Folks keep asking me if I'm going to watch the Presidential Debate on Thursday evening. This is assuming it happens as planned. My answer? I dunno. I'm not sure I can watch Donald Trump for that long in one sitting.

Everyone discussing this online is talking about raising or lowering expectations. My expectation is that neither man will fare so poorly that his boosters can't declare him the obvious winner by a million-billion miles. This whole thing about "performance-enhancing drugs" is another Trump alibi/distraction. There's zero evidence that Biden gets a shot in his incumbent butt before any major address but if you're really invested in the premise that he can barely walk or talk, I guess you have to come up with some explanation when he actually walks or talks.

And of course, the back-up excuse if Trump doesn't do well will be Jake Tapper. Trump dwells in a world of "Heads, I win…tails, it's rigged!"

Me, I think it's way too early for this. Neither man officially has his nomination yet. One hasn't even named his running mate. The polls don't mean much this far ahead of Election Day but even if they did, they've been essentially tied for some time…as anyone who understands the term "margin of error" knows.

Assuming these are the two guys on the ballots in November, I think Biden's going to win because Trump's reminding me more and more of a crook being pursued in a high-speed chase but whose car is coming apart, piece by piece. It's inevitable that he's going to crash but I don't think this debate will be the spike-strip that does it. I think it'll just further polarize a battle that has already become too polarized for the issues to matter as much as they should.

Another classic Bob Newhart monologue.

When I was in Junior High School, there was a talent show and I somehow wound up as one of the audition judges. Students who wished to perform — and there were a lot of them — would come in to a small classroom and perform for a panel of five or so judges and we'd pick the ones who would get to be in the show in the big auditorium. One guy came in, announced he was going to do a comedy routine he'd written and then proceeded to do this one, just about verbatim.

Little did he know that one of the judges (i.e., me) not only had a copy of Bob Newhart's 1960 debut album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, but had played it often enough to know every cut of it by heart. That included the "Driving Instructor" routine.

The student did a nice-enough job of it given that he was maybe 14 years old but after he finished, when it became time for the judges to compliment him and thank him for coming by, I blew the whistle on him…and regretted it. I should have just said thanks and let him go off and then, when the judges discussed who to put in the show, mentioned that his bit was not original and likely to be recognized by many in the audience, especially parents.

The plagiarizing student never forgave me and scowled at me all through the rest of junior high and then through our mutual three years of high school. And I almost didn't blame him for stealing it. As you'll see, it's a pretty funny bit…

Eddie Murphy says he wants to do a remake of my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It appears he doesn't yet have a studio ready to put up the zillions of dollars it would take to make such a picture and I'm wondering if he's saying this just to see if any such backer comes forward. It would probably take zillions for two reasons, one being that Mr. Murphy is, probably deservedly, a very highly-paid movie star…and if you were to pack the film with other stars of that caliber, they'd want Favored Nations with him or something close to it.

You'd also have to spend a lot of money to make the chases and stunts and action scenes pretty damned spectacular…and I wonder if it would be anywhere near as effective. Here's the thing: When my fave film was released in 1963, there was no such thing as CGI and audiences didn't know very much about camera trickery. Along with Spencer Tracy, Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers and the rest, there was another kind of star in the movie: The stuntpeople. Audiences didn't think Buddy Hackett had actually flown an airplane through a billboard but they knew that someone did — for real.

Today, it would be done with CGI. Or if you had someone actually do it, moviegoers would just assume it was CGI. Nobody today believes any stunts in any movies are real unless it's well-publicized that (for example) a Tom Cruise actually did some of his himself. (And you can find plenty of people on the Internet who think that's a lie. By the way, the man who flew the plane through the billboard — for real — was named Frank Tallman.)

So I'm not sure the action stuff would be as thrilling as it was in 1963 Cinerama and I'm not sure you could afford a comparable all-star lineup. Also, there are a lot of funny people around but with a few exceptions, they're not known for or experienced in physical comedy and they aren't "types."  The moment Phil Silvers appeared on the screen in the original film, audiences knew instantly the kind of person he was. He had decades of experience playing avaricious con men and so brought loads of characterization to the screen with him.

