Monthly Archives: March 2021

Here's Adam Ragusea with a history lesson about breakfast cereals…

Busy writing something today…something that's not for this blog. I do that occasionally. And when I do, I put up one of these cute graphics I made using an image of a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup which, by the way, is not only a delicious lunch but also a handy ingredient to use in many recipes.

When one of these graphics is displayed on this blog, it denotes that Mark is busy and may not be able to spare the time to generate the usual amount of content today. Your tolerance is appreciated.

A new version of the theme from the Saturday morning Road Runner cartoon show…

Several of you have written to tell me that today's New York Times crossword puzzle is dedicated to Al Jaffee. I have a feeling that made Al very happy.

I'm dueling with some deadlines so this'll be short. The main argument I'm seeing on the 'net today is this one. Peter Baker, who's the Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times posted this tweet…

At this point in office, Trump had given five news conferences. Obama had given two, George W. Bush three and Clinton five. Biden so far has given zero.

This brought responses like this one from pundit Eric Boehlert…

at this point in office, Trump Obama Bush and Clinton hadn't passed the most important spending bill in 80 yrs

…while others pointed out that (a) the White House has said that there will be a press conference before March is over and (b) that most of the press conferences the other presidents had had by now were joint conferences with foreign leaders where not many questions were asked and the ones that were were about matters that concerned the foreign leaders.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that it's kinda nice to turn on the TV and not see the President of the United States as much as we saw the last guy. And I don't recall him answering many questions he didn't want to answer, which is almost the same thing as not having the press conference at all.

And yes, I think presidents should hold regular press conferences but you know what would impress me more? Sitting down at regular intervals with good journalists — the kind who don't lob softballs — for one-on-one interviews where the reporter can ask follow-up questions and the president can't dodge them by calling on someone else. Anyone who's reached an important place in government has learned how to give non-answers and evasive responses.

Your standard press conference — the kind where the subject calls on this reporter then that reporter, then this reporter — makes it too easy to dodge questions. Nixon, when he held them, used to have a little chart in front of him that told him where each reporter was sitting and it was marked with the ones who were friendly or who just wanted to be seen on camera asking a question. And some of them asked pretty easy ones because they thought it increased their chances of being called on. I'd rather see my President have to sit down for an hour with Jonathan Swan or Bob Woodward or even Chris Wallace.

Okay, back to work…

In March of 2016, the Guinness Book of World Records certified that Allan "Al" Jaffee (born March 13, 1921) had the longest career as a professional comics artist. At the time of this recognition, it was 73 years and 3 month and it lasted, by my count, another three years and one month after that.

This would be impressive even if all that work was lousy but it was the precise opposite of that. It was skillful and funny and delightful…and if you ever got to meet Al, it was obvious why it was the way it was. Because all those adjectives described Al, too.

Have a great day, Al. Feel the love.

Hey, you got fourteen minutes to play a musical game? I can name that movie in five notes…

Judging from my e-mail, a lot of you enjoyed the Johnny Carson video yesterday. Several of you noticed Teri Garr in a United Airlines commercial and John Austin, who was among those who wrote in, noted this show was the same year that Young Frankenstein came out. She may have done the commercial a year or two before.

Stu Shostak, Kabir Bhatia and a few other folks corrected a confusion of mine. Johnny Carson actually moved his Tonight Show from New York to Burbank as of May 1, 1972, not May of '74. Stu says that contrary to what I said, Johnny did take the show back to New York once — for Thanksgiving Week in '72. Kabir says he did it twice — from November 13 to 30 of 1972 and again for May 7-25 of 1973. I don't know why I thought otherwise.

Two weeks from today, we won't all be in Anaheim enjoying WonderCon. We will be in our homes watching all the great panels that will be available online including three of mine. The entire schedule has been posted here and I'll just spotlight my three…

All of these are on Friday, March 26, all times are Pacific and all panels run an hour, give or take a few minutes…

10 AM – The Jack Kirby Tribute Panel
Mark Evanier (Kirby: King of Comics) talks about the man some call "The King of the Comics" with author Neil Gaiman (American Gods) and TV host and mega-Kirby fan Jonathan Ross. They will attempt to discuss what was special about the work of Jack Kirby and why, long after we lost him, he seems to be more popular than ever.

