be a huge improvement? I don't think Bloomberg can get the nomination but if he did, how could Warren or even Sanders now pivot and say he'd be that much better than what we have now? They didn't need to damage the man that much. The press is doing that for them.

So who would I vote for if I had to vote right this minute? Probably Bernie but I'm still not sure.

Here's a Golden Oldie — Lou Christie with his hit, "Lighting Strikes," as performed on some "oldies" show, maybe even in this century. The original came out in 1965 and I liked it even though I couldn't make out half the lyrics. I just found them online and did a lot of "Oh, so that's what that line was!"

I don't recall seeing Mr. Christie perform it or anything else back then and I think I assumed he was black. He doesn't sound that way in this video but he sounded kinda/sorta like that in the original record which, by the way, I didn't buy back then.

We hear a lot about people bootlegging music in The Era of the Internet. I did it — legally, I'm prepared to argue — back in the sixties and so did a lot of my friends, thanks to these big reel-to-reel tape recorders we all had.

Since I was spending all my money on comic books, I didn't have much to spend on records so I did the following: I would tape hours and hours off of some local radio station that played the hits of the day — usually KHJ, sometimes KRLA. When they played a record I liked, I cut it from the tape and splice it onto a reel I maintained of my favorite tunes. That reel got to be about two hours long and I played it over and over and over and over…

It was great because it was only songs I liked. I had to put up with little snippets of disc jockeys talking over the beginnings and/or ends of some songs but that seemed like a small price to pay for music with no price to pay. One lingering aspect of that reel is that to this day, whenever I hear a song that was on that reel — "Lighting Strikes" by Lou Christie, say — I expect it to be followed by the song that followed it on my reel…in this case, "I Know a Place" by Petula Clark.

I stopped playing the "hits" reel in the seventies because I could afford records. I bought most of the same songs, in some cases on collections of hits from the sixties. Now, of course, I have them on MP3. And I also stopped playing the tape because my reel-to-reel machine died and I didn't really have a reason to replace it. Around 1985, I came across my old reel-to-reel tapes and had a few rarities on them transferred to CDs. The "hits" reel didn't make the conversion though because too many of the splices in it had come undone.

One time a few years back, I was in a casino in Vegas where they played a lot of songs from that time period and I heard "Lightning Strikes" and for a second thought, "After this comes 'I Know a Place.'" And in that one instance, it did. Anyway, here's Lou Christie singing "Lightnin' Strikes."

And I just decided, "Hey, why not?"

I've received about thirty messages about this so forgive me if I don't acknowledge all of you, but the other day on this blog, I said that if it ever came to Donald Trump debating Pete Buttigieg, I imagined this…

…the two men are debating and Donald makes some crack about his opponent not being a real man or a moral man or someone whose lifestyle God would approves of. And when it's Mayor Pete's turn to talk, assuming Trump lets him have one, he says, "I know you don't understand this, Mr. President, but I am devoted to my mate in every way. For instance, if he were to take ill, I would be at his side to take care of him instead of…oh, say, going out and banging a porn star!"

As ~30 of you wrote to tell me, Mayor Pete used a version of that line in a town hall meeting yesterday…

Buttigieg — who came out as gay in 2015 and married his husband, Chasten, in 2018 — was asked during his CNN town hall about conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh telling his listeners that American voters are "still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage president." Trump, who initially responded to the comments by saying he was not uncomfortable with a gay president, told Limbaugh to "never apologize" for his comments about Buttigieg, the radio host said Tuesday.

"The idea of the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Donald Trump lecturing anybody on family values," Buttigieg said before pausing for applause. Then the Democratic candidate went after the President directly: "I mean, I'm sorry but one thing about my marriage is it's never involved me having to send hush money to a porn star after cheating on my spouse, with him or her."

He added: "So, if they want to debate family values, let's debate family values, I'm ready."

I guess if you're a politician trying to be more civilized than the opposition, you say "send hush money to a porn star" instead of "banging a porn star" but it's the same line. And yes, I'm sure Buttigieg got it directly from this blog because he surely has nothing else to do these days other than surf the 'net looking for quips and rejoinders, and no one else could have possibly thought of that line, and yes, I'm being sarcastic.

I still haven't decided which candidate I'm going to vote for on this ballot to my left which I need to mark and send back. But I was impressed with Mayor Pete's Town Hall performance. He's delivering exactly what is desired by people who say they yearn for the days of pre-Trump civility. I did not find myself seriously disagreeing with anything he said…but judge for yourself. The section where the above lines were spoken starts with a question at 24:40 and this link should take you right to it or you can watch the whole thing (it's 47 minutes) below…

A few weeks ago somewhere on the Internet, I saw someone say that the folks on Fox & Friends had referred to Fred Rogers (AKA Mr. Rogers of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood) as an "evil, evil man." Swear to God, I thought it was a joke…like the people on that show are so screwed-up, they'd say something that ridiculous. Then I saw it somewhere else and thought the same thing…and you can guess where this is going.

