If your TV gets the Decades channel, enjoy it while you can. Monday, March 27 it changes to a channel called Catchy Comedy which, from what I see, carries nothing that I'd watch that I can't get on half a dozen other channels or online: The Carol Burnett Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, The Lucy Show, I Love Lucy, Love Boat, The Bob Newhart Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show…

I love many of those shows dearly. I own complete sets of some of them on DVD. I think I can watch some of them on six or seven other channels I receive…and that's not even counting online. Every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show is on YouTube in good, compete prints with no commercials. If you were to name any episode from that series, I could be watching it on the screen in front of me in about ten seconds…or less time than it takes my office TV to warm up.

Pluto even has an "all Dick Van Dyke Show" sub-channel that runs 'em 24/7. I just checked and at this moment, they're running "The Square Triangle," my least-favorite episode of my favorite sitcom.

This is not to in any way berate the folks who run Decades Catchy Comedy. I've met a few of them. They're nice, smart people who seem to truly love old television programs. If anything, I'm berating a system that doesn't seem to incentivize programmers to seek out shows that everyone else isn't running. A lot, I know, aren't being run because it doesn't seem cost-efficient to restore the old prints to current broadcast quality.

And a lot might not draw an audience right away. There might be a Catch-22 in play here: I'd love to be able to watch all the episodes of The Defenders, the 1961-1965 dramatic series that starred E.G. Marshall and that guy who later starred in The Brady Bunch. I suspect though it would cost an awful lot of money to get all four seasons in rotation on some channel and then it might take an awful long time for enough people to discover it and start watching to justify that investment. If I owned a channel, I doubt I'd take the risk.

I don't have any solution to this. I don't have any suggestions. I hope some other channel picks up the Dick Cavett Show reruns which were one thing I could watch on Decades and nowhere else. I guess all I'm saying is that I'll miss that channel.

But you know, when I was much younger, if you'd told me that someday, my TV set could bring in hundreds of different channels for my viewing pleasure, I would have thought that was Heaven. I wouldn't have imagined they'd all be showing The Dick Van Dyke Show…and probably when I tuned in, "The Square Triangle."

And here's another song parody that scores a bulls-eye, this one courtesy of a certain Mr. Rainbow…

A musical interlude that I think hits some solid marks. Thanks to Prentice Hammond for telling me about it…

I recently had a birthday and this is one of those years when I can't renew my driver's license by mail and/or Internet. So I went into the Department of Motor Vehicles the other day to get a new license and an anecdote. I always seem to get an anecdote there along with my license.  I got one in 2008 and another one in 2018. Here is this year's.

I went to the D.M.V. office where the wait, even with an appointment, turned out to be as long as the Oscars. I don't mean the televised ceremony a couple nights ago. I mean the entire history of that award.

I was lulled into the false hope for a speedy in-and-out because they started me through the process about twenty seconds after I walked in…but then there was a long wait for the next step, then a longer wait for the one after that and the longest wait after that. Before I was halfway to having my photo taken, I began to understand why people become Sovereign Citizens and foolishly argue that you don't need a driver's license to operate a motor vehicle.

The guy who gave me the vision test seemed skeptical that I, a person of 71 years, didn't use eyeglasses or contacts for the exam but I aced it. I only missed one question on the written test…something about the rules when someone under the drinking age transports liquor in his or her vehicle. It was not information I would ever have a reason to know.

While waiting in line for that last test, I got my anecdote. The line put us right near the vision testing area and there I witnessed a "Karen." This, as you probably know, is a recently-invented descriptor for a person — usually female — who creates a big public spectacle insisting on all sorts of entitlement and privilege. I used to think the name was unfortunate because I've known some ladies named Karen who were as nice as nice could be.

But from what I overheard, this "Karen" was actually named Karen.  In fact, if they didn't name the descriptor for her, they should have.  The line to have your photo taken had about a dozen people in it.  When told she should join the line, she marched to the front of it and tried to join it there.  Someone told her to go to the end of it but she announced — as if saying this would entitle her to do what she did — "I don't wait in lines!"

A roving D.M.V. employee told her that if she wanted to get her photo taken — and therefore get her license — she was going to have to wait in this one. They would not take it until she did. After running through a list of words that get bleeped on most TV shows, she grudgingly trudged to the end of the line, pulled out her cell phone and began texting someone angrily.

That line moved quickly. I was still in mine when I saw her reach the camera station, complaining all the while quite loudly about how she couldn't wait to get the hell out of this place. All of us watching her felt the same way but we didn't feel the need to say it and with such volume. They took her photo and then there was some sort of squabble because she demanded to see it and to have it redone to her liking.