1 PM – Cartoon Voices
Mark Evanier (supervising producer of The Garfield Show) welcomes four of the best actors today supplying the words and sounds of animated superstars and the strange beings who inhabit videogames. They are Maurice LaMarche (Pinky and the Brain), Mara Junot (Mortal Combat 11), Brock Powell (Phineas and Ferb: Candace against the Universe) and Anna Brisbin (Final Fantasy VII Remake). There will be a script reading of a script they've never seen before and plenty of talk about their craft.

5 PM – The Groo Crew
The four guys responsible for the comic book Groo the Wanderer — Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier, Stan Sakai and Tom Luth — talk about how and why they create the adventures of the stupidest character in all of comics, and maybe we'll get Sergio to talk about his 55 years with MAD magazine and Stan to discuss new and exciting news about his creation, Usagi Yojimbo.

The times given are when these panels will debut on the WonderCon@Home website but soon after, they will be seen on this page and elsewhere. There are a lot of great panels and — just think! — because they're pre-recorded, online and there indefinitely, you won't have to miss one to see another…and you can get a great seat, assuming you have one in your home.

For a few months early in 1974, there was a fad in this country called "streaking" which at times seemed like it existed to serve two purposes. There were people who always wanted to be naked in public and this gave them an excuse to do it and seem trendy as opposed to perverted. And it gave news programs and other shows a way to advertise that if you tuned in, you just might get a glimpse of a naked person…something you almost never saw on your TV back then.

Oh — and it also resulted in a hit record for Ray Stevens. If by some chance you don't know what streaking is, this will clue you in…

A lot of people I knew then did it…once. And I'll own up and confess that I got talked into doing it…once. I was twenty-two years old, which is just about the upper limit for when you should do something like that.

I was dating a lady who lived in a huge apartment complex near the Marina. It was full of single people and on the weekends, there were a dozen parties in various apartments or by each of several pools there. She was throwing one of those apartment parties one Saturday evening and an idea somehow came up during it. I have no idea who first suggested it; only that it wasn't me.

My lady friend was close with a tenant named Ginny who was throwing a simultaneous party in her apartment on the other side of the complex. Suddenly, from outta nowhere, there was a discussion at our party about us all streaking Ginny's get-together.

There were, I think, ten couples at ours and for about a half hour, there was a lot of "I'll do it if you'll do it" and "I'll do it if everyone else will do it." My lady friend said to me, "Well, if I do it, you have to do it" and a couple of other folks said that to their dates. Bluffs were being called left and right and then finally, one young woman began taking her clothes off and announcing, "Let's not think about it. Let's just do it!"

So we didn't think about it. We just did it. A minute later, we were all nude and running through the complex, giggling a lot and getting cheers and applause from everyone who spotted us. And before you ask: This was not the kind of party where a significant amount of alcohol or recreational drugs get consumed. None of us had had any of that and now, close to half a century later, I still haven't.

We got to Ginny's apartment and one of us knocked. Then someone said, "Streakers don't knock" and we tried to go in. The door was locked so one of us rang the bell and when Ginny answered, she started cheering, "Yay! We're being streaked! We're being streaked!" This was, at the moment, a great honor…or something. We ran in to a thunderous ovation and laughter, then ran through the apartment and out the back door.

And that's when we found ourselves bareass naked out on the sidewalk in a very nice residential section of Marina Del Rey. This is the kind of thing that can happen when you don't think about something, you just do it.

We had to walk around to the front of the building where, since my lady friend didn't have a key — or anything else on her — she had to buzz Ginny's apartment and ask her to please buzz us in.

We later heard that at that moment, a raucous debate was going on at Ginny's party about whether they should all take off their clothes and streak our party and if so, how long they should wait to make sure we were all clothed again. I mean, what's the point of streaking naked people? They ultimately decided to think about this instead of just doing it so they decided not to do it.

Everyone at our party was soon back in my friend's apartment, many of us saying, "I can't believe we just did that!" Actually, a very interesting discussion ensued about bodies and nudity and freedom and beauty. It turned out at least three of the couples had not seen each other naked before and they seemed eager now to do more of that; just not in front of others. The general consensus was that we were kind of glad we'd done it…once.