Earlier today, I saw a mention of it on yet another page, clearly from someone who didn't get that it was a joke and they hadn't really said that on Fox & Friends. Then, just to satisfy myself it was from some parody site or somewhere, I went over to Snopes and did a search and…yeah, they said that. I plum forget we're living in an age where Satire can't always get ahead of Reality.

Later this year, Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster are starring in a Broadway revival of The Music Man. I am looking forward to seeing this.

Beginning February 28, they're holding Equity Auditions in New York for other members of the cast. Would someone I know please go in, audition and get a part in this show so you can arrange House Seats for me? Thank you.

I botched up a few of the issue numbers and dates in the piece I wrote last night on Dick DeBartolo. I have corrected them thanks to the wise info of Mr. Steve Bacher. Thanks, Steve.

Yes, it's Randy Rainbow doing his little Randy Rainbow thing…

Lots of people warned that Trump's big tax cut would be a tremendous giveaway to rich people and would do nothing for the middle class. Kevin Drum looks at the numbers and concludes that Trump's big tax cut was a tremendous giveaway to rich people and did nothing for the middle class.

Harold Meyerson on why Democrats would be foolish to nominate Mike Bloomberg.

Emily Stewart on why Democrats would be foolish to not nominate Mike Bloomberg.

Daniel Larison on the essential cruelty of Trump's travel ban.

Have you read what's happened to the Boy Scouts of America?  In a nutshell, the cost of defending against sexual abuse lawsuits has driven the organization into bankruptcy.  And as with many institutions, it's revealed how much the leadership knew about the abusers and tried to protect its reputation by covering up.  I was never a scout but the guys I knew who were were pretty decent fellows who honestly felt they were helping to make the world a better, more humane place.  What a shame that the leaders let them down.

That guy there is Dick DeBartolo, known to many of us as MAD's Maddest Writer. In the past, we've written on this blog of his amazing streak of appearances in the magazine known as MAD. Dick had his first article in MAD #69, the issue dated March of 1962. To put that date in perspective, MAD was ten years old in March of 1962 and so was I.

He did other scripts for the magazine and then began an uninterrupted streak of appearances in MAD #103, cover-dated June of '66. He had a piece in #104 and #105 and #106 and #107 and #108 and #109 and #110 and #111 and #112 and I have to stop listing these or I'll break the Internet. Dick had a piece in every issue after these of the old MAD, the one that ended recently with #550. There were a few scares along the way where an issue would come out and Dick's credit was nowhere to be seen but upon closer inspection, it always turned out that he'd written something uncredited…or in one issue, that someone else's credit had accidentally been affixed to a piece Dick authored.

#550 was the last issue to be produced out of New York. MAD then began to emanate from Burbank, California where numbering began anew. Dick had a piece in #1 and in #2 and #3 and #4 and #5 and #6 and #7 and #8 and #9 and #10 and #11 and…well, I don't know how to break this to you so I'll just come right out and say it:

MAD #12 comes out next week. There is no new material by Dick DeBartolo in it.

As you may know, MAD has had a lot of trouble lately. Not long ago, there was an announcement that the magazine was going all-reprint. That has not happened. The issues now are mostly reprint. There's a new cover and a new articles…but not enough new material that one of them could be by Dick. As the great Stan Laurel once said, "I am housebroken about this."

So who, I hear you wondering, now holds the record for the most consecutive issues of MAD to contain something by them? Well, it's still Dick but it may soon be Sergio Aragonés.

Sergio did his first work in MAD in #76 and thereafter contributed mightily. Alas, due to a problem with mail delivery, he was absent from #111 so his streak started again with #112. He has had new material in every issue since then so Sergio has been in 451 consecutive issues. Dick's streak ended with 459 issues…so assuming MAD continues to publish and that MAD continues buying new material each month, Sergio will surpass Dick's record soon. Will he make it? You still have time to get a bet down.

A new production of the musical Mack and Mabel is opening in a few days for a quick run at New York City Center. In case you don't know, it's about a love affair between the famous producer of silent comedies, Mack Sennett, and his best leading lady, Mabel Normand.

The original production was produced by the infamous David Merrick in 1974 and starred Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters. It had a book by Mike Stewart, a score by Jerry Herman and direction by Gower Champion, thus reuniting the team that had a few years earlier created Hello, Dolly! The original production of Dolly ran for 2,844 performances. Mack and Mabel was around for a few less: It closed after 66.

Mack and Mabel received eight Tony Award nominations including Best Musical and won a total of zero. Oddly enough, none of the nominations were for Mr. Herman's score. And what's odd about that is that most theater experts will tell you the score was the best thing about the show and the main reason that it keeps being revived way more often than any other non-Sondheim show that was considered a flop.

Many of these revivals tinker with the book, which was regarded as too "dark" when it debuted on Broadway. Many of those revivals lighten it. Some darken it. None of their storylines really have that much to do with what actually happened between the real Mack and the real Mabel…but there are those songs. Here's a little video previewing one of the better tunes as performed by the stars of this revival, Douglas Sills and Alexandra Socha…

Got here at 12:41.  Not bad, Amazon.