That's right: Another post about this. Sometimes, a topic is just on my mind in a way that I have to write about it so I can move my brain over to thinking about something else.

My last post on Gay Marriage brought a number of private responses, including some long and thoughtful ones I'm not going to post because they agreed with me. Here's most of one that didn't — from a gentleman who asked I withhold his name. I'm going to interrupt a few times and respond…

I continue to enjoy your excellent, well-written blog even when I don't agree with you. I just read your "Tuesday Morning" post addressing Rep. Tim Heulskamp's comments on gay marriage. Unless I misunderstood you, you seemed to be saying basically that conservatives are hypocrites because they are just hunky-dory-fine with divorce, single parents, and gay adoption, but when it comes to gay marriage we suddenly have a problem. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It's not so much a matter of being "hunky-dory-fine" with any of this. No one is saying you have to be delighted with the concept of Gay Marriage. It's a question of what you think is so potentially damaging to society and mankind that there must be government action to stop it. "Hypocrite" is your word, not mine. I'm just looking at an argument that strikes me as illogical and inconsistent.

I keep reading how horrible it is that kids not have two loving, mixed-sex parents and thus we must prevent my friends Mike and Geoff from getting married just in case one of those two men suddenly gives birth…or something. That does not make a lot of sense to me. Gay marriages rarely involve children, especially in states where Gay Adoption is not permitted. Straight marriages usually do have offspring, especially in the idealized configuration preferred by most of those opposed to Gay Marriage. Someone — you, anyone — please explain to me why you so want the government to forbid the union of two same-sex folks (a union that rarely puts kids in that position) but do pretty much nothing about the epidemic dissolution of the unions of opposite-sex folks (unions which often do involve children). I'm also guessing you don't like the situation where a woman decides to have a child without getting married. Why is there no serious legislation proposed to discourage, let alone forbid that? It too creates the situation where a child is being reared without a male parent and a female one…and it creates it a lot more often than allowing Mike and Geoff to marry.

Back to you…

My wife was raised by a single mother after her father abandoned the family when she was just a toddler. She will be the first to tell you that even in her mid-thirties she still bears deep scars and hurts from her parents' long-standing separation and the lack of a father figure to shape and guide her growing up. Recently one of my best friends went through a divorce and his children were devastated. Yes you can quote scientific research saying that kids without a mom and a dad "get along fine", but I think deep down you know that's not the case.

It isn't and I didn't mean to suggest it was. Kids are better off when they come from a loving, safe environment and two good parents are better than one. Unfortunately, that is not always an option. There are bad marriages. There are sometimes bad people in marriages. A former lady friend of mine came from a family where the father had a tendency to drink, strike his wife and make sexual moves on his step-children. The parents divorced and my friend was better off being raised by her mother only as a single parent. She has scars because her folks didn't separate sooner. One reason we have divorce in this country is so that marriages that go that way can be dissolved for the good of everyone involved, including the children.

I do not disagree with you about the ideal. I believe I had the ideal and I wish every child in America could have parents as good as mine were. I also realize that is not possible and we have to deal with the realities before us…and it is possible for kids to "get along fine" with a parental situation that is less than ideal. In a nation with this high a divorce rate, it would have to be possible.

Your turn again…

Most conservatives genuinely mourn over the widespread wreckage and devastation that's been plaguing our country largely due to the breakdown of the traditional family and the "I'll do whatever I want" attitude when it comes to sex.

And yet, a lot of them — the overwhelming majority, I'd bet — were quite prepared to vote for Newt Gingrich over a man with what from all appearances is a very happy, healthy marriage with two beautiful daughters.

In the Bible God said, "I hate divorce", and most of us do too. To us gay marriage is just society taking another long step farther away from the God-given ideal of a loving, committed, monogamous man and woman whose complimentary roles help make the family stronger, and many of us wish more politicians would take a stand to help protect the institution of the family on all fronts, instead of watching it continue to crumble.

God may hate divorce but He sure makes a lot of them. Frankly, I think divorce is kind of a necessary evil in a world where lots of folks (the majority, some stats tell us) marry someone and then want desperately out…and often don't find the ideal mate until the second or third try. Ronald Reagan, who all my conservative friends seem to think walked on H2O, seems to have required a second shot at it. A very few of you might not have voted for Newt because of his dysfunctional marital history. Every single one of you would vote today for Reagan and point to his marriage to Nancy as an ideal, never mind anything any of their kids did.

