Happy to awake to the news that our fifth volume of Pogo reprints has been nominated for an Eisner Award in the category of "Best Archival Collection/Project — Strips." In fact, this pleases me a lot more than the times when my own work has been directly nominated. I'm only the co-editor on these books and obviously, they ain't voting for what I did. It's a collection of the work of one of the world's all-time great cartoonists and humorists, Walt Kelly. How inept would you have to be to co-edit a book of Kelly's best work and not have it be a great book? A rhesus monkey could do my job if he could write a legible foreword and say, "Oh, we need to clean up the smudges on that stat."

The design of this series required serious talent and skill but that was done by my late, lovely friend Carolyn Kelly. We are now following her template. The Fantagraphics crew and my co-editor Eric Reynolds handle all the tech stuff, formatting and restoring the material. Maggie Thompson and R.C. Harvey contribute vital, highly-researched supplemental text and we have other fine folks helping us out in a number of ways.

Me…I'm in on a pass. If the book wins, I get to go up on stage and pick up the trophy and make a little speech and everyone will congratulate me. If it doesn't win, my life is largely unaffected and I won't be hurt. It won't be my work that loses.

I'm quite serious about this. I think creative people often harm themselves by taking awards way too seriously…like they can't be proud of their work or secure in their chosen profession until someone has handed them a plaque or a statuette. With some, it doesn't seem to matter who gives it to them or what the selection process involves. It's an award, damn it, and that proves something good about you.

Of course, I'd rather see the Pogo book win as opposed to not win. It might sell a few more books. It'll make everyone involved with making the books happier in some way. Most of all, if by some chance Carolyn is watching from on high, it will show her we kept up the standards for the series she launched, and I'll get to say something nice about her in my acceptance speech. But if we don't win, I'll post it here…and Walt Kelly's work will be no less wonderful.

• At the moment, there are twenty announced candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Even without running, you and I will probably tie at least half of them in the total number of delegates won.

When the Beany & Cecil cartoons first appeared on TV in 1959, the show was funded and sponsored by Mattel Toys. Part of the financial plan was that Mattel put out a ton of Beany & Cecil toys, most of which were pretty good. Here's a commercial for one that I owned back then…

Gee, it looks like Herman Cain is not going to get that seat on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. It seemed so certain a few weeks ago.

And maybe it helps to remember back to September of 2011, Mr. Cain was the leader in the race for the Republican nomination, snatching that title away from the previous leader, Rick Perry. I believe this was before Newt Gingrich was the leader and actually went on TV to explain he was the "presumptive nominee." He had it all locked-up and no one could possibly wrest the nomination from him…certainly not Mitt Romney.

Right now, the Democratic field is these folks in this order: Biden, Sanders, Harris, Buttigieg, O'Rourke, Warren, Klobuchar, Booker, Gillibrand and Castro. Biden and Sanders are neck-and-neck and there's a big gap between the two of them and the rest. (I just accidentally typed "big gasp" and fixed it. Maybe I should have left it like that.)

Yes, someone could break out and steamroller the rest but it seems more likely to me that this is going to be one of those races where the lead's going to change from week to week. Just remember how the lead changed constantly in 2011 for G.O.P. contenders…and that was after the primaries started. The first primary of this election is still 292 days away.

With the aid of my colleague John Plunkett, I have succeeded in restoring more than 600 video links in past postings on this blog and labeling a few hundred others as dead-ends. Over the next month or so, another 200-300 might reopen for business.

I need to mention this every so often here: A lot of folks wonder why when someone in the entertainment field (including comic books and animation) dies, I sometimes don't write up an obit for this blog. That generally means I don't think I have anything interesting to say about the person that others aren't saying…and probably saying better. It could also mean that I don't have anything I think is proper to say at the time.

A lot of you send me links to articles or video clips that you think oughta be on this site. In some cases, a lot of you send me one…like I think twelve people sent the link to the Gwen Verdon number that I put up here yesterday and eight of them arrived almost simultaneously. Thanks to everyone who sends in every suggestion, even the ones I don't use. And if I post a link but don't thank you by name on the blog, it's because there were a lot of you.

To the surprise of as many as five people in this country, Joe Biden has announced he's running for president. I think Joe Biden would make a fine president and I don't just mean that in the sense that after Trump, I think a caterpillar would make a fine president. The bar's about as low as it can go but Biden would even be good by the old standards.

Here comes the "but"…

I don't think he's a great candidate. I could be surprised but I think we have a whole new set of rules for that and they require someone tougher, feistier and less inclined to be polite. If Trump is the candidate — and I still don't think that's inevitable — the nominee oughta be someone sharper and perhaps less statesmanlike. I also don't see Biden as a great uniter of his party.

