Here's something you may want to watch when you have two hours and thirty-seven minutes: The entirety of the 1958 movie, South Pacific, starring Mitzi Gaynor, Rossano Brazzi and Ray Walston before he became a Martian. It's a pretty good adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway hit. Enjoy…

Several folks have pitched in to identify the cast members from that Lampoon pilot-special that I couldn't make out. The gent after Wayland Flowers is Pat Proft, a comedian and writer who wrote on Police Academy, the Leslie Nielsen "Naked Gun" movies and a whole lot of other things. The next lady over is Joanne Jonas, who among her other credits was in the original company of Godspell on Broadway. Then we have Bo Kaprall, who was part of Second City in Chicago and who's now apparently a writer on Saturday Night Live. Then we have The Lockers (the dance group) and Adrienne Posta, who among her other film roles was in To Sir With Love. Thanks to Mike Hensel, Joby Ball and Raymond Merkh for pitching in.

I am, by the way, finally back on my main computer. It has better sound and I might have caught a few of those names if I'd been using it then.

I always feel a little sorry for folks in unsold pilots. It's always a lot of work to get into one and then be a part of it…and you can't help imagining what it will do for your career if it sells and is a huge hit. Never mind "your career," your life. People on a hit show get married or unmarried or buy new homes or pay off all their debts or get the clout to pursue other dreams or get recognized in public or…

Well, you can imagine what it would do to your world. Alas, there's no consolation prize when the show doesn't make it…and there's a saying on Broadway, "Nobody looks good in a flop." That's not always true. I know cases where the network folks have screened a pilot and said, "This stinks but that kid in the blue shirt is terrific!" Generally though, it's a real all-or-nothing crap shoot.

Changing topics: There's no real political news. You can find polls that show your candidate doing a little better than the other candidate but nothing you'll believe ensures the outcome unless you want to fib to yourself.

Kevin Drum has an interesting post up about how when Donald Trump says something blatantly untrue like the Haitian pet-eating fairy tale, his supporters are desperate to prove it's true.

And Marc A. Caputo thinks that the Trump/Vance ticket is fine with looking a bit nutcase over stories like that because it keeps the dialogue being about immigration (which they think is a winning issue for them) and off topics like abortion and employment (which isn't).

Changing again: I didn't watch the Emmy Awards but caught a few segments. John Oliver is usually so funny and so good when he accepts his annual one or two but I thought he was a bit of a dick this time. (I actually mistyped that as "a brit of a dick" and should have left it that way.) As usual, some folks are outraged that a few TV stars were left out of the "In Memoriam" segment. And as usual, absolutely no one is bothered by the omission of any recently-deceased director, writer, producer, composer, make-up person, etc. Until we show equal outrage about any of those "snubs," I refuse to care about a couple of actors not making it in.

Lastly: I keep getting questions about when Sergio Aragonés and/or I will be appearing at a convention or somewhere. Well, I'm always at Comic-Con in July and will try to make it to WonderCon next March but that's all I have planned and Sergio hasn't yet decided about either. If/when either of our plans change or firm-up, you'll read it here.

In 1974, producer George Schlatter — relatively fresh off Laugh-In — produced a not-all-that-dissimilar comedy-variety pilot for ABC called Lampoon. Now, you may be wondering about that name because at the time, National Lampoon was a pretty popular magazine. Apparently, lawyers had advised Schlatter that National Lampoon didn't own the word "lampoon" so he could use it.

There was legal action which you can read about here and not only did the show not become a series but the pilot never aired. The word "Lampoon" was just too prominent in the show to edit it out.

But now, here we have it. The comedy troupe included Desi Arnaz Jr., Harry Secombe, Brenda Vaccaro, Marshall Efron, Wayland Flowers and Madame, Marion Ramsey, Lonnie Schorr and some other folks whose names I can't understand in the opening intros. If you can identify any of 'em, let me know. There were also some cartoons in the show, one of which was drawn by my amigo, Sergio Aragonés. If you just want to see Sergio's cartoon and hear his name mispronounced, click here to start watching the show at that point. If you want to watch the whole thing, click below…

Here's a look at Project 2025 as it might be explained if Schoolhouse Rock was still around. What I don't think a lot of folks "get" is that wishlists like Project 2025 have been around in Conservative circles for decades. The Heritage Foundation always has them under different names.

What's different now is that the current iteration has been made more public and one of the Presidential Candidates — I'll let you guess which one — seems like he might actually take a lot of pages from this version. Also, Politico says this edition is just plain nastier in its tone…and why shouldn't it be? Their chosen candidate sure is.

