Comedian John Mulaney has the perfect analogy for what's going on in our country today…

…time for at least some of us to start thinking about Comic-Con International 2020, which will take place July 23-26 in, of course, San Diego. If you were a paid attendee for 2019, you may be eligible to sign up for Returning Registration. This page will tell you all about it.

Me, I have no conventions planned until WonderCon in Anaheim, which is April 10-12.

Confused about this whole thing with Joe Biden and the Ukraine? Me too. But I feel a little less confused since I read Louis Jacobson explain things over at Politifact.

There are still seats available for the screening of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on Sunday evening, September 29, in its natural habitat. The Cinerama Dome theater on Sunset in Hollywood was built to show this movie and assuming they're showing the same DCP print they ran last year, you couldn't see this movie in a better place with better audio and video.

Though I was involved in the Criterion DVD/Blu Ray release and highly recommend it, I recommend it as an adjunct to viewing it on a big, real movie screen with a big, real movie audience. It's really a shared experience and I can't imagine how anyone could appreciate it at home, no matter how big your screen is and no matter how many people you invite over. If you're within commuting distance of Sunset and Vine and want to order tickets, here's where you can do that. I will see you there.

In 1967, writer-musician Mason Williams released a song called "Classical Gas" and the following year, it became quite a big hit. Part of its popularity no doubt flowed from what we would now call a "music video" though at the time, that was not a term in the common lexicon. Working with a filmmaker named Dan McLaughlin, Williams made a film that set his song to the visual of 3000 great works of art, each of them on the screen for but a fraction of a second.

Williams was then the Head Writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS and the video debuted on The Summer Brothers Smothers Show, which was a summer replacement series that filled Tom and Dick's time slot for a while in the summer of '68. Glen Campbell was the host.

This, uploaded to YouTube by Mason Williams himself, is that 3 minute and 10 second video. If you are familiar with the tune from its frequent radio play, you may notice that this is a different recording of the song. There are several. If you go to Spotify to listen to "Classic Gas" by Mason Williams, there's a version that's 2:36, another that's 3:08 and one that's 3:31 and I don't think any of them are this one. My thanks to Maggie Thompson who discovered this was online…

• Harvey Weinstein's attorney says his client's "whole life has been ruined [because] he never gets to be Harvey Weinstein ever again." Okay, fine. Now, how do we ensure that no one else does?

What's going on with Iran and Saudi Arabia? Fred Kaplan, as usual, is the man with the overview. I wish someone in Washington seemed to have one.

If you're wise enough to visit this website, I figure you're wise enough to watch John Oliver every week…but just in case, here's his segment from last Sunday night about immigration. The most interesting thing about it is that he explains how it actually works and makes the point that the folks discussing it in the public arena — Mr. Trump, especially — don't know. Nor do they care.

There are people out there who simply hate the concept of foreigners coming to our land…and there are enough of these haters that some find it profitable, in terms of money and/or votes, to fan the flames of that hatred. So the whole process gets described, not the way it is but in a way to stir up that anger. Oliver's segment will change none of these minds but it's still nice to have around…

One of my favorite comedian-persons, Ricky Gervais, tweeted the following not long ago…

Please stop saying "You can't joke about anything anymore". You can. You can joke about whatever the fuck you like. And some people won't like it and they will tell you they don't like it. And then it's up to you whether you give a fuck or not. And so on. It's a good system.

I think I agree with that the way he meant it but with one little codicil. There's an increasing tendency, I think, to believe that if you tell a joke about some sensitive subject and folks don't laugh, it's their fault for being too friggin' sensitive. Well, maybe it's that but maybe the joke just wasn't funny. That's also a possibility. I mean, not every joke about dead babies or people with unfortunate physical conditions is hilarious.

There was a period in my life, long ago and far away, when I spent a fair amount of time at the Comedy Store and other venues where new comedians were showcasing and painstakingly trying to be seen. A lot of the guys I was around went on to decent success — and a surprising amount of them, I now think, attained the level of success they deserved. That is to say B+ comics had B+ careers, C- comedians had C- careers and so on. Often when that didn't happen, there was a clear and visible reason why not…like the comedian being too heavy into drinks 'n' drugs or the comedian being difficult to work with. It wasn't because of how good they were on stage.