Now, this may sound like an abrupt change of subject but it isn't. As my lady friend said before we streaked, bare with me…

The video below is The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for March 28, 1974. To put this into context, Johnny's show was still based in New York then but several times a year, they'd come out and do a few weeks of shows from NBC Burbank and claim it was "Hollywood." Two months after this, Johnny moved the show out here permanently, claiming they'd occasionally go back to New York for a few weeks — which they never did.

Among the many things that changed with the move was that one of the world's great comedy writers, Pat McCormick, joined Johnny full-time. Pat had been employed whenever the show was in town but he got a steady gig there as a writer and occasional sketch player. And in this episode, he also filled the role of Streaker.

Knowing Pat as I did in later years, this was either his idea or if someone else suggested it, he was only too happy to volunteer.

It happened at the end of the monologue so it didn't interfere with Mr. Carson's jokes. Near the beginning of that monologue, Johnny mentions that there's a rumor that they'll be "streaked" some time that evening…as if he didn't know exactly when it would happen, who would do it and what he would ad-lib after it.

I once heard Pat talk about it and he said the original idea involved him and a bevy of Playboy-type ladies and that Johnny okayed it based on that. In fact, Johnny suggested they lose Pat and keep the bevy. Alas, Standards and Practices said that if they did that, the whole thing would have to be edited out of the show. It could stay in if the naughty bits were electronically masked and it was just one guy. Pat, of course, would be the one guy and he did it wearing athletic shoes and a Johnny Carson mask.

Later on, the press revealed who'd dunnit and it claimed NBC was doing some sort of investigation that might conclude he should be fired for moral impropriety. I assume that was said just for show and that no such inquiry was done. If there had been one, it would surely have concluded that streaking the Tonight Show was among the more wholesome things Pat McCormick ever did.

This video is of the whole show with the original commercials. If you want to keep watching, they play "Stump the Band" and then Johnny chats with Michael Landon and the man who was arguably the all-time best talk show guest ever, Carl Reiner. They're followed by a song from Gloria Loring and then the last guest is Joanna Cassidy. This is from when the show was ninety minutes…

Your mileage can and will probably vary but I have to say: This year of mostly-isolation hasn't been as bad for me as I thought it would be. I don't mean it was good; just that I was expecting worse. And I am well aware of how bad it was for those whose incomes plunged or ceased, those whose jobs went away to perhaps never return, those who worked but worked in jobs with a certain amount of risk, etc.

There are many downsides to being a freelancer who works mostly at home but at least it prepares you to be at home a lot. It also helps to not be one of those people who loves to travel or who gets claustrophobia from being in the same place for a long time. I don't think I'd do badly if I went to prison and was placed in Solitary Confinement. Which will probably happen one of these days. Just you wait.

My most frustrating moments of the past year have probably been of listening to friends who needed help that I couldn't give them or, worse, that no one could give them. I think it has helped me to not try to predict when it would end and what portions of our lives would return once it does. But I know it adds to the pain of someone who asks, "When do you think this will all be over?" to tell them, "I have no idea."

I still have no idea. I can see light at the end of the tunnel but I don't think any of us have a way of gauging how long that tunnel might be.

Today is not only 365 days since I started my little self-quarantine lifestyle, it's also two weeks since I got the second dose of Moderna, meaning I ought to be as immune as I'm going to get. I have not been particularly frightened of getting the virus since I've been real careful where I go…and properly-masked. I've also been very particular about who I associate with. That will not change but obviously, the list of people can expand as more and more of them get vaccinated.

I spoke last night to a friend of mine who is very, very nervous about contracting COVID-19. Yes, she knows cases are declining…and she's young enough that if she does get it, it probably won't be more than a few days of agony. It isn't the few days of agony that scares her. It's the fear that she might infect someone else, especially her parents. She lives with them and could never forgive herself if she was the reason they caught it.

I don't believe in worrying as much as she does but I do believe in being as cautious as she is.

Here's a smart message from Michael Grabowski. I'm going to interject between some of his paragraphs so don't get confused as to which of us is speaking. I'm the one with the wider margins…

To start, I'm okay with any company deciding how it wants to use or no longer use its characters and trademarks. I get a bit nervous when they do that out of cultural pressure rather than commercial pressure, though.

