On Veterans Day, Marvel Comics salutes Jack Kirby…for his military service.

John Cleese is on a book tour, popping up everywhere. He is never not interesting so I'll link to this interview which Vince Waldron told me about. I'll probably be linking to others, plus I'm going to go see him speak next week. Betcha dozens of people there try to get his photo even though as he mentions in the piece here, he doesn't like doing that.

My pal Steve Stoliar is a writer and an actor and a Marx Brothers historian…in fact, he's the guy who worked in Groucho's house the last few years of the great comedian's life. I have plugged Steve's book about that experience before and I'll plug it again. I think I even plugged it before I knew Steve so you know I'm sincere. It's a real good read.

Via the Marx connection, Steve got to know another Friend of Groucho, the eminent TV host Dick Cavett. This led to, among other things, an odd TV appearance by my friend Steve. But here — I'll let him tell you about it…

Cavett had a late-night talk show on the USA Network in 1985-6. He came to L.A. to tape some shows, amongst them a writers panel with three legends: Pat McCormick, Larry Gelbart and David Lloyd. His secretary, Judy Englander, called me and said that Dick wanted me to be a part of the panel to represent young, aspiring writers.

I had great mixed feelings: On the one hand, if I tried to pass myself off as their equal, people would think, "Who is this jerk?" On the other hand, if I just sat there silently, radiating, "Gosh! Golly! Jeepers!", people would think, "Who is this idiot?" So I was nervous. A few days before the taping, Judy called to say I wouldn't be participating after all, because "Pat McCormick doesn't want to be on a panel with more than three people." I said, "Pat McCormick is more than three people," but was relieved to be off the hook.

The day of the taping, Larry Hussar and I went down to the Mayfair Music Hall to watch the show from the audience. I had on one of my trademark Hawaiian shirts and blue jeans. We loved listening to everyone's stories and Cavett was longtime friends with all three writers. Then, just after the show appeared to have wrapped, a production person came down to me in the audience and said, "The next guest was supposed to be Rod Steiger, but he's trapped in Malibu because of the mudslides, so we're going to bring you out and add you to the panel and tape a few more segments."

I went pale and clammy, then asked, "But — what am I supposed to do or say?" She said, "Dick will explain everything."

That was October of 1985. Dick has yet to explain anything.

Next thing I knew, someone was running a microphone cord down my shirt and tucking a remote into my back pocket, another chair was brought out, I was plunked down into it, and Cavett introduced me to this cluster of brilliant wits, my heart pounding and my mind racing. I was still faced with how to come off as more than a mute and less than an undeserving punk. Here's how I handled it…

Brian Beutler gives some good reasons why the Supreme Court won't vote to gut Obamacare. I don't have a lot of confidence in anyone's predictions about what the Supreme Court will do and I don't think some of its members care all that much if a given ruling is illogical if it achieves the political result they crave. (See Bush v. Gore)

Still, I think Obamacare will never go away unless it's replaced by something better (and no one seems to have anything better) or the same thing disguised as a Republican alternative. I'm not even sure most of those who say they want to "repeal and replace," want it to go away. For one thing, none of them seem to have or be trying to find a real replacement. I think they just want to gin up anger against the Affordable Care Act, exploit that anger for personal gain, and then not have to face the fallout from taking away health care from people who will die because of it.

So there was this bear in the Polish Army…

No, really. A real bear. In the Army. Honest. A filmmaker named Brendan Foley is working on a movie about him and I know Brendan. He's a decent, honest fellow who's married to my pal, Shelly Goldstein. If Brendan says it's so, it's so. Read all about it here. He's like Harry Speakup but he's a bear.

Obama's Death Panels have already claimed one victim. They ordered the execution of Bea Arthur! Is Betty White safe?

I was involved with two comic art books that are out this month. One features the work of Walt Kelly in his prime. The other features the work of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. At the funeral of Jack's wife Roz, I introduced my friend Carolyn (daughter of Walt) to Lisa Kirby (daughter of Jack) and I couldn't help but think I was witnessing a moment. The DNA of the greatest "funny animal" comic artist was meeting the DNA of the greatest "adventure" comic artist. If you could have somehow merged the two, you could have grown a new Wally Wood.

