You don't need years of practice to be a great sleight-of-hand magician. Not if you employ a little thing called stop-motion photography…

As long as I've been going from L.A. to Las Vegas, I've been hearing talk of someone building a high-speed rail line betwixt those two cities. Breaking ground on it has always been eighteen months in the future. Eighteen years ago, it was eighteen months in the future. Five years ago, it was eighteen months in the future. Eighteen months ago, it was eighteen months in the future. Today, it's eighteen months in the future and eighteen months from now, guess what it'll be. Right: Eighteen months in the future.

I used to think how great it would be and toyed with the idea of buying a condo there and living in both places, shuttling back and forth with a residence and a car at each end. But it's never gonna happen…and even if the current plan did go forth, it for some reason isn't between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The California end would be in Victorville, which is a 90-minute drive from L.A. and that's without traffic. Most of the day, it's more than two hours. So you'd have to leave maybe a 2.5 hour window on your schedule to make sure you got there in time for your train, leave your car in a lot there and then ride the rails to Vegas. Or you could ride the existing Amtrak train to Victorville and change there but that train is three hours.

The point is it might all take more time than just driving straight through to Caesars Palace. And if that's the point, what's the point?

So why Victorville? I did some research and couldn't find an explanation. I'm guessing it's that Victorville-to-Vegas would mean going through largely unpopulated, undeveloped land so it would make possible the current cost estimate of $7 billion to get the train up 'n' running. To extend that route to Los Angeles would take it through actual cities where people live — a much higher cost per mile, to be sure. The whole project would wind up with a pricetag that would guarantee no part of it would ever happen.

I wish we had more realistic mass-transit projects in this country. Traffic lately is such that I'm starting to really hate driving. When I have to go some distance, I use Google maps and Henrietta (that's what I call the G.P.S. in my car) to find routes that may not require braking every nine seconds. They help but only a little.

Waiting in a doctor's office recently, I picked up a magazine and read an encouraging piece that predicted technological advances would make driving easier. Global positioning systems would be getting smarter about re-routing you around congestion. New high-speed rail and subway systems would ease the bumper-to-bumper of freeways and surface streets. Smartphones would make it easier to figure out which bus or train to take and let you know when the next one would be along.

The article said we'd start seeing improvements in less than a year…which would have given me hope had I not then noticed the magazine was three years old.

The Friskies company is making this stuff…cat food that is designed to be your cat's breakfast. There's a Rise & Shine dry food and four varieties of wet food:

• Friskies® Rise & Shine Tasty Turkey & Egg Scramble (accented with Cheese in Sauce)
• Friskies® Rise & Shine Sizzlin' Beef & Egg Scramble (also accented with Cheese in Sauce
• Friskies® Rise & Shine Sunny Chicken & Egg Scramble (accented with Garden Greens in Sauce)
• Friskies® Rise & Shine Savory Salmon & Egg Scramble (also accented with Garden Greens in Sauce)

Sound tasty? Of course. But I've always found it silly that the way to sell pet food is to make it seem appealing to the buyers who are not going to eat it. I fall for it, too. I like tuna so I buy cat food with tuna in it based, I guess, on the premise that animals around me will like what I like. My lady friend Carolyn doesn't even like a lot of the foods I like but somehow the stray cats out back share my culinary tastes. The truth is that they'd probably rather have Chopped Mouse or something like that.

Anyway, upon seeing "Rise & Shine" foods in the market, I purchased one can — the kind with the salmon in it — and took it home to study extensively in my test kitchen. Which is to say I split a can between the two feral cats, Lydia and Sylvia, I've lately been feeding on my back porch. The verdict? They loved it. And neither was famished as both were fed well about eight hours earlier.

Lydia seems to like anything with any kind of fish in it. Sylvia will eat anything. But I can't recall either devouring their chow quite as ravenously. Since it's the same price as the other cans I buy them, I think I'll try out the other varieties and a few more tins of the salmon. I may start serving it to them with hash-browns and a toasted English muffin on the side plus a cup of joe. Lydia prefers hers black with two Sweet-n'-Lows.