I personally don't buy the premise that child-yielding monogamous relations have to be the ideal for everyone. In fact, I think a leading cause of divorce is that some feel pressured into that configuration before they're ready for it or in spite of the fact that they may never be ready for it.

Ultimately though, the problem with your argument is simply that there are gay people in this world and they cannot fit into your template. Mike and Geoff are just not going to abandon 20+ years of love and commitment to one another and go father children with women so they can conform to your ideal. That's off the menu for them. I frankly don't see that any argument that touches on procreation (or since they have no desire to adopt, child rearing) has anything to do with their lives. More and more, Americans are realizing that…which is why I expect to see Mike and Geoff married before long. They aren't a threat to your ideal. They're actually trying to get as close to it as biology will allow.

Today only! Amazon has the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, which gives you over 350 classic Warner Brothers cartoons, for $65.00. If you buy it, please don't write to me to complain that your favorite wasn't included and how dare they? Just enjoy the cartoons and all the special features and commentary tracks and other goodies. Here's your link and if you click on it, thank Vince Waldron, who alerted me to this delightful deal.

The great songsmith Tom Lehrer is 85 years old and the BBC is saluting him with a radio documentary on his life 'n' times 'n' tunes. You can listen online for only a few more days. So don't dawdle.

I've had several e-mails from folks waiting eagerly for my great Annette Funicello anecdotes. Wish I had one for you. I never met Ms. Funicello. I never heard much about Ms. Funicello. I never even had a crush on Ms. Funicello, perhaps because she was a bit too old for me. I admired her work and accomplishments but so did we all. Sorry I can't offer more than that.

This also applies, by the way, to Margaret Thatcher.

This is one of those "just watch it" ones…

Fox News is up in arms over a threatened jail sentence for reporter Jana Winter who is refusing to reveal her source for the notebook of "alleged Aurora shooter" James Holmes. (I put quotes around that because even his defense isn't claiming he wasn't the shooter there; just that he was insane.)

Anyway, the author of this article is right that Winter should not face time behind bars if she won't reveal her source…

From Woodward and Bernstein, who met with a mysterious source named Deep Throat in a garage, to a local zoning board official who is privy to municipal corruption in a small town, conversations between journalists and unnamed sources lead to investigative articles that shed light on the very things those in power would rather not reveal. Off the record conversations — or "leaks," as they may be less pleasantly called — are the bricks and mortar of what you read when you crack open a newspaper.

Absolutely right except that Bernstein never met with Deep Throat. But true, our news media cannot function if reporters can't guarantee anonymity to most kinds of sources. Still, I can't help but react to this…

Imagine if a judge had forced Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to reveal the identity of Deep Throat, who corroborated so much of their research into the Watergate scandal. Mark Felt, the associate director at the FBI, would likely never have risked his career, his family's safety and the opprobrium that came with notoriety to leak information to the Washington Post. The arc of history would therefore have been very different indeed.

That's also true but I seem to remember that when Mr. Felt's identity was finally revealed, a certain "alleged news channel" was flooded with its contributors saying that Felt was a coward for leaking what he leaked, that his motives were impure and I think the word "treason" was even employed. A lot of that opprobrium came from Fox News.

Many folks are reminding this A.M. of Joe Flynn's other big voice credit in animation — Mr. Snoops in the 1977 Disney film, The Rescuers. He was pretty good in that. He was actually a pretty funny actor. Not long before he passed (in '74), he became a regular on the talk show circuit. Johnny Carson first had him on as a guest in June of '72 and I seem to recall Mr. Flynn saying it was the first time he'd ever done anything like that. I do recall that he was hilarious and that you could see that "we've gotta have this guy on a lot" look on Johnny's face. And indeed, health permitting, Flynn appeared once a month with Carson thereafter and started doing Merv as well.

Brent Seguine, who knows everything worth knowing about the Stooges, says that I'm wrong about that male person in the "Swinging the Alphabet" number in Violent is the Word for Curly. It's not an outta-place male student. It's actor Eddie Fetherston playing one of the school officials. He was introduced earlier in the film. I was so busy taking voluminous notes that I missed that.

