Our friend Shelly Goldstein has a great article in this month's issue of Written By, the journal of the Writers Guild of America, West. It's called "The Hollywood 10: Screenwriters of Conscience" and it's derived from the script she wrote for a presentation at the 2018 Writers Guild Awards Ceremony. The era of the blacklist — when writers lost their careers because someone didn't like the allegations they were hearing about those writers' personal politics — is in the past but it needs to be remembered so it doesn't happen again. Shelly wrote a good piece about it and you can read it — and that whole issue of Written By — at this link.

Meanwhile, our friend Leonard Maltin has a new edition online of "Maltin on Movies," the must-listen podcast in which he and his daughter Jessie chat with various folks who make or properly appreciate films. This one features a conversation with someone named Al Pacino…and why they'd have that guy on when they could have me back as a guest, I do not understand. Listen to it here and see if you can figure it out.

It's Sgt. Sonny again, this time doing five-part harmony on the hit song from the musical, Rent…

I told you posting would resume shortly. The matter that took me away from blogging for a few days is resolved. My apologies for leaving you with nothing else to read on the whole bloomin' Internet. Here's what I feel like posting about first. Brian Stelter, a reporter I usually respect, recently aroused some controversy…

Stelter opened Sunday's Reliable Sources [on CNN] with an explanation of the ongoing feud between Ingraham and Hogg: Ingraham mocked Hogg's college rejections in a tweet; Hogg called for an ad boycott of her show; companies began to pull their ads; Ingraham apologized; Hogg declined her apology; Ingraham went on vacation as advertisers continued to pull out.

"Are ad-boycotts the right answer here?" Stelter asked his guests. "I'm personally pretty wary of this. I think it's dangerous to see these ad boycott attempts happening more and more often in this country. My view is let's not shut down anyone's right to speak. Let's meet their comments with more speech. Let's try to respond that way."

I keep rethinking this and it always leads me back to the belief that Mr. Stelter is wrong. First off, Laura Ingraham is not having her right to speak shut down. If her show did go off — which is apparently not happening — what she'd be losing was her right to a job on Fox News and to speak before its large audience. And of course, that's not a right. She'd be reduced to the same right to speak that well over 99% of all Americans have…the right to tell her friends what she thinks, to start a blog, to mount a peaceful protest somewhere, to write letters to the editor which might not be printed, etc.

There's no constitutional right to a TV show. If there is, the A.C.L.U. better get busy because a lot of us don't have ours yet.

And here's another way Mr. Stelter's wrong. Let's say the Klopman Diamonds Company is one of Ms. Ingraham's sponsors. My free speech includes the right to write a letter to Mr. Klopman asking, "Are you aware of the nature of the show you're sponsoring? Are you comfy with having yours ads follow an attack on a survivor of the Parkland shooting?"

Mr. Klopman has the right to decide he doesn't want people associating his product with that kind of mean-spirited smear. He might yank his ads strictly as a business decision, fearing that people will be less inclined to buy his product because of that association or he could do it just because he thinks it's offensive and wants no part of bringing Laura Ingraham to America.

But he has that right and it's tied up with his freedom of expression. And frankly, with a president and a major broadcasting corporation trying to convince the American public that any news that is not to their liking has to be a deliberate, conspiratorial lie, I think we have greater threats to the free press in this country than Laura Ingraham losing the sponsorship of Office Depot, Jenny Craig and Miracle-Ear.

• Watching news reports of "active shooter" on CNN. They have absolutely no idea what's happening there so they're just telling us everything that might be happening there.

Hey, how do they make bubble gum?

As steady readers of this blog know, I have a lot of amazing friends. This is deliberate misdirection: If you surround yourself with talented people, you can fool some of the people some of the time into thinking you're in that league. In that spirit, let me tell you about Charlie Frye and his wife Sherry…

Charlie and Sherry have been touring longer than they might admit as Charlie Frye and Company. Sherry is the Company. She "assists" (purposely not by much) as Charlie does impossible feats of juggling, balance, magic and physical comedy. The act involves no speaking so they can do it all around the world — and do. It is not uncommon for me to get an e-mail from them from Sri Lanka or New Zealand. No matter where they wander, they delight audiences since juggling is a universal language. Here's a little taste of what they do…

I love this act. No matter how many times I see it, I love it. When they were playing Vegas a lot, I used to go there and see them often…and not just because of the showgirls walking around backstage naked. Well, not entirely because of the showgirls walking around backstage naked. I especially loved going to a late dinner with Charlie and Sherry because Charlie would start juggling the plates and the silverware and the veal cutlet and once I think we stopped him from trying to balance a very short busboy on his nose.