Here we have 26 Ways President Obama Has Completely Ruined The Country.

The other day here, I extolled the lost glory of the radio station I and most of my friends listened to in the sixties. Meanwhile, my buddy Ken Levine has posted a manifesto on how stations like that — in fact, any that aren't Internet-based — are going away on us. He knows of what he writes.

Here's a blast from my past. Back in the sixties, I was the president of an entity known as the Los Angeles Comic Book Club. We billed ourselves as "the largest comic book club in the world" because we didn't know of any others. Every Saturday afternoon, we convened in a meeting room at a public park, the Palms Recreation Center in West L.A. I've written about this club in a number of my essays on the world of comics.

I don't think I mentioned in any of them that there was another club at Palms Park for much of the same time — officially unaffiliated but full of a lot of the same folks and run by some L.A.C.B.C. members — mainly Barry Siegel and Bruce Simon. This was the Old Time Movie Club which met on some (not all) Friday evenings. Sometimes, they showed 8mm silent movies from the personal collections of members. Dues were collected at those meetings and when there was enough in the treasury, they'd use the dough to rent a 16mm print of some great sound film. The evening I recall best was when they ran the Laurel and Hardy film, Our Relations. The place was packed and I don't recall ever being in an audience where as many people were convulsed with laughter.

The leaders of the club not only showed silent films, they also made them. Barry, then 17 years of age, made the first one and it starred him, Bruce, a bevy of L.A.C.B.C. members…and, briefly, me. He recently posted Spats and Splats — an ode to the joy of spitting on other people — on YouTube.

The film was shot in 8mm over two days in 1970 — early in the year, as I recall. There were scenes shot at Barry's house, at Palms Park and out by some abandoned buildings out by the ocean in Santa Monica. Barry had, of course, no permits to film in the latter two locations so out in Santa Monica, we were chased by a security guard. You'll see some shots of the old Pacific Ocean Park (a seaside amusement park) and the Aragon Ballroom, which is where Lawrence Welk did his show for years. It had all burned down a year or so earlier, probably because Barry needed the visual of some ruins for his film.

Steve Sherman, who was later my partner working for Jack Kirby, was an actor in it but he was also the Director of Photography, which means he ran the camera. One of the toughest problems Barry had to solve was finding black-and-white 8mm film for that camera. Color stock could be purchased at any drugstore…but he felt an old-style silent movie had to be monochrome and it took a while to locate a supply. The title cards were done by a mail order company run by someone named Jack B. Hardy.

In it, you will see a young skinny M.E. making my film debut as the Hamburger Vendor. I botched things up on my first take…and as it turned out, that was the only take. That security guard was threatening to call the cops on us so we had to hurry. Thus, my flawed performance had to stay in. Barry did not use me on camera in his subsequent cinematic efforts and I don't blame him one bit.

In addition to making films, Siegel and Simon produced some popular underground comics. I don't think it's been released yet but a few months ago, it was announced that a publisher was bringing out a collection of their strip, Blackwall Siegel. Blackwall was a character based loosely on Barry's dog, Blackwell…and you can see the actual pooch playing himself in a brief cameo in the film. I'm ashamed to admit he was a better performer than I was.

If you'll promise to keep in mind that we were all teenagers, I'll let you click on the little arrow and watch Spats and Splats. The Academy Award that year went to Patton but only because Barry forgot to submit his film. If he had, I'd guess a minimum of eight Oscars including Best Supporting Actor to Blackwell…

Carol Tilley teaches at the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science. She says Dr. Fredric Wertham was not entirely honest or accurate in his writings, including his infamous book warning of the evils of comic books, Seduction of the Innocent. We all knew that he didn't understand the work he was criticizing so I guess it should come as no surprise that he fibbed a little. Or maybe a lot.

