• What a coincidence! 16 is the # of women who've accused Bob Filner of sexual impropriety AND it's the # of votes he'd get if he ran again.

Speaking of the great Jack Davis, as we were here the other day, there's an event each year in Georgia, which is where Jack resides. A great cartoonist is invited to come give a lecture to the kind of people who'd like to hear a great cartoonist lecture. In 2009, it was my partner/amigo Sergio Aragonés. This is his lecture and at the beginning, you'll see him presented with an award by Mr. Davis himself…

Dick Van Dyke entitled his autobiography, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business. Here's yet another example of why that was a good name…

Dick Van Dyke was pulled from his burning sports car Monday afternoon after it caught fire on the 101 Freeway in Calabasas, according to California Highway Patrol officials and his personal Twitter account.

Although the agency did not identify Van Dyke by name, he and his wife both tweeted photos of the scorched vehicle.

"He's fine thank God!!" Arlene Van Dyke wrote.

California Highway Patrol responded to a report of a burning vehicle on the right shoulder of the eastbound 101 Freeway near Parkway Calabasas about 2 p.m., according to the agency's incident log. The log noted that the driver was still inside, possibly unaware that the vehicle was on fire.

And other reports say that Dick, who's 87, went home right after and did not need medical attention.  His Jaguar was totaled but he's unharmed.

I've been hanging around this man lately because I admire him and his work so much and because he's such a nice, funny man…and also because I like seeing him with Arlene, who's a terrific spouse/partner for him. At least, that's why I was hanging around him. From now on, it's just because I'm hoping some of his luck will rub off on me. That's how it works with chimney sweeps, you know.

Dan Barry recently wrote an article in which he made passing reference to Lee Harvey Oswald as having been the assassin who offed John F. Kennedy. He was, as any of us are who say such a thing, deluged with accusations — some of them, sorta rational; many of them, crazed — that there was a conspiracy and anyone who says otherwise is a puppet of (and probably a co-conspirator in) said conspiracy. As we approach the 50th anniversary of That Day in Dallas, it looks like we're in for a lot of this.

I do not intend or pretend to convince anyone that Oswald acted alone. Some people would rather change their gender than their minds on this issue. When I briefly associated with "buffs" (as JFK conspiracy theorists often call themselves) and thought they might be right, I found myself among people who had struck me as incapable of changing positions on this. They just had too much of their lives invested in the premise of a massive conspiracy, sometimes involving thousands of people and/or every institution (governmental, foreign, etc.) they already distrusted.

I think the Warren Commission was wrong on a few details but correct on its conclusion. If you really want to know why, prowl through the 1,648 pages of Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vince Bugliosi. (A tip if you ever do: The book is a lot more manageable on Kindle than on paper.) Mr. Bugliosi is a very smart man and he spends a number of those 1,648 pages telling you he's a very smart man; that the greatest proof that Oswald acted alone is that Vince Bugliosi, who's such a smart man, thinks Oswald acted alone. But once you get past that, he really does make a solid case…and actually, most of the book is not taken up with making his case but in debunking others'. He goes through Oliver Stone's JFK movie, f'rinstance, and pretty much destroys everything in it, up to and including the credit at the end for the guy who supplied the doughnuts to the film crew.

There are other books making the case besides Bugliosi's but none quite as thorough…and you know what? None of them matter to most Americans. People are going to believe what they want to believe. There are folks there who think it's been proven beyond any doubt that Barack Obama is a gay Kenyan-born commie. I'm still waiting for someone to prove conclusively that Obama masterminded the hit on Kennedy. And don't think that the fact that he was two years old at the time proves he didn't. The devil, as they'll tell you, is capable of anything.

Paul Krugman reminds us about the essentials of Obamacare. And by the way: Have you noticed that none of these folks who go on and on about why we have to repeal Obamacare has the slightest suggestion about what to replace it with…or any defense of the old system? It might be real easy to get rid of Obamacare if they proposed something better.

• Noon today in San Diego, there's a rally of supporters of Mayor Bob Filner. It's being held in a Mazda. If you go, watch your ass.

Last week, Charlie Rose welcomed comedian John Oliver to his round table. It was a pretty good conversation about Oliver guest-hosting The Daily Show and other topics. Forgive any ads you have to watch, especially if they have Alec Baldwin in them…

"Sexual harassment" is an important problem at comic book and science-fiction conventions. It's also an important problem not at comic book and science-fiction conventions and I think those that discuss it in reference to cons sometimes forget that fact and act like it's something that never happens at, say, the Target store. Or the classroom or the gym or the church social or anywhere someone with no manners or morals is horny. It's especially bad when that someone has some sort of power (hiring, for example) over the object of his or her lust.

I put "sexual harassment" in quotes because I think it's a bad term for what in some cases would be better described as molestation. It's just like how "global warming" causes stupid people to go, "That's gotta be a myth because it was so cold yesterday!" If you say "sexual harassment" to some people and they don't see someone being hit on by their boss, they write it off as a false charge. Years ago at a convention, I found myself — because I knew and liked both parties — in the midst of an incident that people were calling "sexual harassment." It was that but the proper level of outrage was better triggered by a term closer to "attempted rape."

All that said, I direct you now to a cartoon by Jim C. Hines about the issue. All of the clueless remarks he cites are things that are said by folks who are in denial and trying to change the subject. There are false accusations of rape in this world and, more often, people who brag that they were "hit on" when they weren't. There used to be a lady hanging around Comic-Con who claimed that every non-obese male, including the ones she didn't know were gay, had pawed and propositioned her inappropriately. Yeah, that happens but real accusations shouldn't be treated with less seriousness because there are the occasional phony ones.