I'll tell you more about the Simon-Kirby book tomorrow. Right now, I'm just noting for the record that Volume 3 of The Complete Pogo, the one that's just been released, is on the top of the New York Times list for its category. Long before I met Carolyn, I thought Mr. Kelly's Pogo was the best newspaper strip ever done — a viewpoint that is hardly unique to me.

We're reprinting it chronologically and in this volume, we get to the years when Walt Kelly really hit his stride. I don't think he got any better than what's in this book because you really couldn't. But he did maintain that standard until his health gave out many, many years later. If you haven't ordered a copy yet, here's an Amazon link. Comics don't get any better than this.

Matt Taibbi, now back at Rolling Stone, tells us about a most interesting whistle-blower. I'm still eager to see some Wall Street tycoon frog-marched into prison so I can see what that looks like.

My pal Bob Elisberg has it out with a theater manager about that "handling charge" he was assessed on a ticket that wasn't really handled much. The rule of thumb buying tickets online is that the less they have to do, the more they charge you for it.

Canter's Delicatessen (a favorite hangout of the newsfromme staff) revamped its classic menu a few years ago, adding a bunch of new items. One of the few deletions was the Billy Gray's Band Box Special, a sandwich that was probably about the same size as Billy Gray's Band Box.

Its inclusion on the Canter's menu caused many a diner to wonder, "What the heck is or was Billy Gray's Band Box?" A waitress there once told someone who asked at my table that it was the restaurant next door to Canter's and that years ago, the Canter family bought it, knocked out a wall and expanded into it. This is not true.

Billy Gray's Band Box was a nightclub about a block and half south of Canter's on Fairfax. At first it was a jazz club then it became a comedian's paradise…and a prototype for The Comedy Store, which in turn has been the model for hundreds if not thousands of other establishments. My pal Kliph Nesteroff, who is becoming the Doris Kearns Goodwin of comedians from the fifties and sixties, has been researching the place for some time.

Some time ago, he sent me an ad for it giving its address — 123 N. Fairfax — and I stared at it for long minutes, trying to figure out what's there now. That address was so familiar, I thought, that I should know. Finally, I gave up and went to Google Maps where I found out why it was so familiar: It's now more or less the parking lot for the Wells Fargo Bank where I used to have an account.

Kliph has a book coming out next year that we await with great interest. An excerpt from it covering the history of Billy Gray's Band Box can be read here and I highly recommend it.

In the piece, you'll also see Kliph mention two different locations for a night club called Slapsy Maxie's. One was 7165 Beverly Boulevard, which is where the Beverly Cinema is now located. I've written here in the past about going to the Beverly Cinema.

The later Slapsy Maxie's was at 5665 Wilshire Boulevard which is now the Office Depot where I buy most of the office supplies I don't buy online. Before that, that was the address of a Van DeKamp's bakery and coffee shop. In 1969, the second time I ever took a girl on a date, we went there for dinner and then we went to the Ivar Theater in Hollywood where we saw the closing performance of the L.A. company of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown starring Gary Burghoff. It was a great show but looking at the photo I just linked to of when it was Slapsy Maxie's, I kinda wish it had still been that place and Spike Jones was still playing there.

This is the group called The Magic of Voices. For obvious reasons…

Fred Kaplan on the fall of the Berlin Wall, 25 years ago today. Much has changed since then. Much has not.

Hey, you know what we haven't done in a long time? We haven't checked to see if Abe Vigoda is still alive!

Between 1962 and 1964, the U.P.A. cartoon studio — best known as the purveyors of Mr. Magoo — produced a syndicated cartoon series called The Dick Tracy Show. I was ten when this thing came on and even then, I looked at it like I'd just seen a chicken with lips or a cat with antlers. Many years later when I worked in the animation business and met some of the folks who'd worked on this show, I asked them what was on anyone's mind and I always got pretty much the same reply: "I still don't know."

If you've never seen one, I've embedded a typical episode below. As you'll see, the famous Mr. Tracy carried almost none of the action. He'd not only do the same thing in every episode, they'd usually use the same animation, often with his mouth hidden to make it easier to insert different dialogue. Each cartoon would open with Tracy hearing of a crime and passing it on to one of his team of detectives and officers.