I did not hear how that was resolved but it was resolved and she took her place in the line for the written test, about three folks behind me. We all waited a long time to go into a little room where we would each take our written test standing at one of several little computer work stations. As rotten luck would have it, a whole bunch of us in line were finally called in at the same time and she wound up at the station next to me.

I was taking my test. She was taking her test. You're not supposed to get help from notes or books or anyone else but she turned to me and asked out loud, "What the [f-word] is the level of blood that means you're too drunk to drive?" and you would have been proud of me. I did not reply, "I don't know but whatever it is, you're over it!" I said nothing as another D.M.V. staffer scurried over to her and told her politely that she was not allowed to ask for help. (In case you're interested, the answer is that's it's illegal to drive if you're over 21 and your Blood Alcohol Concentration is 0.08% or higher. I looked that up online before I went in for my test.)

She resumed answering the questions, spending three seconds on each one, not stopping to carefully read each question and consider each multiple-choice. So it was not surprising that the screen suddenly told her she'd failed and would have to wait two minutes to take another test. She however announced she was not waiting and stormed from the room.

Soon after, I passed my test. I proceeded to the desk where a clerk would process my final paperwork and give me my temp license, good until the real one shows up in my mail. I asked said clerk, "Does that happen often?" and she knew I was asking about Karen and her grand exit.

The clerk sighed and said, "Once or twice a day. Where they get real upset is when they realize that instead of waiting the two minutes to take another test, they have to come back and start the whole process all over again from the top."

This may seem trivial and unnecessary to some of you but that's kind of how much of my life — and therefore, this blog — is. I was just lying in bed, wide awake and thinking over the list o' things I have to do today and the proper order in which to do them. I decided I had to post this before I did anything else…

Yesterday around 4:30 in the afternoon, I was standing on a street some miles from my home waiting for an Uber. A tall gentleman walked past me, stopped and then came back and said, "Are you Mark?" I said I was and he told me his name was Bob, that he was a fan of this blog and he was looking forward to seeing my panels at WonderCon. I thanked him, we shook hands and he was on his way.

I had something kinda serious on my mind at the moment so I wasn't as friendly as I like to be with people and I'm feeling uncomfy about that. Bob, if you really do read this blog and you're at WonderCon and you see me there, please say hello. You were nice enough to stop and say what you said. I'd like to be as nice in response.

Your local PBS station may be showing this wonderful documentary about the man behind The Music Man, Meredith Willson. If you can't watch it there, you can watch it here — but only for a limited time…

Hey, wanna read a pretty good interview with Birthday Boy Al Jaffee? It was done some time ago but it's a good read and it's right here.

Al is probably busy today thinking up Snappy Answers to the Stupid Question, "How does it feel to be 102?"

A few folks have written to disagree with my position that there's no real proof out there as to the effectiveness of masks against COVID.  As far as they're concerned, there's absolute, definitive proof of whatever they want to believe…and it seems to bother some that (a) I don't think so and/or (b) I might or might not be wearing one when they think I should or should not.  The latter seems to rile some folks who are unlikely to come within fifty miles of me.

The ones who say it's settled that masks are useless all seem to be pointing to the "Cochrane Study" as having settled the issue once and for all.  Cochrane is a widely-respected organization but their findings in this area were extremely limited in scope and they're being so misinterpreted that Cochrane put out a notice that started with these words…

Many commentators have claimed that a recently-updated Cochrane Review shows that "masks don't work," which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation.

Could they say it any clearer? Somehow, that didn't persuade a friend of mine. I sent him the link and he wrote back that as far as he was concerned, the study still proved his position — i.e., what he wanted to believe it proved. There's a lot of that around.

I am reminded of a year or two ago when a different friend sent me a draft of an article he was working on about the failure of Charlton Comics' super-hero line in the late sixties. He said he wanted any corrections I had and I sent him what I thought was a big one. In the piece, he cited sales figures for certain comics and he got those out of the Statements of Ownership that ran in some of the Charlton comics in question. Back then, if you published comics sold by subscription, you had to print an annual notice in each book divulging its past sales.

I sent the guy an interview with Dick Giordano, who was the editor of those comics. In it, Dick said that the numbers in those Statements were bogus; that someone just made them up to satisfy the postal authorities who apparently never checked. This friend wrote me back, "I was aware he said that but those numbers are the only ones we have." In other words: Wrong numbers are better than no numbers at all.