Why does bottled water have an expiration date? Here's the answer. I recently had to throw out about ten gallons of Crystal Geyser I had stored in my garage for the same reason.

I thought the President's State of the Union address was quite fine, though throughout I could hear echoes of Rodney Dangerfield muttering, "Tough crowd, tough crowd." I understand that the Republicans feel their "we hate everything this man stands for" posture plays well with their base…but if there's anything this last election proved, it's that their base isn't large enough to win them elections. Really, when Obama can say "Let's agree, right here, right now, to keep the people's government open, pay our bills on time, and always uphold the full faith and credit of the United States of America" and G.O.P. leaders like John Boehner sit stonefaced and unapplauding, it's kinda obvious what's going on here.

I wonder which part of that Boehner didn't like. Keeping the people's government open? Paying our bills on time? Maybe it was that part about upholding the full faith and credit of the United States. But then he also wasn't impressed by the 102-year-old lady who stood in line for seven hours to vote or the mention of "our wounded warriors." When a Democrat doesn't stand and cheer for the latter, that's supposed to be proof he hates the military.

I more or less agree with John Cassidy's take on Obama's speech and on the Republican response, though I think people are making way too big a deal about Mario Rubio's sip of water. There are reasons Rubio should not be in power but among them is not that he had a clumsy moment on television. I wish we could get past caring about such things.

From May of '65, It's Jimmy Durante and Louis Armstrong singing one of Jimmy's hits on Hollywood Palace. They're so delightful together that the producer didn't even care that Satchmo got half the lyrics wrong…

Here's another one of my unprovable theories. Every few days in this country, you see some pundit or political candidate or public figure say something really outrageous or insane…and attention-grabbing. It can be an uninformed male's understanding of rape or it can be some borderline-racist putdown of minorities or it can be darn near anything Pat Robertson or Donald Trump says about anything. But it evokes anger and calls to apologize and it makes you wonder, not why does the person think that but how could they be so stupid as to say it?

I mean, I understand that there are folks out there who hate people with different-colored skin or who attend a different house of worship. What I used to wonder more about is why they weren't smart enough to avoid saying what they said the way they said it. This is especially true of those who are courting votes. You'd think, for example, that every male seeking public office would have learned to steer clear of the topic of rape. You'd think their advisors would have said to them, "No matter how obvious or reasonable it may seem to you, it will come across to many as insensitive and foolish." You'd think Donald Trump would have realized he couldn't engage Bill Maher in a public fight and not come off looking to much of America like a stuffy anal sphincter.

And here's where my theory comes in. I've come to think that while some folks may say outrageous things because they think it'll get them attention and sell books (Ann Coulter comes to mind), I think a lot of them are guilty of Joe E. Ross Disease.

You remember Joe E. Ross, the star of Car 54, Where Are You?, It's About Time and nothing else. Mr. Ross was very funny on those shows and very funny before them with intermittent appearances on Sgt. Bilko. His career dwindled to darn near nothing after the short-lived It's About Time, in large part because he got a reputation in show business for (a) being utterly unreliable and (b) having no sense of time and place.

Regarding (a), it was said he was never on time, never knew his lines and never changed when he was told to shape up or ship out. His biggest role was on Car 54, which ran two seasons. Had it been picked up for a third, Ross would not have been picked up with it. The show's producer-creator Nat Hiken had simply had enough of the guy.

But his career was probably harmed more by (b). It was said that he never once thought, of anything that came out of his mouth, "Hmm, this might not be the right audience for this." Having starred for a time in burlesque, he had a repertoire of filthy jokes — appropriate for those venues, inappropriate for others. He didn't care. The Sgt. Bilko show was shot in front of a live audience for its first few seasons. Then they started filming without one. After every two filmed-without-one episodes were edited, they'd send the films, some audio engineers and a cast member to some sort of theater with some sort of audience. The cast member would welcome the crowd, warm them up with a comedy routine, then the episodes would be shown and the live laughter would be recorded and dubbed onto the shows.