Anyway, tonight's the last night of a week-long engagement at the Magic Castle up in Hollywood. Charlie and Sherry haven't played there for a few decades because they've been too busy…and I'm going to claim partial-credit for getting them to make time. Jack Goldfinger, who books the acts for the Castle, asked me to do a little arm-twisting…and that was one reason they came to town. Another was that I told Charlie — who is also a pretty good cartoonist — that if he performed in L.A., I'd bring my partner Sergio Aragonés to see him. Sergio is one of Charlie's heroes.

So that's what I did last Wednesday night. Sergio and I put on ties (the Castle has a dress code in the evenings) and we went up there, dined and took in the 8 PM performance. Charlie and Sherry shared the stage with the fine magic act of Mark Kalin and Ginger, and it really was a great show. Sergio was blown away by what he saw on stage so afterwards, I had to stand there as Sergio and Charlie exchanged compliments.

And more compliments and more compliments and if Charlie hadn't had to do the 10 PM show, those two guys would still be standing there gushing over each others' skills.  Much of the discussion was about how they're kind of in the same line of work, creating wordless visual humor and having to practice for thousands of hours to be able to present it effectively.

In the photo above, Sherry and Charlie are on either side of Sergio.  I'm the big guy with the orange tie…and the fellow at left is a pretty great performer, himself.  It's Paul Reubens, who I worked with years ago and who happened to be at the same performance to catch Charlie's act.  You probably know him best in his character of Pee Wee Herman but Paul does an awful lot of other things and he has something coming up that sounds pretty exciting.  It was nice catching up with the guy.

Anyway, that's what I did Wednesday night.  Thursday, I stayed home all day and worked on a script and on my taxes.  Friday, my assistant John and I had lunch with Charlie and Sherry but otherwise, it was a pretty boring day, too.  A little later today, I'll try and tell you about Saturday when things got interesting again.

Okay, so this year's WonderCon is history and it's time to turn our attention to this year's Comic-Con International which takes place July 19-22 with a Preview Night on 7/18.  So we are now 109 days away.

If you're going and you need a hotel room, it's time to do something about it.  The "Early Bird" hotel sale for rooms in the Mission Valley and Airport area has been open for some time.  If one of those locations suits you, go there a.s.a.p. and try to book something because the list of what's available is thinning and the whole Early Bird sale will be shut down this coming Tuesday, April 3rd.

This coming Wednesday, April 4, the General Sale commences.  Read this to learn how it works.  There will be more people battling for rooms than there are rooms so you need to study up on the procedure to have a shot at getting one.  Happy Hotel Hunting…and no, if you don't get one, I can't help you.

I've been meaning to write the second part of my WonderCon Report but it's been a busy week around here.

Where was I? Oh, right: Saturday. Saturday, parts of WonderCon looked like a Cosplay Con with a few tables for people to sell comic books. I keep hearing that the people who do this just want to be noticed and to "stand out" and I don't completely buy that. If they wanted to "stand out," half of them wouldn't be dressed as Harley Quinn or The Joker. Harley Quinn is such a popular costume, I even saw women dressed up as her!

Some folks find them annoying but I love all cosplayers who don't brandish props that can (and do) thoughtlessly poke people and who understand that when someone asks to take their photo, they can't just stop anywhere and strike a pose. If it's on a walkway, other people may be trying to walk that walkway. I saw one spot where we came close to having a Four-Klingon-Pileup.

My two Saturday panels were late in the day so I just wandered around talking to folks and browsing the aisles. There were some wonderful craftworks there to be browsed and if I had any room left in my house for such things, some of them would have been purchased by me, too. As it was, some of the sellers seemed to be doing a brisk business.

That day's panels — Quick Draw! and Cartoon Voices — were back-to-back in the same room, the way we go it at Comic-Con in San Diego. We filled the room to capacity for the first one and the few seats that were vacated after Quick Draw! were quickly filled for Cartoon Voices. Both were in Room North 200B, which is in the convention center's new add-on building…very nice but also a little far from the part of the main hall where I'd been hanging out.