Name a star today who has that kind of history. Or name one whose very appearance instantly denotes "prey" like when Don Knotts appears or "ineptness" when we see the Three Stooges dressed up as firefighters. Mad World had a cast of comic actors who went back to the days of silent pictures. A remake today would probably reach back as far as stars whose films came out on VHS.

This is not me thinking that a remake denotes some kind of disrespect for the original. A few years ago when they announced a new Three Stooges movie, some folks who for some reason thought the original Stooges could possibly be disgraced, denounced the whole idea. Well, the movie came and went and I didn't notice any lowering of reverence for Larry, Moe and the third Stooge of your choice. They were those loud knuckleheads then, they're those loud knuckleheads now. Their films are as popular as ever.

I'm not saying that someone with the deepest of pockets couldn't assemble an all-star cast. I'm just saying it wouldn't be easy and it would only be a remake of my favorite flick in the slimmest of ways. And there's one more problem that I probably should mention: If they do make it and I go see it, I'm unlikely to be eleven years old. Then again, others might be.

This is the second episode of the 1977 hostless Laugh-In series. You'll especially enjoy it if you're nostalgic for jokes about Jimmy Hoffa and Anita Bryant. And look carefully and at different moments, you'll get to see my partner Sergio Aragonés being chased by a train, diving into a woman's navel, getting blown-up and taking a bath…

Dave Marron just wrote to ask me this…

What's your opinion of the Hanna-Barbera Laurel and Hardy cartoons? Were they faithful to the Boys, or are they an abomination that should never see the light of day ever again?

My answer would fall somewhere between those two extremes. I covered this matter here back in 2007 but I wouldn't expect anyone to wade through the 31,949 messages on this site — that's the actual number as of this minute — and indeed, few have so I get asked this a lot.

I have a kind of two-tier answer here: The cartoons themselves are as good or bad as anything Hanna-Barbera was producing at the time. They're competent. They have their moments. I don't think they're anyone's favorites. They don't have that much to do with the real performers on whom they're technically based.

I feel almost the same way about the Abbott & Costello cartoons that H-B produced, though the ones of Bud and Lou had a slight edge since they did have Bud Abbott supplying his own voice. Also, Lou Costello was a little more of a cartoon character in real life, his humor depending less on gestures and certain subtleties that were vital to Stan and Ollie. You weren't going to get those gestures and subtleties out of Hanna-Barbera…or probably any animation studio then in operation.

So I don't hate the H-B Stan and Oliver cartoons. They're about on a par with the studio's Lippy Lion and Hardy Har Har cartoons…and similar enough to make it credible that, as rumor has it, they used leftover or recycled Lippy and Hardy scripts. (I just typed "L&H scripts," then realized the initials apply to both. So did the level of comedy.)

So that's one tier of my response. The other has to do with what a shame it was that producer Larry Harmon obtained and exploited the names and likenesses of my two favorite performers. I had some run-ins with Mr. Harmon and didn't like him…which is odd because throughout my life, I've been criticized for liking people that others abhor.

Mr. Harmon, may he rest in peace, came across like Sgt. Bilko without the charm or occasional benevolence, always trying to hustle me into writing something for him for deferred income — or no promise of any ever, no matter what. A lot of folks seems to think that he cheated the heirs of Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy and while I have no direct info on what was signed or what was paid on that matter, I had my own sense of his integrity. It, not the cartoons themselves, colors that whole body of work for me.

I rarely watch Bill Maher these days but this, from his broadcast last night, was too good not to share…

"Louie" wrote to ask…

I have a million questions but here is one that has vexed me since I began my fascination with our shared love as a four year old in 1976 falling in hopeless love with Wonder Woman:

Who designs logos and how? The artists or the letterers? What is the process like? Who decides it's time to change a logo? For example, I assume that in the early 70s, the Fantastic Four logo was changed twice in an attempt to reconfigure after Kirby and then Lee left. But even the minor changes always fascinated me…for instance when the F.F. logo dropped the shadows around the letters and the "the"…were these things decided by committee or on the fly? And back to the F.F., was the original logo modeled after the Twilight Zone lettering?