Democrats need to learn a lesson from all the Republicans who decided, "We'll take anybody — A-N-Y-B-O-D-Y — who will win." There are Trump backers who are privately appalled at the way he treats women, minorities, disaster victims, immigrants, etc. and once would never have considered voting for someone who lies constantly, changes position from day to day, brags about assaulting women, flaunts his ignorance, kisses up to dictators, obsesses about himself and probably has multiple criminal acts in his past business dealings…

…but they'll live with all that if it means their side is in power. Look at the way many so-called evangelists are licking the face of a man who signs Bibles but has probably never opened one.

Democrats will threaten to vote Independent if their nominee likes to sniff women's hair. Or isn't "progressive enough" on some issue.

I'm not sure there's any nominee who can please enough of the Democratic party to get them all behind the ticket. If there is, I don't think it's Joe Biden…but boy, am I ready to vote for him.

From a 1967 episode of The Carol Burnett Show, here's the real Gwen Verdon. It's one of those numbers where someone took "one of those songs the kids today like" and tried to make it palatable for older viewers…

A musical based on the movie Tootsie opened on Broadway last night and it got the kind of reviews that suggest it'll be there for a long time. Almost all the critics called it hilarious and crowd-pleasing…and an even better indicator is that Rex Reed said it was a mess. It would not necessarily be a foolish policy to make your theatergoing selections by going to everything Rex Reed said was bad and avoiding the shows he's liked.

Anyway, here's a page with links to many of the reviews of Tootsie. I wonder how many (if any) of the lines they said were so wonderful were written by Larry Gelbart.

I have three days in New York coming up and I've got to figure out what I'm going to see while I'm there. I kinda want to see the King Kong musical. I've heard mixed things about the plot/music part but everyone's saying the 20-foot King Kong puppet alone is worth the price of admission. I'm also spending way too much time wondering what's going to become of that massive monkey marionette when this show closes. It weighs a ton (literally)…so where do you put it? Do you store it? If so, why and where and for what future usage?

For that matter, might this be the only opportunity ever to see this show? I mean, it's not like they can do a national tour with a star who takes weeks to set up and take down. And the little 99 and 300 seat theaters around are unlikely to do this musical. They could just put a guy in some costume that's not being used for National Gorilla Suit Day.

I'm going to guess they're going to try and find a permanent home for this show and its title star, perhaps at a theme park or someplace. Las Vegas is probably out. It hasn't had much luck with musicals.

I'd just hate to see Kong wind up with a talk show on basic cable or sitting behind a table at an autograph show. Maybe he can go on Jeopardy! He could win easily. All he has to do is step on James Holzhauer

As a kid, I was a real fan of a recording artist named Ross Bagdasarian who sometimes went under the name David Seville.  And as an adult, I'm still a kid and still an admirer of his clever, fun-to-listen-to records.  He became most famous for The Chipmunks — Theodore, Simon and especially Alvin but he did non-Chipmunks records like his big hit, "The Witch Doctor" and my favorite single of his, "The Trouble with Harry."

I know a lot about him but I must admit I don't know as much about Mr. Bagdasarian-Seville as I'd like. This, I hope to rectify by reading a new book by our pal Mark Arnold, who writes great books about stuff I like. The new one is Aaaaalllviiinnn!: The Story of Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., Liberty Records, Format Films and The Alvin Show…and if you're going to read that title aloud, you'd better have them speed your voice up. You can order a copy at this link.

Mark will be discussing this book and its subject today on Stu's Show. He will be joined there by another pal, Scott Shaw!, who will tell you why the Chipmunks' 1961 prime-time series, The Alvin Show, was one of the best cartoon programs ever done for television.

Stu's Show, hosted by your genial host Stu Shostak, is a simulcast. You can stream the video on a Roku-enabled TV or device or on your computer or you can just listen to the audio. To find out how to do this, go to this page…and you can even watch it there at the appointed time. That time begins at 4 PM West Coast Time, 7 PM in the east and other times in other time zones. It'll run at least two hours, more likely three, maybe even more. If I were Stu, I'd pre-record the whole thing and speed it up.

Remember, it's live and it's free. After the webcast, you can download the show from a different section of the same website for a very modest price. And while you're there, check out some of the other fine episodes of Stu's Show. You have plenty to pick from.

Here's a few minutes about a wonderful man named Jack Kirby…with testimony from another visionary, Neil Gaiman, whose view of Jack precisely matches my own. And it pretty much matches that of everyone who worked with Jack or just knew him well.