One of the recurring problems, it seemed to me, was to take this attitude: I am always funny. If the audience doesn't laugh, they're a bunch of idiots or they're a bunch of squares or they're a bunch of losers…something like that. There was one up-and-coming/going nowhere comic who consistently evoked only mild laughter on stage and it was always the crowd's fault for not being smarter and hipper and more appreciative of true comic genius. Don't try to figure out who it was. I don't remember his name and you probably never knew it.

There is such a thing as a bad audience but as I once heard Jay Leno tell a roomful of comics who envied where he then was in his career, "If you get them [bad audiences] all the time, maybe the problem isn't with them." There's also such a thing as a wrong audience — or the wrong material for the room. I suspect if Ricky Gervais somehow got booked to play a retirement community where the average age was Deceased, he'd tell fewer dick jokes.

I love most of what some call "shock" or "edgy" comedians. My current favorite is probably Jim Jefferies who does it with more thought and genuine insight than anyone else I've seen lately. Gervais is good too. I don't think either of them if they bombed would blame it on the audience being too uptight or "politically correct" or anything like that. They know that to be outrageous and to "push the envelope" (as they say) to the point of offending some is not the point of comedy. It can be a nice bonus but it's not an excuse for not being funny.

This blog is on lockdown for a few days while I deal with a matter that would be of no interest to any of its readers. I should have known I'd have to break that radio silence to write about a good friend and a good person who left us.

Bill Schelly passed away last Thursday and the cause is being reported as multiple myeloma, which is a cancer of the plasma cells found in the bone marrow. I would imagine he'd been battling this for some time but I sure hadn't heard anything about it. He was 67.

He was a man who did many things well: A writer and an artist and a particularly fine expert on comic books and comic book fandom. I recommend all of his books to you but I'll just mention five of them…

• Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary, which Bill co-authored with Richard Lupoff, is a fine biography of one of the most important comic book writers of comics' first few decades and an important author of prose science-fiction as well.
• John Stanley: Giving Life to Little Lulu is one of those "Gee, I'm glad someone put in the work to do this book" books. John Stanley was the highly-undercredited wit behind the classic Dell Little Lulu comics and some other pretty good ones, too. Before Bill did this book, not a whole lot was known about the man. That is no longer the case.
• Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad and Revolutionized Humor is also in that category of books someone was going to write and I'm real glad Bill was the guy to do it. Kurtzman, of course, was one of the most important figures in the history of the American comic book and one of the most misunderstood. When I finished reading this book, I called Bill and told him he couldn't have done a better job.
• James Warren, Empire Of Monsters: The Man Behind Creepy, Vampirella, And Famous Monsters is Bill's latest book and when I read this one, I was impressed with how he dug past all the rumors and stories that have been passed around about Jim Warren and got to what I believe and trust is the truth. Warren was a one-of-a-kind figure in publishing, living by his own rule and building a mini-dynasty the hard way: With big ambitions and very little capital. It's hard to capture someone that unconventional but I think Bill pulled it off.
• And then there's Sense of Wonder: My Life in Comic Fandom — The Whole Story, which is Bill's autobiography. With surprising candor, he writes of his life in comic book fandom and of the conflicts and problems he had of confronting his homosexuality at a time when that was even more dramatic than it is now. Bill found great honesty in telling the stories of other folks but it must have been difficult to achieve it about himself. A very good piece of work.

If books with long titles scare you off, be brave. Be very brave. These and his others are quite good. Bill was quite good…just a lovely, talented man. I'm sure going to miss talking to him on the phone and at conventions, and I'm sorry we aren't going to get all the other books that he would have written. Such a loss.

Fifty years ago today on CBS, the first episode of Scooby Doo, Where Are You? debuted. I didn't care much for the show at first…or at second or at third or fifth or ninth. Somewhere around twenty-seventh, I began to develop an appreciation for it and now I have a fondness for it, at least in its primal form. Some of the variations don't thrill me a whole lot but I think every Scooby fan would say that. Here's Rob Salkowitz with some words about the greatest of Great Danes.

Back in this post, I wrote the following…

I used to like juggling lots of assignments, especially if they were very different from one another. I was never happier as a writer than I was during a few periods when I was simultaneously writing animation scripts, live-action scripts and comic book scripts — and often, more than one in each category. At one point for instance, I recall working at the same time on Blackhawk for DC, DNAgents for Eclipse and Groo for whatever publisher we hadn't put out of business at that moment — three very different comics for three different publishers and drawn by three different artists who required different kinds and formats of input from me.