Some of my favorite covers involved making the logo part of the action…like that Neal Adams X-Men cover and the Batman-Blockbuster cover.

Anyway thank you sir for a fascinating blog all these years.

Generally speaking, the editor is the person with the final say on things like logos. They can be designed by anyone involved in the work, though until fairly recently, most companies had one person who did most of the work on most of the logos. In the fifties and sixties, for example, most of the logos on Harvey Comics were the handiwork of a man named Otto Pirkola and most of the ones on A.C.G. comics were by Edmond Hamilton. Those two gents did art production work for their respective companies.

In the fifties and sixties (and even before), most of the logos on DC Comics were the handiwork of a master designer named Ira Schnapp. He did not have final say. He consulted with editors and the guys in DC's Production Department surely had something to say about most of 'em. A lot of Marvel logos of the sixties were designed by Production Manager Sol Brodsky working in tandem with letterer Artie Simek under the final supervision of Stan Lee.

Brodsky and Simek did the original Fantastic Four logo and, concurrently, the logo on another Marvel book, Amazing Adult Fantasy. They had pretty much the same design…and yes, a logo on the TV series The Twilight Zone inspired the look. The stories in Amazing Adult Fantasy also represented an attempt to do something a bit like The Twilight Zone. Brodsky told me that was what Stan wanted.

To interrupt myself briefly: I should explain here a problem with discussing things like this: Titles do not always mean the same things at different companies or even at the same companies at different times. Someone with the title of "editor" might have total control over the creative content or not. That title might even be ceremonial.

In 1970 when I first met Stan Lee, almost the first thing he said to me (and my partner then, Steve Sherman) was that he was so busy, he didn't have time to read half the comics they were putting out. He was officially the editor but someone like Roy Thomas, for example, was really doing that job on some books. Carmine Infantino's title at DC changed several times but no matter what it was, from the moment he moved into management there until the moment he left the company, he had final authority over covers…and therefore, logos.

Infantino replaced Schnapp with (mainly) Gaspar Saladino who later wound up designing a lot of logos for Marvel also. A lot of professionals consider Saladino the all-time logomaster though I personally preferred Schnapp or Simek.

In any case: These days, a lot of different people design logos and some specialize. Sometimes, artists design logos for their books. Sometimes, editors do. Often, one person will more-or-less design a logo and then a professional letterer will execute the final version the way Brodsky worked with Simek. I designed and executed several of the logos on comics I worked on. It varies.

If you want to know more about logos — a lot more — the expert you seek is Todd Klein, who has designed a lot of the best logos on comics of the last few decades. More important for your purposes is that he has made an exhaustive study of logos of the past and you can access it over on this page. Matter of fact, you can learn just about everything there is to know about the lettering of comic books somewhere on Todd's site.

I have received more evidence and now it appears that the first year that the event we now know as Comic-Con International inhabited the new San Diego Convention Center — where it convenes to this day — was 1991. That's right: 1991. I'll say it once more, this time in boldface: 1991.

I have adjusted dates on this website accordingly. I believe this is the final word on the subject….but I've been wrong before.

No matter how many problems you have, you probably don't have as many as Alex Jones; not unless you're Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani, at least. The Legal Eagle explains why Mr. Jones is in a mess from which he may never be able to extricate himself…

An awful lot of folks sent me messages telling me with great certainty when Comic-Con moved into its present location, the San Diego Convention Center. Unfortunately, a lot of these folks who were absolutely certain were certain about different years. Most insisted that I trust their memories but one, Gary Sassaman, sent actual proof. I knew someone would and I was pretty sure it would be Gary, who was at various times the guy in charge of programming and/or publications and/or the website for the con. He's retired now from all that but still aids the cause of Comic Book History with his website, Innocent Bystander, which I recommend to anyone who shares our interest in that subject.

Based on Gary's actual proof, I have revised my chronology of the events we now call Comic-Con International. The first year the con was in its present location was 1992 and I have also changed the name of its previous venue from "(Old) San Diego Convention Center" to "Convention and Performing Arts Center," which is probably a more accurate — and certainly less confusing — name for that hallowed hall. I corrected a few other minor things while I was at it.