Just got a note asking about Steve Sherman, the gent I just mentioned who was my partner when I went to work for Jack Kirby in 1970. "Where is he these days?" writes Kevin Wood. Well, I don't know where Steve is today but last Friday, he was at the Magic Castle in Hollywood having lunch with me. Steve is a master puppeteer, very much in demand. In fact, years after we stopped being a team, we worked together on several TV projects where I was hired as the writer and he, just by coincidence, was hired as a puppet guy. He's doing well after a brief, recent health scare and we had a great time Friday talking about Jack and other mutual acquaintances. Great guy, great friend.

Recently, a gentleman (I guess he's a gentleman) sent me a manuscript he's shopping around for a history of the comic book business.  He asked if I could find any errors in it…and as politely as I could, I wrote him back that it might save time if I just listed the stuff he got right.  Just the parts about me, the least important person mentioned in the book, had enough errors to fill a week's worth of Fox and Friends.  I was especially amused by one sentence…

In 1970, he [this is me he's talking about] went to work for DC Comics and immediately became one of their top writers.  His income from writing comics for them was so high that he immediately quit U.C.L.A., where he'd been attending college.

Okay, Fact Check: In tandem with my then-partner Steve Sherman, I went to work for Jack Kirby in 1970 and he paid us, not DC…and since there wasn't much for us to do, there wasn't much to pay us for.  It was a few hundred dollars a year, not because Jack wasn't generous but because…well, much to his frustration, very few of the projects he'd hired us to do ever materialized.  I started working for Disney in 1971, then for Western Publishing (Gold Key) in 1972 and because of that income plus a few other factors, I quit college in that year, not 1970.

1972 was also the year I did my first work directly for DC.  Just to convince this guy that he didn't know what he was writing about, I dug out, scanned and sent him this tax form I have which lists my total income for the year from DC — or as we called it then, National Periodical Publications — and I thought someone out there would enjoy seeing it. I have no idea what they paid me the fifteen bucks for but I guarantee you, I didn't look at it and decide to quit school.

Like thousands of other people around the world, I got hooked last night. I spent hours watching a baby ostrich named Pip slowly (and I mean slowly) peck his/her/its way out of an egg. Some nice man who'd acquired an ostrich egg had set up a webcam so Ustream users could watch it hatch…and for a very long time, it was impossible to turn off. At least every time I tried going back to a script or to bed, I'd see another bit of movement as the newly-emerging bird shoved against its shell. For hours and hours and hours, a worldwide audience was trapped, thinking, "It'll just be a few more minutes."

As it turned out, Pip never did make it out on her own accord. The "nice man" finally went in and performed the eggshell version of a Caesarian, clipping away pieces of the shell and underlying membrane so the baby fowl could wiggle 'n' wriggle its way out. This happened about eight hours after I started watching, thinking all the time it was only a matter of minutes. It happened about three hours after I finally decided that it wasn't that vital that I witness the emergence as it happened. If I'd known how long it would actually take, I could have given up a lot sooner, gotten a lot more sleep and also finished a Garfield script. This morning, I got up and watched the video of what I'd missed and at this moment, the webcam is showing Pip strutting about and taking in food and water…a happy ending.

Here's the video. For many, many long hours, I and thousands of strangers watched what you'll see in the first part…the egg, with a little unseen creature chirping within, cracking more and more and more…always making you think you were but minutes from seeing little Pip come on outta there. The video then jumps to the assisted hatching…

Realizing how long the entire process took makes me feel a bit dumb for having stared at the screen as long as I did but I'm very glad the gentleman set this up. It was in many ways fascinating and wonderful to see, as frustrating as it was at times.

There was also an element of…well, I wouldn't call it disgust so much as open-mouthed amazement at many of the contemporaneous comments that were posted live by other observers. A lot were rooting for Pip to make it out and they posted things like, "You can do it, Pip" and "We're all behind you" — as if the baby ostrich had Wi-Fi inside the shell and was surfing the 'net while fighting to be born. An awful lot of folks posted tasteless remarks about eating or molesting the infant fowl and there were a couple of guys posting racist and homophobic attacks on…well, on everyone. I was kinda amazed at what some people thought was funny…and my newly-observed Rule of Thumb is that the worse your thought process is in this regard, the worse your spelling will be. I must have seen thirty different people crack omelet jokes without being able to spell the word "omelet."

At times, it was hard not to think that if the tiny creature inside that egg did have a decent internet connection in there and could read the rantings of a few of the lower lifeforms who were rooting for its death or frying, it might have elected to stay in there.

A state judge has thrown another obstacle into the plan to build a major high-speed bullet train here in California. Kevin Drum says this may be a major setback for the project. Well, yes…if you ever thought it had any chance of completion. I didn't. Oh, it's not impossible we'll see it happen in our lifetimes, assuming we all live to 120 or so. But there are some things about which utter pessimism just feels like the way to go. You'll probably be right…and if you aren't, well, you'll have a delightful surprise.

Enough people have now sent me this photo that I figure I might as well put it up here. It's a license plate from a car in New Hampshire. Too bad it isn't from Frostbite Falls.

Fred Kaplan thinks the United States should cut off all military aid to Egypt. Okay, fine.

I've been saying here for some time that there's nothing cuter in the entire universe than a baby panda. I was wrong. A baby panda being reunited with its mother for the first time since birth is cuter. But that's the only thing that is. (Thanks to Shelly Goldstein for telling me about this. Shelly is also pretty darned cute but on a whole difference scale of "cute.")