I get a bit nervous about that too but I also think it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between cultural pressure and commercial pressure. Some TV stations said they wouldn't carry reruns of The Cosby Show because they didn't want to be putting money in his pocket or suggesting that his sex crimes didn't matter and it was fine to promote the image of the man as America's Dad. Other stations decided no one would want to watch him now, and apparently some did polls and surveys that shaped this decision. So is The Cosby Show not around much now due to cultural pressure or commercial pressure? I sure can't separate them.

I vaguely remember the Dr. Seuss books under fire as ones I read as a kid but never got around to revisiting when my kids were Dr. Seuss-ready age. I remember the premise of On Beyond Zebra fondly, but I don't recall the specifics.

I have copies of all the Dr. Seuss books up to a certain point in his output. Of the six that have been withdrawn, On Beyond Zebra was the only one I would consider a major work of Seuss. In a couple of the articles about this entire matter, I've read that all six of the books have sometimes been outta-print for long periods with no one noticing. I have a hunch this one will soon be back with some art corrections.

I think Pepe LePew is a bit more marketable than you give it credit for. I have a Pepe necktie bought from a Warner Bros. mall store in the 90s that I still wear every Valentine's Day, and I have a Looney Tunes DVD from about ten years ago that featured a dozen or more of the Pepe shorts. No idea how those items sold relative to, say, the Sylvester or Foghorn Leghorn DVDs or Taz ties, but the character still had commercial worth and entertainment value (in moderate doses).

I'm told by a person involved with Warner Home Video that none of the DVDs of classic Warner Brothers cartoons are selling too well these days but when they did that Pepe one, it sold worse than most of the others. This might have been because of the seduction aspect of the material but I'd be more inclined to think it was because no one wanted to watch a collection of cartoons that were all the same story over and over again.

I once bought a Pepe LePew video collection and never got around to taking off the shrink wrap and watching it…and I'll tell you how far before the "Me Too" movement this was: Not only was this a videotape but, so help me, it was on Beta.

The same person connected with Warner Home Video told me Pepe merchandise never did well for them; not as strong as the "first tier" characters (who I believe are Bugs, Daffy and Tweety) and not as strong as most of the "second tier" ones, which I guess would be Porky, Foghorn, etc.

All that said, you seem to be saying that it's ok for these books and that character to disappear from modern culture in part because their copyright owners haven't realized much commercial potential from them lately, or they're not really cherished by the intended audience the way other, more memorable such characters and books are.

(To take it to another category for a moment, we live in an age where we can't see Fatty Arbuckle shorts or get a decent Blu-Ray of Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, because the probably undeserved scandal around their names wasn't and isn't worth the hassle for such limited commercial potential. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson's hits will never get off the radio — and I'm not saying they should — despite concerns about him, because those songs still have tremendous commercial value.)

I think it's okay for a private company to say "We're not going to put this out because we think we'll lose money on it or not make enough to make it worth the effort." That to me is a totally valid reason and there are zillions of books that are not in print and oodles of movies and TV shows that are not available on home video for that reason.

The fact that someone someplace may find the material offensive may or may not have anything to do with that. I worked on some TV shows that have never been issued on DVD because no one thinks they can make a buck doing that. Are you suggesting that if someone thought there was something offensive in those shows, some company would have some obligation to invest in their release?

I also don't think material disappears from modern culture just because you can't order it off Amazon at the moment.

Are we really far from the day when it's decided that Elmer Fudd's speech impediment is no longer funny, or that the hunting and gunplay in those cartoons are no laughing matter? Will their commercial potential be enough for WB to stream those cartoons still, or will they get locked up with Coal Black? I'm glad I'll still have all those DVDs if that becomes the only way to watch them. (Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs probably deserves to stay out of public view. Elmer Fudd and Pepe LePew are nowhere near that class of bad taste and deliberate harm.)

See? Here's what I meant about things that aren't available on Amazon at the moment. Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is not out of public view. There are probably a hundred copies of it — some from a really good transfer — on the Internet at the moment. Now, if you want to argue that it deserves better treatment, okay.

But this is not a terrible situation. While the folks at Warner Brothers probably don't officially like the idea of their property being bootlegged, someone there's gotta be pleased they're sidestepping controversy. They're not preventing anyone who wants to see it from seeing it…so there aren't angry mobs denouncing them for suppressing and "canceling" a wonderful cartoon. But if other angry mobs are outraged about its content…well, WB isn't responsible for it being seen.