I got something out of each kind of writing — animation, live-action and comics — that I didn't get out of the other two.

I've received about thirty e-mails asking me to elaborate on what I got out of each kind of writing, and especially what do I get out of comic books that I don't get out of the other two? I could probably do thirty posts here answering the question and maybe I'll do more than one but I'll try to cover a few here.

To understand my first answer, you need to divide what you do on any given writing job into two categories: "Writing" and "Non-Writing." "Writing" is when you're sitting at a keyboard thinking of what to put into the script and you're putting it into a script. It can also include moments when you're in a room with one or more other writers, all pitching out ideas and jointly deciding which one will go into that script.

"Non-Writing" is all the other stuff — dealing with the company that's paying you and/or the person (be it an editor or a producer) who is above you, doing promotional work, sitting around with various folks discussing what you're going to go off and write, sitting around with various folks hearing what they don't like about what you wrote, attending events where you're expected to "network," dealing with the concerns and problems of others on the same project, etc. A lot of "Non-Writing" involves meetings. In comics, I've never had to "pitch" anywhere near as hard as I have in the other categories of work.

With occasional exceptions, I prefer "Writing" to "Non-Writing" and I particularly dislike pitching. If I were to take the three kinds of writing I mentioned — comic books, animation and live-action shows — and put them in order based on the extent to which they involve "Writing," that list would look like this…

1. Comic Books
2. Animation
3. Live-Action

And if I were to reorder that list based on which ones paid me the most, the list would look like this…

1. Live-Action
2. Animation
3. Comic Books

These are how it's generally worked with me. There have been exceptions — a certain cartoon show that paid me more than a certain live-action show — but most of the time, this is how they've stacked up for me. Others' mileage may, as they say, vary.

There's something to be said for the glory of a job where you spend most of your time writing and very little of it in meetings. I really like to just sit and write, often all day and into the night. Believe it or not, I'm doing just that at this moment. A reason I have this blog is because apart from occasional tech maintenance, the time I spend on it is all spent writing. I don't have to have meetings with folks who outrank me to discuss what I'm going to post tomorrow or when it will be time to plug Frank Ferrante again or curse the evil that is cole slaw.

But I also like to be paid money and I can't very well do the things that don't pay well or at all if something doesn't pay well or at all. Some folks reading this probably won't believe this next part but there have been some comic book projects that I loved writing — I won't mention any by name; I'll just stick an illustration below — that paid me very little (or near the end, nothing) and those were made possible because I was getting decent bucks at the time on some animated or live-action project.

It was the best of both worlds because I like writing comic books. In most (not all, alas) situations, you don't have to deal with lots of different people who alter your work, criticize your work, put their spin on your work, etc. You just do the work. On an animated or live-action TV show, between you and the audience there are hundreds of people who impact what gets to that audience. In a comic book, it's more like five or six…if that many.

Take Groo the Wanderer, which is one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done in my life. I don't mean most enjoyable jobs because it's never felt like a job to me. It's not something produced by a committee. To me, it feels like it's done by me, my best friend and two other friends who letter and color. You cannot do a sitcom or a cartoon show with just three other guys or with only talented people you like. General rule of thumb: Once you have a dozen people involved in a project, at least one of them is going to be an asshole and/or a non-removable incompetent and you just have to live with that.

Also, I like writing comic books because I like comic books. I grew up with comic books. I'm fascinated by the history of the medium. I enjoy being part of that world and not because it's ever paid me huge sums of money…because it hasn't.

And lastly for now — and remember I may write more about this later because there is more — there are the people I've met and known and worked with in each walk of life. I think the ones in comics have meant more to me than the ones in the other two fields. I just can't imagine my silly existence without all three.

Last Friday on his show, Bill Maher did a "New Rules" speech about Fat Shaming. He's in favor of it. Here's James Corden with a rebuttal of sorts. I think they're both right up to a point…

• Trump has denied rumors that he'll name Mike Pompeo his National Security Advisor while keeping him as Secretary of State. That's a mistake. It would have saved Trump the trouble of finding yet another lying incompetent who'll soon be fired.