None of these law enforcement figures were the kind of cartoon characters who belonged in Tracy's world. One, Hemlock Holmes, was a talking cartoon bulldog who sounded like Cary Grant. Another was a broadly cartooned guy named Heap O'Calorie whose voice was an impersonation of Andy Devine.  (One of the producers told me that when the show went on the air, they got a call from Andy Devine asking why they hadn't just hired him.)

Then you had an Asian stereotype (Joe Jitsu) and a Hispanic stereotype (Go-Go Gomez) and occasionally someone else, equally unlike anything Tracy's creator Chester Gould ever drew.

The crime at hand was something being perpetrated by two (occasionally, one) of the villains from Mr. Gould's strip — Pruneface, Itchy, Mumbles, Flattop, B-B Eyes, Stooge Viller, The Brow, Oodles, The Mole, Sketch Paree, etc. Tracy's operative would chase them about in a world that contained almost no other characters to animate, almost get killed and then triumph in the end.

Somewhere in the middle, Tracy's man would often freeze the action for a moment and check in with Tracy via two-way wrist-radio, which was kind of the iPhone of its day. At the end, Tracy would either show up to congratulate the officer or do so via the wrist-radio. They made 130 of these 5-minute cartoons which were shown in various packagings on TV stations across the land.

I see one every so often and I still wonder the same thing: Why? Why do you get the rights to Dick Tracy and then not put Dick Tracy in the show but use him to anchor cartoons about a talking bulldog? I can imagine doing a show about Tracy. I can imagine doing one about these weird law enforcement officials. I just never quite got the mix.

And there's another mystery. People are always asking me who did which voices. Well, some of them are known. The great dramatic actor Everett Sloane voiced Tracy. "Uncle" Johnny Coons, once a prominent kid show host in Chicago, spoke for Heap O'Calorie. Benny Rubin supplied the voice of Joe Jitsu. Jerry Hausner (who also voice-directed) was Hemlock Holmes. And Paul Frees and Mel Blanc split the role of Go-Go Gomez.

Okay, so who did the villains? For years, I puzzled over this until I finally realized three things that didn't dawn on me at first. If you're one of those folks who, like me, likes to identify voices, put your detective skills to work on this series but remember three points…

1. As far as I can tell, all of the voices in the show were done by the above-named actors. Some historians say Don Messick, June Foray and Howie Morris were in the cast. Howie, I know wasn't, though he later turned up in some U.P.A. productions.  I've never heard a voice in one I thought was Messick and I'm not sure there was ever a female voice in any of these, though perhaps I haven't seen all 130.
2. Unlike most cartoon characters, many of the villains had rotating voices. This is why it's hard to make up a list of who played which ones and why it differs every time someone attempts such a list.  Flattop was always a Peter Lorre impression but sometimes it was Frees, sometimes it was Blanc and sometimes it was someone else, probably Hausner. Brow and B-B Eyes had at least two different actors trying to approximate the same voice in different episodes and so did Itchy and probably others.
3. A lot of those villains — especially Pruneface, Sketch Paree and Stooge Viller — were voiced by Everett Sloane. Somehow, this did not dawn on me when I first tried to figure it out. I assumed he just did Tracy…but no. U.P.A. was a frugal studio and I guess they had to get their money's worth out of the guy. Every source I've ever seen credits his roles to others but listen with him in mind.  You'll hear it.

Here's a fairly typical episode with Benny Rubin as Joe Jitsu, Everett Sloane as Tracy and the old man and Paul Frees as B-B Eyes and Flattop. If you don't like this cartoon, there's no point in ever watching another one because this is as good as they get.  And as racially-sensitive…

Bruce Bartlett, who was a policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and also worked for the first President Bush, explains why Barack Obama is actually a Conservative. I don't completely buy this argument but I sure agree that he's accomplished a lot of things that Republicans would have thought made him The Greatest President Ever — greater than Reagan even — had they been done by a Republican. (To get some to that view, he'd also have had to have been a white Republican.)

If all a Republican president had accomplished was the deficit reduction charted in Bartlett's piece, the G.O.P. would have started clearing brush on Mount Rushmore to add another face. If that president had also presided over the killing of Osama bin Laden, they would have dynamited the four likenesses already there so they could make the new one bigger.