Brent also writes about the film's three visiting professors. The one on the left is Al Thompson. The one in the middle is Alex Novinsky. Who's the guy at the right? Stooge Experts everywhere are tearing their hair out and poking one another in the eyes trying to find this guy's name…and he also played Professor Tuttle one year later in the knuckleheads' We Want Our Mummy. If you have any leads, send them to me and I'll pass them on to Brent.

Also, Derek Tague notes that in Violent is the Word for Curly, Curly is introduced to the class as Professor Von Stupid. "How then," he wonders, "are the co-eds able to address him as Curly when they sing 'Curly's a dope!' just before the instrumental finale?" How, indeed? It's just this kind of shoddy writing that makes it hard for some people to take a Three Stooges film seriously.

…you gotta plug them all. This'll be the last one for a while but in this case, it's a wholehearted plug. My pal Michael "Mickey" Paraskevas draws as well as anyone I know — and I know a lot of terrific artists. Every year or three, he paints the hell out of a new book for kids and a sweet story turns into something very special for children of all ages.

Tomorrow is the release date for Taffy Saltwater's Yummy Summer Day, which he did last year while visiting Los Angeles, which he does largely to hang out with me at Farmers Market and eat hot turkey sandwiches. It's really, really good. If you need to buy a gift for a youngster, trust me: They'll love this story. That is, if you can bring yourself to actually give them the damned thing and stop looking at the neat illustrations yourself. Better order two copies. And if you don't trust me, check out the preview on Amazon and trust your own eyes.

Speaking of Hanna-Barbera as one of us was: Our pal Greg Ehbrar has a nice piece up at Cartoon Research about Help! It's the Hair Bear Bunch, a 1971 Saturday morning cartoon that represented one of the better shows of that period. It was another in the unending series of H-B programs about one or more animal characters sneaking out a place of imprisonment — a zoo, a park, an aquarium, etc. In this case, it was three bears in a zoo and their leader, Hair Bear — the one with the Phil Spector hair-do — was voiced by Daws Butler. Not every Hanna-Barbera show with Daws Butler in it was good but most of the good ones had Daws Butler in them.

I haven't seen one since…well, probably since '71. But I remember liking it, kinda, mostly for the voices. Greg writes…

The hapless villains are zoo keeper Eustace P. Peevly, voiced by Mr. Slate/Dr. Quest voice veteran John Stephenson. You'll notice that his performance is a little less extreme in the first episode. It became more of a Joe Flynn type thereafter (perhaps Flynn commanded a high salary, having just had a substantial supporting role in 1969's number one film, The Love Bug, as well as other Disney comedies).

I think I have the answer to this mystery. A few years later, Joe Barbera told me that they'd based the character on Joe Flynn and planned to cast Joe Flynn. Then they brought him in to audition and decided that Joe Flynn didn't sound enough like Joe Flynn. That's not as bizarre as it may sound. Sometimes, a great character actor is a function of voice plus visual and when you take away the visual, the voice isn't as special as you thought. That happened on several cartoon shows that got the idea of casting Don Knotts. He just wasn't as wonderful when you couldn't see him.

Joe Flynn did have at least one animation voice gig — as the voice of King Vitaman, the guy on the box of the cereal of the same name. Ward's company produced those commercials and here's a link to watch one of them, also with Daws Butler. As funny as Flynn was on TV shows like McHale's Navy, I don't think he was great in those commercials.

Ezra Klein apologizes for supporting the Iraq War. An awful lot of people — especially those who manufactured phony information to convince people like Klein — should follow his lead.

For a few decades now, I've been hanging around this fellow named Alan Brennert. He thinks I consider him one of my best friends. Actually, I'm just hoping that if I stick close to him, a smidgen of his writing ability will rub off on me and I'll be able to write novels a tenth as good as his last few — Moloka'i and Honolulu, to name two. His latest is Palisades Park, named for a fabled amusement park that a lot of us only knew from ads in old DC comics. Leave it to Alan to know more than that.

Palisades Park is about a family and about the daughter in that family and it's also about World War II and that amusement park…and if you'd like to read a little of Brennert and see how good he is, there's an excerpt on this page.