Fatty Arbuckle shorts have long been hard to view…and I say that as someone who was searching for them back in the sixties. Again, this gets to the muddle between things becoming unavailable due to cultural objections or commercial problems. For seventy or eighty years, there was no market whatsoever for Arbuckle movies so no one invested the funds to preserve and restore them. As we mentioned back here, they're becoming a little more available. And Turner Classic Movies has even run a few of his movies as mentioned here. I'm going to guess there was not a huge tune-in and that if there had been, we'd see more of him there.

As for the Pepe shorts, their biggest crime is their repetitiousness. I'm pretty sure Pepe never gets the girl. The whole bit is about all the suffering he endures while being such an obvious creep. As with Wile E. Coyote, no one roots for him to succeed. The whole gag is about the constant and crazy failures, as in most of the WB cartoons, to get what they want. It's just a different kind of hunt theme, and I didn't need anyone to tell me that Pepe LePew wasn't a role model.

I have no outrage over this issue, but definitely concern. Can't we develop a better sense of perspective about the things in our culture we think others might take social cues from? I'm okay with WB not making any new use of Pepe LePew if they choose not to, but can't we also make it clear that Pepe LePew is not Cosby, Weinstein, Trump, or Cuomo? Thanks as always for thoughtful, entertaining blogging.

And thank you for a thoughtful, entertaining message. I wish people didn't take umbrage at some kinds of humor…but then again, I think people these days are more sensitive about some serious issues like alcoholism and sexual exploitation. It's possible, I believe, to crack down on the Harvey Weinsteins and that kind of behavior towards women and still enjoy a performance of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" or a Pepe LePew cartoon but I recognize that might not be as easy for some people as others. When wrongs are righted, they're sometimes righted too much for a while.

Randy Rainbow is back with one of his best…

With all the problems in the world today, it's amazing that people find time to get outraged about things like six obscure Dr. Seuss books that no one was reading being taken out of print or some episodes of The Muppet Show rerunning with disclaimers. This week's way-outta-scale outrage seems to be about Pepe LePew, a character who during the "Golden Age" of Warner Brothers cartoons appeared in eighteen short cartoons, all of them the same.

And like you, I was amazed to find out that they made eighteen of those things. I thought they made three and just ran them over and over.

I was and am a huge admirer of Chuck Jones, Michael Maltese and the other folks who concocted these cartoons but I think I liked everything else they did more. And I don't think I'm alone in not having a whole lotta love for the horny skunk, even back when date rape was an acceptable subject for humor. Maltese, who wrote the cartoons, wasn't even too fond of him.

I knew Mike a little and I recall him saying something like, "We made one and it went over well so we did it again because that's what we did when something went over well. And then the second one won an Academy Award." That was a distinction which no one in the business thought went to the best cartoon each year — it had more to do with what the guys who ran the studio chose to submit — but when it did, to quote Mike, "We had to keep making them."

The audiences for which they were made laughed at them, as Linda Jones (daughter of Chuck) notes. But I don't think Pepe ever rose to the popularity of other characters her father worked on or others that came out of that studio. When I was growing up, I had Bugs and Daffy and Porky and Tweety and Sylvester and Elmer and Sam and the Road Runner and the Coyote and several of their comrades on my t-shirts and lunchboxes and toy shelf…but only once in a while did you see Pepe.

He didn't even have his own Dell or Gold Key comic book like all the rest of them did at one point or another or always. Every year or three, Pepe might pop up in someone else's comic on a puzzle page or a short back-up story or somewhere but it was extremely rare. I suspect one reason was that no one knew what to do with him. Okay, so he chases around a female black cat that happened to get a white streak painted on its back. What's the plot of the next issue?

One of his few appearances in comics of the preceding century was a one-panel cameo in an issue of Bugs Bunny that I wrote for the Gold Key line back in 1975. It was a story about Elmer Fudd deciding to join the French Foreign Legion and I think I only wrote it because I thought it would be funny to have Elmer keep saying "Fwench Foweign Wegion." Speech impediments were funnier then too. Here is that one panel from "Beau Fudd"…

I'm not sure if it was on this story or one other one I wrote that had a three-panel cameo of Pepe but it was a hassle getting him in there. When my editor at Gold Key, Del Connell, saw I'd put Pepe into the script, he said, "Pepe LePew? We haven't used him in years! I don't think we even have a model sheet for what he looks like." I suggested that maybe they oughta have one.