That was how it worked every time…except the week they sent Joe E. Ross.

He got up there before an audience of older and middle-age people — with some children present — and began telling jokes that would make Lenny Bruce blush: jokes about sex with nuns and hookers servicing sailors and…well, you know that kind of joke. You may even tell that kind of joke…but I bet you'd have the good sense not to tell them to your grandparents.

Joe E. Ross did this kind of thing all over the place because he had no such sense. When people ran in horror from the hall, he just kind of wondered what had gone wrong. Everyone had howled at those same jokes when he'd told them at a stag party the week before.

Which brings us to my theory. Some of those shocking/stupid things said by public figures are obviously calculated to get ratings or sell books or otherwise make money. But I think a lot of them are things which when said in the right room in front of the right crowds drew cheers and ovations and fealty. The mistake, like Ross's, was in thinking they'd play as well in a bigger room to a wider range of people. All those nutcase Pat Robertson quotes over the years were things he said on his TV broadcasts without his studio audience moaning or hooting. They just didn't play well beyond the flock.

This is the scary thing to me about someone who gets up and yells that there's incontrovertible evidence that Barack Obama is a Kenyan-born Socialist Muslim who had Andrew Breitbart murdered. It's not that that person is looney. It's that there are auditoriums in this country where that rhetoric played well for that person…places where they cheered their agreement. In most cases, I don't think people believe rubbish because their leaders say it. I think the "leaders" say it because people believe it. It's what enables them to retain their status as "leaders" with all the perks (the money, the attention, etc.) that are attached.

There are though, let's admit, two key differences between someone like Michele Bachmann or Rand Paul and Joe E. Ross, one being that Ross eventually paid a price for his insensitivity to his audiences. Nowadays, you can make a very good living telling a minority of Americans what they want to hear. Most people in this country think Obama's a pretty good president but you can sell a lot of books to the ones who don't. An awful lot of books. In some areas, you can get elected.

And the other difference is that Joe E. Ross was funny. Sometimes, he was funny in the wrong place and/or at the wrong time. But he made me laugh, whereas Donald Trump doesn't. Not even with that hair of his. I'd trade him for Joe E. Ross any day.

Most of you probably know of Carl Barks, the man who created Uncle Scrooge and who for years wrote and drew the comic books of that rich old duck and also of his nephew, a poorer duck named Donald. Barks produced delightful, timeless stories which are reprinted year after year around the world…and probably always will be. His work inspired many of us who work in comics…and also in fields where the connection is not so obvious. There are moments in Steven Spielberg films, for instance, that connect to his love of Barks.

A lot of folks who followed Carl have tried to write and/or draw Disney Comics in the Barks tradition and some have come close. The only person who has managed to clearly distinguish himself in that realm is a gent named Don Rosa. I have known Don since before he got the gig — when his "dream job" was still a dream and seemed so unattainable that he didn't even attempt to get it. Then he got it and the work he did was quite outstanding and popular, especially in Europe. Again, what he created was a body of delightful, timeless stories which are reprinted year after year around the world…and probably always will be.

But he doesn't do that anymore. He stopped forever in 2008 for six reasons which he recently detailed in an essay you can read online. Before I give you the link so you can do this, let me tell you a few things. One is that I have minor quibbles with a few of his historical points. Carl Barks did receive more than his page rate for the comics he did. He worked for a company called Western Printing and Lithography (not for Dell Comics, as many people assume; this article explains the difference) and Western paid him a pension and a few other benefits. For a time in the sixties, Western had a profit-sharing plan for its writers and artists that yielded bonus money if the sales of a comic they were working on went up.

Barks wasn't the only person working on Disney Comics who got this and in some cases, the amounts were tiny. But just as a matter of record, Don is only mostly accurate about what others before him received, not totally accurate. He is, of course, 100% accurate with regard to his own situation and probably that of everyone who's written or drawn Disney Comics since gents like Barks and Paul Murry and a few others.