Our Quick Draw! draw-ers were Tom Richmond (from MAD), Lonnie Millsap (from this very funny site) and Sergio Aragonés (also from MAD, as well as Groo the Wanderer). Scott Shaw!, who usually occupies one of those seats, was unable to make it to WonderCon but we expect to see him back, Sharpie in hand, for San Diego. On the Cartoon Voices panel, we had Neil Ross, Eliza Jane Schneider, Wally Wingert, Julie Nathanson and Townsend Coleman.

Fave moment of the panel? There were several but I loved when Wally displayed a new acquisition he'd brought to the con…a replica Muppet from the famous "Mahna Mahna" routine. Wally brought it out, made it say "Manha Manha" and the whole audience, without prompting, began singing "Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo."

Sunday, I did two more panels. There was Cover Story where we discuss the design of comic book covers, in this case with Dan Jurgens, Ed Piskor, Mitch Gerads and Ryan Benjamin. Later came the Annual Jack Kirby Tribute with my ol' partner Steve Sherman, Tom Kraft of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, and attorney Paul S. Levine. Interest in Jack and his work has never been greater and I expect to keep saying that the rest of my days.

That's about all that comes to mind. I very much enjoyed chatting with old friends and meeting many readers of this blog. I had one frustrating conversation with a Trump supporter who sought me out to explain to me that everything bad about Trump the press says is a conspiracy of lies, whereas everything good you hear about him is absolutely, incontrovertibly true. Guess that must be so if this guy said it. As a bonus for the entire weekend, I made great time back on the 5 Freeway…and I think that's the end of this report. If you made it there, I hope you had even a quarter as good a time as I did.

Hey, remember the two tickets I had for sale for Saturday night? They're showing Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills Adjacent and it's followed by a live Q-and-A with John Cleese himself. I offered 'em here and a friend swooped in and grabbed them…and now, he can't go.

Two seats in Row G of the Front Balcony. They cost someone else $160.20 and we'll let 'em go for $160.00 — a savings of not one but two dimes. Write me if you want 'em and this time, All Sales Final. And if you have an online account with Ticketmaster, I can transfer them to you that way so you know they're genuine.

Earlier today, I posted an obit for a very talented cartoonist named Lee Holley. Here's a video from a few years ago of Lee drawing Dennis the Menace and his own creation, Ponytail. He makes it look so easy — and if you had as much experience as he did, it might be…

The Rasmussen Poll usually favors Republicans and it's now saying Trump's popularity is fairly high. No doubt he thinks that's the only one that matters…and will until it tells him something he doesn't like. For what little it may be worth, I don't think the measure of any politician's popularity means a lot until such time as there's a named alternative to them. Asking "Would you rather have [name of elected official] or some unnamed alternative who isn't even running yet?" is different from asking folks if they'd prefer a named alternative. You not only can't beat something with nothing, you can't even measure preference against nothing.

Here are some articles I read today which you might want to read today…

• Trump has been hammering Amazon — gee, I wonder why he'd attack a company owned by Jeff Bezos — and insisting they don't pay high-enough postal rates. Here's what that's all about and why he's probably wrong.
• Fred Kaplan wonders (and has a theory) about who made the single worst decision of the Iraq War. There were a lot of "worst" decisions made during that mess but only a couple of folks who could have made the real "worst one."
• William Saletan tries to get to the bottom of how John Bolton, Trump's incoming national security adviser, feels about Muslims and Islam. As you'll see, this is not an easy thing to figure out.
• A political theorist offers political theories as to why Trump's base doesn't seem to care if he's corrupt. I think it's a lot simpler. They hate not having one of "their guys" in power so much that they're willing to overlook anything.
• Jonathan Chait explains why Trump signs a budget then denounces it as terrible. It's because if he said it was great, then he'd have to take some responsibility for what results from it.
• Charles P. Pierce on how Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's idea of democracy is to not hold elections he fears Republicans will not win. And hey, what's more democratic than not letting people vote?

Like you, I'm aghast at some of the lies and personal attacks being hurled at the young survivors of the Parkland school shooting. Some people will say or do anything just to deny an opponent a smidgen of Higher Moral Ground…or even Equal.

Last Monday morning, a single-engine Mooney M20E airplane crashed and burned at the airfield in Marina, California. The pilot, who was reportedly killed upon impact, was the very fine cartoonist, Lee Holley.