Also as you may have noted, I have changed the heading on this website. For a few months now, it's been a Sergio drawing of me with my injured ankle elevated as beautiful nurses attended to my every need. I've decided I've healed enough to stop displaying that header. I hope I will never have need of it again. And to be honest, I never had nurses like those.

UPDATE THE NEXT MORNING: Nope. It was 1991.

Sorry to hear that the Henson Lot in Hollywood (aka The Chaplin Lot, The Red Skelton Lot, The CBS Lot, The A&M Records Lot and a few other names) is for sale. And I'll be even sorrier if the purchaser rips the whole thing down and puts a shopping mall in its place, which sadly may make the most financial sense.

This article will give you a good overview of the history of the facility which was, as you'll see, built in 1919 to serve the needs of Mr. Charles Chaplin. Located on La Brea Boulevard near Sunset, it's in a spot where you wouldn't expect a studio with all that history to be…and there's a lot more of that history than is commonly known. For instance…

When Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera left MGM and set up their own studio to make cartoons, that's where they first rented offices. They later housed artists in buildings across the street and produced their first TV shows from both locations before building their big building up on Cahuenga Boulevard.

I've visited that lot many times — sometimes for business-type meetings because a number of producers rent space there, sometimes because that's where they do Puppet Up! That is, of course, the adult/improvised puppet show that The Henson Company puts on now and then in the big studio there. Tickets are now on sale for performances in late July and early August and I'm curious how and when a sale of the studio will affect Puppet Up! That of course may depend on whether there ends up being a Target store, an Olive Garden and a Sephora on that hunk of real estate.

There are just so many great stories about that lot. For instance, the linked article says that "Red Skelton bought the studio in 1960 and dubbed it Skelton Studios…Skelton sold the studio in 1962 to CBS, which shot Perry Mason there from 1962 to 1966."

That's true but there's more to the story. Skelton reportedly bought the place over the warnings of his financial advisers because he just couldn't resist owning — and putting his name on — the place where Chaplin made Modern Times and other classics. Obsessed with the idea that the future of television was in color, he also purchased three rental remote vans which had full color videotape capability.

It was only after they were delivered that a problem turned up: Because they were so long, there was no place to park them on the studio lot. They had to be parked on La Brea Boulevard, each occupying two or three parking spaces, and during the hours that the parking meters were in operation, someone at the studio — it was occasionally Red himself — had to go out and put coins in those meters every two hours.

Mr. Skelton was losing a fortune on the place and facing the very-real possibility of being the only person starring in a popular weekly television series to go broke. He was also fighting with CBS.

They wanted him to do his weekly half-hour show from Television City at Beverly and Fairfax for better production values. He wanted to do it from his studio because…well, because it was his studio and that saved him money. Finally, they solved the problem thusly: To keep him on the air, CBS bought the studio from him and to justify and recoup the expense, his show went from a half-hour to an hour. He thereafter did it from Television City and they put Perry Mason (and other shows) into what had been the Chaplin/Skelton lot.

There are a lot of stories like that and I suppose they'll survive even if the studio doesn't. But it would be nice if the studio did.

The theater at Malibu High School is now named the Arlene and Dick Van Dyke Theater in honor of You-Know-Who and his wife. Last weekend in said theater, there was a show to make the renaming official and to raise bucks for the Van Dyke Endowment for the Arts, which aims to fund arts education in Malibu public schools. Jason Alexander was the emcee of the show and at the end, he led all the participants in a rousing rendition of "Let's Go Fly a Kite."

I wasn't there but I have been to several events where Dick performed and that's usually the closing — everyone on their feet singing that song. There's something very magical and warming about singing "Let's Go Fly a Kite" with Dick Van Dyke.

Arlene is the lady in the long dress to the left of Dick. Most of the guys behind him are members of The Vantastix, which is Dick's singing group. And the fellow in the checked coat holding a derby is my buddy Charlie Frye, whose magic and juggling videos I've often featured on this blog. He and his wonderful wife Sherry, who you can barely make out near him, were among the performers for the event and you may be able to recognize other folks…

I've received a number of e-mails disagreeing with me on the year that the San Diego Comic Con moved from the old San Diego Convention Center to the new San Diego Convention Center. And it sure would be a lot easier if all these correspondents agreed with each other but they don't.

