I've been busy with physical therapy on my knee today. It's getting better at about the speed tortoises twerk…but it is getting better. I've also been finishing a script for a new comic book I've signed on to write. I think its publisher is announcing it this weekend at the New York Comic Con, which I am not attending. Once it's officially announced, I'll tell you about it here.
I don't like to embed Comedy Central videos on this site as they tend to do glitchy things. Matter of fact, I'd say half the websites out there that offer videos they hope other sites will embed have them configured poorly. Either they autostart, which is just plain annoying, or they don't offer customization options like sizing so you can make them fit into the design of your site, or they're just plain full of extra script and code that clutters and crashes. You'd think since YouTube makes it so easy — and enjoys so much success in this area — that all other web designers would just ape them. Yeah, you'd think so.
Anyway, I suggest that if you didn't see Jon Stewart's piece on Obamacare last night, you take a few minutes and watch it. Here's a link to it on the Daily Show website and it'll probably play there as two parts with a brief commercial between 'em.
I have friends who have literally, actually, for-real died because they didn't have health insurance. I have others who are still with us but may not be for long if they don't get some. I do not see any other real plan even vaguely on the horizon to help those people other than the ones the Obama Administration is now attempting to institute…and I suspect the reason you don't see another viable plan is this: Any plan anyone comes up with to solve this problem is going to have all the same things "wrong" with it that Obama's political enemies are now citing to attack his plan. Except maybe that it won't constitute a triumph for this president.
In other news: In case you missed it, plans to expand the convention center in San Diego — in large part to keep Comic-Con there — have been approved unanimously by the California Coastal Commission. There are still obstacles but they've hurdled one of the biggies. I stand by my prediction that Comic-Con will not be decamping for any other city for a long time…if ever.
As some of you know, I am the Supervising Producer of The Garfield Show, an animated series which is produced for worldwide consumption and which runs in the U.S. on Cartoon Network and/or Boomerang. Starting next week, it's running on both but as far as I can tell, it's just reruns of the 78 half-hours we produced for Seasons One through Three. Neither network is running Season Four yet, even though those episodes are long-completed and have aired across most of the rest of this planet.
Season Four was a bit different from the first three seasons of the show. In those, each half hour consisted of two 11-minute episodes. In Season Three, a few of those featured serialized stories that ran four episodes…or two half-hours. In Season Four, we did seven five-parters that are quite spectacular with songs and scope and some of the best CGI animation I've ever seen done for television. I'm quite proud of how they came out and I'll try and let you know when they — and the other, normal-length episodes that comprise Season Four — finally air in on this continent. Of course, that means someone will have to tell me…and why should anyone do that?
Back to work. I have another one of those Tales of My Childhood coming up in a day or three here…