As I mentioned back in this post, the Warner Brothers studio wasn't actively producing new cartoons then. There were however folks there in charge of supervising what was done with their characters, merchandise-wise. Del called them and asked for some reference on Pepe. According to him, they said, "Oh, we don't have any. There's not enough interest in that character these days."

Fortunately, the artist on that particular comic book I wrote was Tom McKimson, who'd worked for the cartoon studio and he remembered…kind of. So we stuck Pepe in the comic and as far as I could tell, nobody cared. That's the character that some people are now furious is being "canceled."

When DC Comics later took over issuing comic books of Bugs and Friends, they did a few short stories of Pepe and I gave him a cameo in a Superman/Bugs Bunny crossover series I wrote for them. But I think at that point, Pepe was just appearing to see if there was any merchandising potential in the character…and apparently, there wasn't.

I am against losing great work because someone somewhere might take offense to it. But when things go away because they haven't aged well or no one really cares about them anymore…well, that's not a hill on which I choose to die or even suffer a slight scratch on.

Not everything that was funny then is funny now. I don't think drunks are as funny as they used to be. I know most of the racist gags of the thirties and forties — jokes of the Mantan Moreland variety — don't bring down the house the way they used to. And given the changes in fashion and in how we view adult sexuality, I don't think your basic man-in-a-dress, as practiced by Milton Berle, Flip Wilson and the movie Some Like It Hot, is the sure-fire laugh-getter it once was.

And I don't think the amorous M. LePew skipping after some terrified pussycat was ever that funny…and it's even less so now. I'm against giving in to pressure groups that scream about things they don't understand. If this was my government banning something, I'd be out on the Capitol dressed like the QAnon Shaman, trying to occupy Nancy Pelosi's office. (Well, no, I wouldn't…)

But when a company that owns something decides there's no market for it at the moment, I'm okay with that, just as long as the material still exists somewhere. I'm not sure there ever was that much of a market for Pepe.

Eric Idle teaches you how to play that song he plays everywhere he goes…

Thursday's the big day here when we celebrate (that's not the right word) one year since my wise doctor told me to stay home as much as possible, avoid gatherings, wear a mask when I absolutely had to go out and, in general, forget about going to public events that, by and large, weren't going to happen anyway. Day after day after tomorrow, we'll be discussing what one year of quasi-isolation has meant to some of us.

Meanwhile, I see that the new ABC/Ipsos poll says that 68% of Americans approve of the way the Biden Administration has been handling the COVID-19 response. That's amazing because I didn't think you could get 68% of Americans to agree on anything these days.

Here are some things I won't be talking about on this blog. I didn't watch Oprah Winfrey's interview last night with Harry and Meghan. After an unscientific survey of comments on the web this morning, I gather most of you did and wish you hadn't.

I'm not really following the travails of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo but I can say this: These days, when someone in public life is accused of "inappropriate sexual behavior" — a term which can cover a wide range of improprieties — I think there are two things which oughta be considered…

One is whether the alleged offender lacked the self-control and consideration for others to do the alleged deeds. The other is whether they lacked the good judgement to not do those things because they'd get caught and people would demand their resignations and they'd become very ineffective in their jobs and maybe lose them.

I dunno quite what Cuomo did and didn't do to the ladies who've accused him so I don't know how bad it was. But maybe he oughta step down because he was very foolish to do whatever he did. We don't need foolish people in positions of power and he's certainly harmed his ability to get things done in his job.

Then again, this might not be a great time to change leaders and install someone who's going to have to learn on-the-job in the middle of a war.

And lastly for now: I'm also not paying that much attention to what's up with my own governor, Gavin Newsom, whom many wish to recall. I know someone who thinks Newsom should be recalled because he's been too strict with lockdowns and masking mandates, and I know someone who thinks Newsom should be recalled because he hasn't been strict enough.

Again, Newsom did something — attending a public event — that he should have been wise enough not to do. What scares me about the recall effort is that the last time my state recalled its governor, the guy who got the job made everything worse. And there's also that horses-in-midstream question. I think I'll stop thinking about this stuff and go write a comic book.