So I may have the year wrong, in which case I will make the correction. But it'll be a little while before I have time to do the digging necessary to arrive at an unquestionable answer. If any of you have solid proof and could send it my way, you could save me a lot of time.

The other day in this post, I said that this year's Comic-Con International would be the 56th one and therefore my 56th one. It no longer says that in that post because I received a flurry of e-mails from folks who said my count was off.

This prompted me to try to recall how I'd arrived at the number I cited and I realized how: Someone — an acquaintance of mine — told me that number and I just assumed it was correct.  I forgot that I have acquaintances who don't know what the hell they're talking about.

I decided to do some research and my own math and in so doing, I realized why there's a confusion.  Here is my list…

1. 1970 – Golden State Comic Con – U.S. Grant Hotel
2. 1971 – Golden State Comic Con – Muir College, U.C.S.D. Campus
3. 1972 – San Diego's West Coast Comic Convention – El Cortez Hotel
4. 1973 – San Diego Comic-Con – Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina
5. 1974 – San Diego Comic-Con – El Cortez Hotel
6. 1975 – San Diego Comic-Con – El Cortez Hotel
7. 1976 – San Diego Comic-Con – El Cortez Hotel
8. 1977 – San Diego Comic-Con – El Cortez Hotel
9. 1978 – San Diego Comic-Con – El Cortez Hotel
10. 1979 – San Diego Comic-Con – Convention and Performing Arts Center
11. 1980 – San Diego Comic-Con – Convention and Performing Arts Center
12. 1981 – San Diego Comic-Con – El Cortez Hotel
13. 1982 – San Diego Comic-Con – Convention and Performing Arts Center
14. 1983 – San Diego Comic-Con – Convention and Performing Arts Center
15. 1984 – San Diego Comic-Con – Convention and Performing Arts Center
16. 1985 – San Diego Comic-Con – Convention and Performing Arts Center
17. 1986 – San Diego Comic-Con – Convention and Performing Arts Center
18. 1987 – San Diego Comic-Con – Convention and Performing Arts Center
19. 1988 – San Diego Comic-Con – Convention and Performing Arts Center
20. 1989 – San Diego Comic-Con – Convention and Performing Arts Center
21. 1990 – San Diego Comic-Con – Convention and Performing Arts Center
22. 1991 – San Diego Comic-Con – San Diego Convention Center
23. 1992 – San Diego Comic-Con – San Diego Convention Center
24. 1993 – San Diego Comic-Con – San Diego Convention Center
25. 1994 – San Diego Comic-Con – San Diego Convention Center
26. 1995 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
27. 1996 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
28. 1997 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
29. 1998 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
30. 1999 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
31. 2000 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
32. 2001 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
33. 2002 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
34. 2003 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
35. 2004 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
36. 2005 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
37. 2006 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
38. 2007 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
39. 2008 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
40. 2009 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
41. 2010 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
42. 2011 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
43. 2012 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
44. 2013 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
45. 2014 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
46. 2015 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
47. 2016 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
48. 2017 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
49. 2018 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
50. 2019 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
51. 2022 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center
52. 2023 – Comic-Con International – San Diego Convention Center

So what's the confusion?  I can explain.  My list does not include the one-day "test" con they held in 1970 before the first "real," multi-day convention, the three-day bonus con they held in November of 1975, the two "at home" cons in 2020 and 2021 or the "back from COVID" event they held in November of 2021. If you want to count any or all of them, you can say there have been 52, 53, 54, 55, 56 or 57 of these gatherings.

Take your pick.  The convention operators ignored the test con and the bonus con when they celebrated the 2019 event as Comic-Con #50 so I didn't count the test con or the bonus con either.  I didn't count the two "at home" ones because we were all "at home" and I didn't count the November 2021 one because it was labeled as a Special Edition.  Unless someone finds fault with the above list, I'm sticking with this year's being #53.

One of the routines that took Bob Newhart to stardom…