Lee was born April 20, 1932 in Phoenix. He got his first cartooning job at age 15 and by the time he was 21, he was doing animation and layout work for the Warner Brothers cartoon studio. In 1957, he began assisting Hank Ketcham on Dennis the Menace, drawing the Sunday page, a few of the comic books and much of the merchandise art. That went on until 1960 when Lee sold his own syndicated strip, Ponytail, which he did until 1988. Between 1980 and 1988, Lee and his friend and frequent collaborator Frank Hill also produced the syndicated Bugs Bunny newspaper strip.

Lee was no stranger to Bugs, having worked on his cartoons at the Warner Brothers studio. But he also drew Bugs in comic books for Western Publishing's Gold Key line and that made me very happy because I was writing a lot of them. He drew most of the new stories of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Tweety & Sylvester that ran in the early issues of the revived Looney Tunes comic that Western launched in 1975 and did occasional stories for the Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig comics. (Online sources say he also drew The Jetsons for Gold Key but I don't think that's true.)

The editors at Western loved the way Lee drew teenage girls so much that they asked me to create an Archie-like teen comic for him to draw. The result was Tom, Dick and Harriet (not my title) which had three tryout issues but never graduated to a regular series. I wrote the first two and Lee did a terrific job on his end. We were both sorry there weren't more. Other comic books Lee drew would include the Ponytail comics published by Dell and later Charlton.

Though we corresponded a bit, I only spoke to Lee in person once — at a San Diego Comic Con in the seventies. He was a very nice man who obviously loved his profession…and why wouldn't he when he was so good at it?

Hey, ya know what Turner Classic Movies is showing tomorrow night? A whole batch of rarely-seen Disney movies, hosted (and maybe selected) by my four-star film friend, Leonard Maltin…and who better? Here's the rundown on what they're running, not in this order…

• The Golden Touch (1935)
• Mickey's Trailer (1938)
• Mr. Duck Steps Out (1940)
• The Sword and the Rose (1953)
• Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue (1953)
• In Search of the Castaways (1962)
• The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968)
• The Journey of Natty Gann (1985)

Check the schedule for the precise times and remember that precise times on TCM are usually not precise so if you're DVR'ing, pad your recordings. There's some pretty good, hard-to-see material there. The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band is kind of a "lost" movie musical with songs by the Sherman Brothers and nice performances by John Davidson, Walter Brennan, Buddy Ebsen and many others. If you look fast, you can spot Goldie Hawn in her film debut as one of the dancers.

Here's a sad story about the current financial condition of a very good guy, William Messner-Loebs. Here's what I wrote about Bill last year when we presented him with the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing…

Bill Messner-Loebs has been a cartoonist and writer since the 1970s. He has worked for DC, Marvel, Comico, Power Comics, Texas Comics, Vertigo, Boom!, Image, IDW, and the U.S. State Department (for which he produced a comic about the perils of land mines). He has written Superman, Flash, Aquaman, Mr. Monster, Hawkman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Dr. Fate, Jonny Quest, Spider-Man, Thor, and the Batman newspaper strip. He wrote and drew Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire and Bliss Alley, and he co-created The Maxx and Epicurus the Sage. He has also delivered pizzas, done custom framing, been a library clerk, sold art supplies, and taught cartooning.

A guy like this should not be in the precarious situation he's in. Everyone reading this who reads current comic books can name a whole bunch that would be better written if the editors had hired Bill Loebs to craft some of his always-fine stories. If I were a publisher right now, I'd seize on this chance not just to help someone down on his luck but for strictly selfish reasons — to get more good books into my line by grabbing onto this fine and available resource.

Read the story. Think if there's anything you can do to help. A donation to the organization helping people in his predicament would be nice but what Bill needs is good, steady employment. Anyone out there got any?

This Saturday night, the Saban Theater — which is almost in Beverly Hills — is running the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, followed by an in-person Q-and-A with John Cleese. Ticketmaster has a few seats left in the last two rows of the rear balcony…which are not only not in Beverly Hills, they're not even in the same troposphere.

If you wanna go but wanna sit closer, I have a friend who has two seats in the front balcony for a lot less than some "resellers" are asking. Drop me a note if you're interested.

In the meantime, some of you may be holding tickets for this Thursday night to see Seth Rudetsky interview and accompany the wonderful Chita Rivera at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, which actually is in Beverly Hills. Well, in case you haven't heard, the event has been rescheduled for May 10.