Thanks to Prentice Hammond for letting me know about this video…

Still battling a deadline, still working on my backup computer which slows me down a bit. Still guardedly optimistic about the Harris/Walz ticket. Still kinda amazed that there are Trump supporters who don't really care if the "Haitian Migrants eating pets" story is true or not because it makes a point they like. I'm reminded when Reagan aides more or less admitted that all his stories about Welfare Queens ripping off taxpayers were false because they didn't need evidence to be sure that kind of thing was happening all the time. Yeah, but if it happens all the time, why do you need to make up examples?

I'll tell you when I can about this new book I'm working on. It's not my big, exhaustive biography on Jack Kirby although that's nearing completion. I'm working on another book about someone who drew amazing, popular pictures.

I'm always remiss in plugging new things I have out so here's your notice that the first issue of a new Groo mini-series should now be available at your local comic book shop. It's subtitled Minstrel Melodies so as you might guess, it's full of silly poetry about silly events involving our silly barbarian. Even if you don't buy it, take a look at the store at pages 2 through 7 on which Sergio did something amazing, even for him. Three more issues follow.

One measure of how badly Donald Trump did in the debate last Tuesday night is how desperate his backers are to cry that it was rigged, fixed, crooked, whatever. They're complaining that Kamala Harris somehow got the questions in advance and I'll tell you why that's ridiculous. Here's the first question she was asked…

I want to begin tonight with the issue voters repeatedly say is their number one issue, and that is the economy and the cost of living in this country. Vice President Harris, you and President Trump [SIC] were elected four years ago and your opponent on the stage here tonight often asks his supporters, are you better off than you were four years ago? When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?

It didn't take collusion or espionage or any dirty-dealing to know that a question like that would probably be asked. It's probably been asked in every Presidential Debate since Reagan. And just about any answer about the state of the American economy would fit that question. If you don't have an answer for that one, you have no business setting foot on the stage of a debate like that. The next one was directed to Trump…

Mr. President, I do want to drill down on something you both brought up. The vice president brought up your tariffs you responded and let's drill down on this because your plan is what she calls is a essentially a national sales tax. Your proposal calls for tariffs as you pointed out here, on foreign imports across the board. You recently said that you might double your plan, imposing tariffs up to 20% on goods coming into this country. As you know many economists say that with tariffs at that level costs are then passed onto the consumer. Vice President Harris has argued it'll mean higher prices on gas, food, clothing medication arguing it costs the typical family nearly four thousand dollars a year. Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs.

Would anyone like to suggest that that was an unfair question? That it was one he couldn't answer? That it was one that he and his aides couldn't have anticipated? More to the point, isn't that a question he would have wanted to answer? Tariffs seem to be his answer to every question about the economy.

And it kind of went on like this. The next two questions were about immigration and abortion — two topics a nine-year-old child (or whoever prepped Trump for the debate) could have told you would be brought up. If the moderators hadn't asked about it, Trump would certainly have raised the topic of immigration. He even brought it up a couple times in response to questions about other matters. And Harris would surely have raised the issue of abortion.

Read the transcript. There were no questions the candidates' handlers couldn't have expected and I don't think Trump was caught off-guard on any of them. I just think he gave bad answers and worse facial expressions.

If you like old cars, you're gonna love this. It's some restored footage of drivers in and around Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and Detroit from the thirties — and it shows that some people back then drove as poorly as some people today. The film is not only restored but it's been colorized and a "sound design" has been added to it, meaning that someone today invented colors and audio but it's still interesting. And I can't help watching this kind of thing without wondering which car has Stan and Ollie in it…

I'm on my backup computer because my main one went kablooey on me last Saturday and the Dell people tried to talk me through fixing it over the phone and now they're sending over one technician after another. I suspect it would be cheaper for them to just give me a new computer but they don't seem to want to do that.

Not much to say about the political situation other than that Donald Trump insists he won the debate the same way he insists he won the last election. Someone needs to explain to this man that drawing a crowd to come see you does not translate to votes. If it did, Neil Diamond would have been President of the United States for about eight terms.

I rarely plug GoFundMe causes here but I'll make an exception for this one. A group is attempting to erect a very silly statue of a very silly man. Here — I'll let another silly man tell you about it…

If you'd like to kick in, here's the page.

After a delay of a few weeks, we have a new episode of Everything You Need To Know About Saturday Night Live. This time, it's Season 11 when Lorne Michaels returned as Executive Producer and it didn't look like he was succeeding. This may have been the last time the show teetered on the brink of cancellation — but teeter it did…

My favorite fact-checking website, fastcheck.org, has posted a pretty long piece of what was true or false in The Great Debate. As one might imagine, D. Trump said an awful lot of things that were just not true…but K. Harris had some, as well. Some of these are arguable…like Trump saying he wanted to be a dictator on Day One of his new administration. The fact-checkers seem to think that was not a fib because he says that was a joke. You can decide.