I would also add that Don is absolutely correct when he describes the hard, almost obsessive work he put into his stories. He was uncommonly dedicated with the comic work he did before he began applying himself to Disney Ducks and it only got more intense when they handed him the chance to work on his childhood faves. Believe every word of that. He is also telling the truth when he talks about all the extra, uncompensated work he did to promote those comics via interviews, tours, signings, etc. They never had a better ambassador.

All that said, I'll give you this link so you can click and read what Don wrote about his retirement. It is not for the most part a happy story and he is by no means the only person to create great comic books and to wind up feeling exploited and at least financially underappreciated. Some companies have learned that it isn't good, morally or just in consideration of future revenues, to treat The Talent that way…but not all have learned it and some who have would still for some reason rather treat people like another Scrooge treated Bob Cratchit before the ghosts appeared.

Still, Don does have the pride of creating all that fine, fine work. They can't take that away from him — though somewhere at this moment, a lawyer is probably trying to figure out how they could…

Forgive me if I've posted this before. I have the feeling I did but can't find it anywhere on this blog. It's test footage that was shot in 1922 to show how Kodachrome film stock worked. Observe four and a half minutes of pretty ladies…

Back in this posting, we previewed a new revue forged from two classic comedy records of the sixties: You Don't Have to Be Jewish, and When You're In Love, The Whole World Is Jewish. The new play, which combines material from both with all-new songs and sketches, is called When You're In Love, The Whole World Is Jewish and it's currently playing at the Greenway Court Theatre on, appropriately enough, Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. I saw it Friday evening and I would recommend you rush to get tickets…but you may not be able to. Even though they've extended it another week, as of Friday the entire run was almost sold out. (If you want to check, here's the link. I just looked though and it says no seats are available.)

Friday evening was Press Night, a fine time for them to have technical problems…but they did and they overcame them. I had a very good time because, first of all, I'm a sucker for that kind of humor. The show is 90 minutes of jokes, some of which were ancient when Myron Cohen told them on The Ed Sullivan Show, some new to me. But the oldies were golden oldies and they even did the one about the Klopman Diamond, though for some reason they insisted on calling it the Plotkin Diamond.

And the other main reason I enjoyed myself was that the cast is outstanding. Here — let me embed a photo of them and then tell you who they are…

The men are, left to right: Barry Gordon, Michael Pasternak, Robert Shampain and Jay Brian Winnick. The ladies are, also left to right: Ellen Ratner and Rena Strober. I probably liked Barry Gordon the best just because he's Barry Gordon and I've never seen him not be wonderful…but honestly, there were no standouts because everyone was terrific. They weren't cast that long ago and I suppose it's due to the expertise of the director, Jason Alexander, that the ensemble functioned like they'd been working together forever. I get impressed by teamwork. As in a good basketball game, it's important that someone scores every few seconds and that's only possible with the support of other players.

Actually, there was one standout. There was a fine live band fronted by Deborah Hurwitz. A woman of extraordinary talent, she played and sang what I believe were mostly her compositions between scenes. One musical number also incorporated expert caricatures by artist James Malia, whose work you can enjoy here.

The producers (who also contributed new material, as did Mr. Alexander) are Danny Gold and Billy Riback, and how they put this whole thing together so well is beyond me. I suspect they have a show here that can run and tour as long as there are Jews in this world…or at least, people who appreciate Jewish humor. Which is, of course, everyone. So don't worry that you can't get seats for this run. There'll be another, boychik.

I started writing a blog post the other day about how often we allow ourselves to be manipulated by fear, and how fears are cranked up (or completely fabricated) by those who wish to exploit us. Then I came across this piece by my friend Paul Harris, the best danged "talk radio" host I've ever heard, and realized he'd just done it, and done it better than I would have. I'm especially disgusted with the "end times" people who argue we have to buy their products to prepare for end times or vote for a certain candidate to prevent them.