I'm not sure I'd call him the Creator of the Marvel Universe, as this video does. I think that was a collective work. But if you don't get that he did a lot more than draw pretty pictures and that so much that is Marvel came from his imagination and concepts, you don't — to coin a phrase — know Jack…

This is the first part of a Cranky, Rambling Rant that will run on this blog over the next few days…

I was 14 when the original Star Trek TV series debuted in 1966. I didn't catch the first few episodes but a few of my friends did and loved 'em madly. It was probably around Week Four that I gave it a try and didn't see what the fuss was all about and I'm sorry. I just never warmed to the show or to any component of the massive franchise that it became. I wish I could. It's always nice to have one more thing in your life that brings you joy.

I absolutely do not hate it. I don't feel like I have much hate within me and if I did, I certainly wouldn't waste any of it on a TV show. I'd save 85-90% of it for people who do evil, hurtful things to me and/or others. The rest, of course, would all be directed at cole slaw.

If I have any negative feelings about Star Trek — and I really don't — they have to do with the kind of folks who get genuinely angry when you don't love what they love. One occasionally encounters such people — these days, not so much about Star Trek as maybe Harry Potter and/or Game of Thrones or something else I haven't gotten around to sampling. Back in high school when the original Star Trek was on, I'd have conversations that went sorta/kinda like this…

SOMEONE ELSE: Hey, what did you think of last night?

ME: What happened last night?

SOMEONE ELSE: Trek, of course.

ME: I didn't watch it.

SOMEONE ELSE (out of genuine concern:) What happened? You sick or something? Family emergency?

ME: No, I just don't watch it.

SOMEONE ELSE (a look of shock followed by either mounting hostility or pity:) Don't you understand it's the greatest TV show ever done?

No, I didn't understand that…or why we all had to agree on one. Sometimes, the Someone Else would embark on a holy mission to indoctrinate me to something I couldn't help but love as much as they did…for my own good, of course. I finally got fed up with this but before I did, I ceded to their urgings that I catch this or that "wonderful" episode in reruns.

One girl in my class thought it was humanly impossible — like flapping your arms and flying to Mars impossible — to watch "The Corbomite Maneuver" and not beam forever aboard the Trek Fan Club. I watched it and didn't dislike it. I just didn't like it enough to care if I ever saw another episode. From that point on, she treated me like I was someone to be avoided at all costs. Women have found so many valid reasons to stay far from me that I couldn't understand why anybody would seize on that silly one.

Some time later, I was working on a project Friday evening at a friend's home. The friend announced — like I should have known this — that it was the first night of Season 3 of Star Trek and that at 10 PM, all work would stop on our project because we absolutely had to watch you-know-what. The way he said it, I could tell non-compliance was out of the question. "You'll see how great it is," he said.

It was an episode called "Spock's Brain" and during it, I could see him slowly understanding how someone could not love Star Trek. At its end, he turned off the set, said "Let's just pretend that never happened" and we went back to work.

That was the first time I felt it might be okay to mingle in the circles of comic book and science-fiction fans and not worship that show. Later on, I encountered more folks who were indifferent to it and even some who wasted perfectly usable hatred on it. They're fewer in number now but I still sometimes come upon people who cannot imagine the non-love of that which they adore.

A comic book editor once called and went on for three minutes telling me how I would be thanking him for the rest of our mutual lives because he was about to offer me my dream assignment.  Over and over, withholding the name of this dream assignment, he told me, "You're gonna be so excited."  I finally said, "Okay, okay. I'll thank you forever. What is it?"

He said he wanted me to write the Star Trek comic book.

Even over the phone, I could hear his stunned expression when I immediately said, "Thanks but you should offer that to someone who loves Star Trek and follows it" and I even tossed out a few nominations. That editor is no longer among the living and he never spoke to me again without telling me he still couldn't believe I'd turned that down. He'd say, "Do you know how many other writers begged me for that job?"

This feels like a good place to end Part One of this Cranky, Rambling Rant. Part Two will be along in a few days and little (if any) of it will be about Star Trek. In case you haven't realized it, this isn't a rant about Star Trek. It's about people who confuse their opinions with inarguable fact and how as I get older, I have less and less time in my life for those discussions. This, even as the Internet makes it harder and harder to avoid them.

I was a big fan of Steve Allen, one of the wittier performers ever on television. Milton Berle used to say that Allen's mother — a stage performer in vaudeville named Belle Montrose — was the funniest women in that field and the source of Steve's sense o' humor. I'm not sure how true that is but I just came across this rare video, introduced by Mr. Berle, of Steve performing with his mother on some TV show. This is reportedly the act she did for many years with Steve's father…

Someone who, like me, thinks most restaurants are too noisy has invented an app to do something about it. He's concerned about hearing loss. So am I but I'm also annoyed when I can't hear the people sitting right across the table from me.

I just downloaded this and I'm going to experiment with it. I'll report back.

Jerry Seinfeld on How To Write A Joke…