Those who think everything Kamala Harris said was true are wrong. And those who claim everything Donald Trump said was true are really, really, really wrong.

What we need right now is a good debate recap. And who better to moderate it than Joseph Gordon-Levitt? (Thanks to Carol Lay for recommending this.)

Eric Idle was recently interviewed in The New Yorker and you can read the interview here if you can get past their paywall, which sometimes you can. If not, this article summarizes and quotes some of what the interview says.

It's about where the various Pythons are now and why some of them don't get along well and/or need money more badly than you'd think they would. Idle has a one-man show touring soon and I sure hope that by the time it gets near me, my leg's healed enough to attend. He's a very funny, clever man — they all are, even the two dead ones. I don't like hearing that they're not all best buddies these days. And I always think that airing these kinds of problems in public makes it a lot less likely they'll be solved.

Isn't it interesting how the two campaigns have kinda come down to two simple competing messages? Trump's is "Make America Great Again," meaning "Let's go back to a time when you were happier with your country!" Kamala's is "We're not going back!"

We seem to be talking a lot about crowd sizes these days and Trump's insistence that his are the biggest ever and hers are tiny. The New York Times sent a crew to head-count and take photos and their conclusion is that both candidates are drawing massive audiences to their rallies. Trump will probably claim they're lying and the photos are fake but that's his usual "anything that shows I'm wrong is phony" excuse.

He may be getting a bit of a bum rap with all this emphasis on how many walkouts he has at his rallies. According to the Times piece, he usually speaks for 90+ minutes, she speaks for 25 or so. Hey, any performer can have walkouts when he or she goes on too long. It would be a mistake to infer that those who leave a Trump rally before he's done don't like his politics and won't vote for him. They just think he doesn't know when to end a speech..and they're right.

As for the debate: I've said this here in a couple of ways…

It's gonna be up and down, up and down, up and down…with many moments which will, at least at first, feel like game-changers. We've already had plenty of these. Trump getting shot at was one. Biden doing so poorly in the debate was one. Biden dropping out was a big one. Trump getting convicted of 34 felonies was one. The big Supreme Court ruling was one. There will be more.

The debate was another. And none of those predictions we were hearing back in March or April anticipated any of them. Or those yet to come…

In 1963, Hanna-Barbera entered into a deal with Ideal Toys that resulted in two programs — The Magilla Gorilla Show and The Peter Potamus Show — being produced for syndication. Both were initially loaded with plugs for Ideal's line and both were decent shows, not as good (in my opinion) as what H-B had done before but better than much of what would follow. As a fan of the studio's work at that age — I was 11 — I was excited about the new shows…

…and what really got me excited was a little documentary that aired the day before the first of these shows (Magilla's) debuted. It featured clips of the upcoming series and also from the feature the studio was then working on, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear. Best of all though, it had a little tour of the then-new Hanna-Barbera studio with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera and their staff re-creating a creative meeting in which they came up with the idea for the Magilla Gorilla cartoons. I kinda doubt it actually happened that way.

The voice recording sequence is also pretty fake. They had two artists (or two someones) play the voice actors without showing their faces. Then they dubbed in the actual voice tracks for the cartoon in question. The voices were actually by Allan Melvin and Doug Young but that wasn't Allan or Doug in the mini-doc — a deception I think I even figured out at that age.

Still, now that I'd had a peek inside that magical place, I spent no small amount of time imagining what it might be like to work there…and around thirteen years later, I did for several years. In fact, I worked with Bill and Joe and some of the other folks seen in this video. Here's a shot of three artists who were very important in the look of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and the design of key characters…

Other folks in this who I knew and/or worked with are Jayne Barbera, Tony Benedict, Alex Lovy and Lew Marshall. There's also a moment with Joe Barbera's secretary Guyla, who I knew later when she was still Mr. B's secretary and was also married to artist Alex Toth.

The special was called Here Comes a Star and it aired, at least in some cities, on January 14, 1964. The next day — again, in some cities — the first episode of The Magilla Gorilla Show debuted on the same stations. The host for Here Comes a Star was TV personality George Fenneman, best known as Groucho Marx's announcer/foil on You Bet Your Life. He had recently hosted a game show for CBS called Your Surprise Package and a prime-time show for ABC called Your Funny, Funny Films.

This is not the entire show. A couple of musical scenes have been edited out, presumably because someone didn't want to pay someone else for music rights. But there's enough here you should find fascinating. I miss those days, those people and that building. The reception area when Mr. Fenneman enters looks exactly as it did the first time I set foot in that building around 1974…

Nicole Karlis explains where this nonsense about aborting babies after they're born comes from. Actually, I think it comes from the kind of politicians and political operatives who'll say anything if it prods some person into pledging donations and/or support.