I recommend it and just about anything else Alan does or did. You can order a copy here or I'm told it just became a Costco "staff pick." That means if you go to one of their warehouse outlets, you can pick up a twelve-pack of copies cheap and on the way out, purchase a set of snow tires. This is a great time to buy snow tires, especially if you live in Los Angeles because, hey, with Climate Change, who the hell knows? But you can't go wrong with Brennert unless you're dumb enough to think that being his pal will make you a better writer. Hasn't helped me one bit and I've known the guy since half-past Richard Nixon.

And welcome again to Stooges Sunday with today's entry, Violent is the World for Curly. The title is a switch on Valiant Is the Word for Carrie, a popular 1936 film starring Gladys George. The Stooges made their film in 1938 and it was directed by Charley Chase, the great film comedian.

Chase had been making very funny short comedies for Hal Roach but the market for shorts was dying off. Roach tried Chase in a feature but the result was less then wonderful and with great reluctance, the producer decided to whittle it down to a two-reel short for release. At the same time, he let Chase go and the comic headed for Columbia Pictures which, due to low overhead, was still able to make a profit making two-reelers. He starred in several for them and also directed shorts starring the Stooges as well as Andy Clyde before he passed away in 1940.

The most notable thing about this film is the song, "Swinging the Alphabet," performed by the Stooges and a classroom of female students. (For some reason, though the scene is set at a girls' school, there's a male student sitting there, not really joining in.) The Stooges must have liked the tune because they performed it other places, including recording it as a childrens' record. If you want to slide ahead to it, it starts around 11 minutes in. But you may enjoy things more if you watch from the top…

Last evening, I went out to the Van Eaton Gallery on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. It was the grand opening of "The H.B. Show," a special salute to Hanna-Barbera that features two main components. One is a display of old Hanna-Barbera toys not for sale but on loan from the mammoth collection of artist Dave Nimitz. Neat stuff, some of which I once had and a few items (just a few, alas) I still own. When I was a kid, I loved Huckleberry Hound and I loved having him on my lunchbox.

The main part of the show was an array of artwork done especially for this exhibit and most of it for sale: New creations depicting the classic H-B properties, a few done by folks who worked for the studio and a lot done by people who didn't. Some of the takes were quite faithful in design to the original cartoons (which didn't mean they couldn't be clever and innovative — and some were) and some of the artists took things into very different styles and redesigns. There are exceptions but most of the time, I think the latter approach doesn't work. The end product looks like the artist asked him- or herself, "Hmm…how can I draw Fred Flintstone and lose everything that's good about the original design?"

I guess I sometimes don't understand the motive/mindset behind some of this. There was a drawing there about which I would have liked to ask the artist, "Do you have any affection or respect for this cartoon in its original form? If so, why did you want to make it so ugly and unlike the show itself? If not, why are you drawing it at all?" An art teacher I had once back when I was dabbling (and I only dabbled) in that area once said, "A work of art should ask questions of those who look at it. It can ask any question except 'Did the artist have anything at all in mind besides making a buck?'"

As I said, I liked some of the pieces and just wondered about some others. I suppose that's how an exhibition like this is supposed to work. The piece above by Mark Christiansen was one of the ones I liked. It's his style and he did something special with the characters…but they look like the characters and it looks like he likes the characters. You can view many of the pieces over on this webpage. Don't miss Bill Morrison's.

The way it worked was that from 4 PM to 6 PM, there was a V.I.P. type reception and at six, the doors opened to the general public. I got there around 4:30 and had a good time talking with June Foray, Jerry Eisenberg, Willie Ito, Scott Shaw!, Sam Register, Tony Benedict, Margaret Loesch, Sam Ewing, Don Jurwich, Dave Nimitz, Rose Marie, Stu Shostak and Jeanine Kasun, Jerry Beck, Janet Waldo and why did I start listing names since I'll be leaving so many out? The place was cramped and a lot of us alleged V.I.P.s fled well before six. Stu, Jeanine, Rose and I (and Rose's wonderful caregiver) retired to a nearby Italian restaurant for chow, then I tried to go back after we ate. By then, it was 6:45 and there was a mob scene outside — a line around the block to get in.