But of course, they aren't. Imagine if a policeman said, "Yes, I know the guy we arrested for that murder was probably not the killer but he was the only suspect we had."

To some people, proof of what they want to believe doesn't have to be accurate. It just has to fit into their arguments for the moment, kind of as a placeholder for the real proof they "know" is coming. Look at all the folks who passionately believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Trump and his lawyers, some of whom may be facing disbarment now, got laughed out of court with their "proof" something like eighty times. Even judges Trump appointed saw no merit in any of it.

But die-hard Trumpers fervently believe that solid proof of Donald's landslide is someplace out there and they're not going to let a little thing like not actually having it change their positions. How much "proof" has Mike Lindell touted and then quietly abandoned?

I know I've said this before on this blog but often, I think "I don't know" is the correct answer to a question. We often don't like admitting that we don't know but sometimes — increasingly often in my life — we don't. At least, I don't. What really baffles me about this mask business is that no one discussing it seems to be considering the possibility that the N95 masks that doctors wear and recommend might be more effective than masks made of the cheapest cloth some non-medical company can find.

Common sense tells me that there could be a difference and maybe a huge one. But I don't see anyone doing any real analysis of this…and I'm talking about actual research.

We seem to be getting very lazy with the whole concept of evidence and proof. These days when someone says, "I did the research on this," they just might mean they searched the Internet until they found someone who gave them the answer they wanted to believe. And that someone didn't have to be an expert or have done any real research themselves. Like that Cochrane Review study that didn't say what many people wanted to think it said, all the alleged research just had to be someone saying it online somewhere.

Here are two more videos by my new favorite pianist, Lord Vinheteiro. In the first, he plays the Woody Woodpecker theme song the proper way…which is to say, dressed as Woody Woodpecker. If you've been trying to learn this tune and it's not working for you, try putting on your Woody Woodpecker costume. As you can hear for yourself, it helps…

And that's the prelude to this video in which Lord V, turns off the sound on the 1946 Woody Woodpecker/Andy Panda cartoon Musical Moments From Chopin and supplies his own real-time accompaniment. He does a good job but it might have been even better if he'd worn the Woody Woodpecker costume and better still if he'd swapped it out now and then for an Andy Panda suit. (If you want to view the cartoon with the original, full orchestral soundtrack, click here.)

I repeat: This is an award for a body of work as a comic book writer…someone who is or was unrecognized and/or unrewarded for that body of work. It is not for your favorite artist. It is not for someone who wrote a few stories. It is not for someone whose talents have been honored over and over and who got very, very rich and/or famous writing comics.

We have so far received a lot of interesting nominations for comic book writers who produced a substantial body of work…but almost as many nominations for artists who, if they ever wrote a comic in their lives, didn't write more than a few. Come on, folks.

Yes, it's that time of the year again — the time when Evanier, on behalf of the selection committee, solicits nominations for the annual Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. This year, we will select someone who is alive for the honor and there will also be a posthumous award. All past nominations will be considered so if you nominated someone in the past, you need not submit them again. Basically, we're asking if any new names have occurred to you.

If so, they will probably not be people who recently joined the industry…and I'd better put the following in boldface: This is an award for a body of work as a comic book writer…someone who is or was unrecognized and/or unrewarded for that body of work. It is not for your favorite artist. It is not for someone who wrote a few stories. It is not for someone whose talents have been honored over and over and who got very, very rich and/or famous writing comics.

And the posthumous one is not for someone who is alive. Look up the word "posthumous," people. Each year, people nominate very-much-alive people and say their nominee should receive the posthumous award. We also have a couple of people who nominate themselves and I'm just waiting for someone to nominate themselves for the posthumous award. It will happen.

It is also not for anyone who has received this award in the past. The full list of such people can be read over on this page.

Here's the address for nominations. They will be accepted until April 15 at which time all reasonable suggestions will be placed before our Blue Ribbon Judging Committee and we'll make our decisions. They'll be announced before this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego and the awards will be presented then and there. Thank you.

I don't watch Bill Maher's show very much these days because on certain topics, I think he's being more controversial than insightful. But he and his writers do hit the bullseye at times…

I found this interesting. It's a short video about how an awful lot of our food is not really what we might think it is. We all probably know that but some of these examples are a bit surprising…

The New York Times has an article today about the effectiveness of masks in warding off COVID or other nasty diseases. It reinforces my belief that none of the studies have settled this question and that the folks who claim it's been definitively proven, one way or the other, are either relying on faulty studies or misinterpreting what they say.