No, to be more accurate: A line around the block to get near. I could not even get past the place to get to my car and I had to circle around another way. The Van Eaton folks did a great job promoting the evening but I'd give some of the credit to Huck, Yogi, Fred and the gang. Those characters are still popular, still beloved by many.

I don't know that everyone at Time-Warner understands that and I think some of them are too quick to think the properties require total makeovers to appeal to that most elusive of target audiences, "The Kids Today." I think a lot of them would be better served not by rethinking the original concept but by figuring out how to apply that concept to the current world and audience. You kind of have to ask yourself, "Why was this character popular in the first place?" and then try to keep the answer to that question relatively intact while you change other things around it.

I have a little tirade I should probably write here about what happens to great properties and characters owned by very large corporations. There's a healthy way to handle them and an unhealthy way and the latter kicks in when there's no one person who has either the business authority or the moral authority to say, "No, this is not right for this character." But that tirade will have to wait 'til I have more time. For now, thanks to the Van Eaton Gallery for hosting such a fun event and congrats on its success.

There's a very popular TV show on the E! network called Fashion Police and its writers are going to court over money they believe they're owed. A lot of money. Here's a link to a report on it. And when you read it, take note of this line: "Writers Guild of America, West has provided legal assistance to the writers in their filings."

This is not a WGA show. E! is not a signatory and the folks who write their shows do so without any protection from a union or other labor organization. When they're screwed, as is alleged here, they have no recourse but to go hire a lawyer. This can be a costly thing, especially when going up against an entity that has a lot more money than you do…which is probably all of them.

I don't know the specifics of the Fashion Police situation beyond what's claimed in the article but it's no secret that writers on non-union shows are often paid poorly. You wouldn't believe how poorly in some cases. And in 100% of the horror stories I've heard, it works like this: The writer is offered bad money. He knows it's bad money but he also knows…

1. Hey, it beats not making anything or working at Olive Garden…
2. It could lead to something bigger and better and…
3. It's only 40 hours a week so I'll have time to work on my own scripts and finding a better position.

"A" is usually true. "B" is occasionally true. Other times, working for low money types you as someone who'll work cheap…or can't be that good if he or she is willing to work for that kind of moola.

"C" seems to never be true. Every single TV staff job turns out to require between 150% and 200% of the time you thought it would when you accepted it — and for the same paycheck. That seems to be the kind of thing that prompted the Fashion Police writers to take action. Most writers do not object because they fear it'll cost them "A" and they'll get typed as troublemakers, thereby scotching "B." It can also cost a lot of money — money they don't have — and it often is not cost effective.

Unscrupulous producers have been known to count on that. There's a guy in town who makes low budget movies who's notorious this way. He agrees to pay you $500 and when the check comes, invariably a few months later than promised, it's for $460…and all your protests and complaints fall on the deafest of ears. He may even shrug and tell you, "If you don't like it, the door is that way," end of discussion. He figures you're not going to quit and go hire a lawyer over $40, nor will any attorney handle your case on contingency for a cut of that. You could take him to Small Claims Court and I understand at least one person did…but most of the time, no one does. Too much trouble…and they need the work.

There's also often a "D" at work here, a tidy bit of self-entrapment: You tell all your friends, "I'm going to L.A. to become a TV writer," and move out here you do. You have in mind writing for prime-time, prestigious shows but, sad to say, there are X openings on those programs and 100X (at least) writers who want those gigs. So you don't get one and then you don't get one and after a while, you still don't get one…and any kind of TV writing job can look mighty appealing. You need the bucks — but more important in some ways is that you need to tell the folks back home that you're writing for television. Any kind of television. If you're wise, you'll do what you can to minimize that kind of pressure.

As for being swindled on money…well, in the 4+ decades I've been a professional writer, I've been swindled on comic book work, swindled on magazine work and swindled on animation work. I've never been swindled on a WGA show. They tend to not cheat you on those because they know you won't have to spend money to take action. The Guild handles things for you.

I am not suggesting that anyone refuse to work on non-WGA live-action shows. That's a decision everyone has to make for themselves. I will suggest that if they do, they not be surprised that they're suddenly working 80 hours and being paid for 40. That happens way too often. I'm glad my Guild is helping these folks.