• Presidents are never responsible for the rising price of gasoline when they're from your party…only when they're from the other party.

Let's start this by flashing back to long after my childhood — to 1994 and the movie Speed, which starred Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. You may not see where I'm going with this but just trust me. This website is free and you have nothing better to do for the next few minutes so watch this clip. If you never saw Speed, there was a lot of this in it and if you did see it, it'll refresh your memory. Here we see Keanu and Sandra and a whole pack of innocent people trapped on a bus that will be exploded by a hidden bomb if the speedometer drops below 50…

Got it? Okay, now let's flash back to the mid-fifties and begin working our way forward through that bizarre childhood of mine …

My first school was of the Nursery variety. Every morning, a private school bus service would pick me up and take me to a building on Overland Avenue for a few hours of stories, play, drawing, sandbox, swings and just kind of learning how to be in school and around others. When I started at Westwood Elementary, the same service took me to and from classes for my Kindergarten years and the first few grades there I didn't skip. Around fourth grade, I began walking to and from school.

I graduated Westwood and moved on to Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School for grades 7-9. My father drove two other kids in our neighborhood and me to Emerson on his way to work each morning. The mother of one of those kids picked us up and drove us home at the end of the school day…except that Tuesdays and Thursdays, I often chose to walk home. Why? Because Tuesdays and Thurdays were the days that the new comic books came out. If I walked, I could stop at Parnin's Pharmacy on Westwood or Pico Drug on Pico, both of which had fine comic book racks.

I spent grades 10-12 at University High School, which was too far away for walking. In the morn, my father would drop me off on his way to work. In the afternoon, I took one of two buses home, both of which were operated by the Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines, whose buses drove all over West Los Angeles, not just Santa Monica.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I took a special bus that was in operation only on school days — once going to school, once taking us home. It connected University High with the area in which I (and some other Uni Hi attendees) lived. On the front, over the big windshield, the window that identified which bus it was said SPECIAL.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would walk around a half a mile from the school down to the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Sawtelle Boulevard and then I'd take a different, non-special bus home. If you're wondering why I did that…well, you should know me better than that by now. Between Uni Hi and that corner, there were two shops that had good comic book racks.

There was also a second-hand bookstore that sold old comic books. It's where years earlier, I'd bought all those Charlton Comics I wrote about in this post. There was also a very nice public library that came in handy at times. I liked going to all those places and I liked not taking that big blue SPECIAL bus. Some days, it was driven by a maniac…

…and now maybe you've figured out the connection to the movie Speed. The bus Sandra Bullock was stuck driving in that film was a big blue bus of the Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines.

I'm not 100% certain of the name of the man who drove the SPECIAL bus most of the time but I think it was Henry. By any name, he was a disgrace to the honorable profession of bus driving. Henry (if indeed, that was his name) drove wildly and unsafely because he thought it was fun to get a reaction out of us passengers…like he was operating a thrill ride at an amusement park. And if there was a cute lady sitting near the front — and remember, we're talking high-school-age students here — he would have his eyes on her and not on the road. He'd literally turn around and flirt with her while the bus he was driving was in motion.

He probably deserved to be fired just for commenting aloud, as he did whenever she boarded his bus, on the impressive ongoing growth of the lovely bustline of a student named Bonnie. But he should definitely have been fired for reckless driving. Henry was endangering lives — his, his passengers' and those of other drivers or pedestrians along the route.

A lot of my friends who took the bus felt the same way. A couple stopped taking the SPECIAL. Most of us could get home via other Santa Monica Bus Line buses — and sometimes, we did — but that involved transfers and waiting for another bus and way more time. And as with the bus I took home Tuesdays and Thursdays, they didn't take the heavily-discounted student bus passes.

One day, when Henry was especially outta-control, I made it home in one piece, then called the office of the bus company and told whoever answered that they needed to do something about that driver. "I'll look into it," that person told me…and I have no idea if he did or didn't or if so, what transpired. All I know is that the next time I got on the SPECIAL bus, Henry was at the wheel. And if anyone had told him to knock off the wild driving and horny comments, he hadn't listened.

There was a girl named Alice who often sat with me when I did take that bus. She was pretty concerned about Henry for the same reason I was, plus the fact that he sometimes told her how good her butt looked in the skirt she was wearing. That day, Alice and I both got off at her stop and went to her house. From there, I called the bus company to complain again, then we waited five minutes and she called them to complain for the first time.

Again, nothing changed. So I went to Radio Shack and purchased a speakerphone which could be plugged in at Alice's house and use her phone line. With, of course, her permission.

The next time Henry was driving the SPECIAL, we rounded up five friends who felt like we did and we all went to Alice's and called, one after another — seven of us spaced out over an hour or so, telling the same guy each time how awful Henry was.

I went last and when it was my turn, I made a point of getting the name of the person to whom we were all speaking and then I told him that I was writing an article for the school newspaper and I'd like a quote from him, as a spokesperson for the Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines. "What does your company intend to do about this driver?"

This was on the speakerphone so the other six folks in the room, all of whom had just made their calls to complain, heard this man at the bus company office say, "I'll look into it. Yours is the first complaint we've had about him."

He may have heard them gasp. He certainly heard me say, "Mr. [Whatever-His-Name-Was], you're lying. There are seven of us here and I'm the seventh person to call you in the last hour and complain. Right, guys?" And he heard them all yell, "Yeah!"

To be honest, I was fibbing a bit. I didn't write for the school newspaper…but I could have. If I'd written that article and submitted it to the group that put it out, they might have printed it. So I said, again addressing him by name, "Is there anything else you'd like to say for my article?" He hung up on me — and for as long as we attended University High School, someone else drove the SPECIAL bus.

I have no reason to believe they fired Henry…and indeed, a friend told me much later that he thought he'd seen Henry driving the Santa Monica bus on Olympic. The friend wasn't certain because this driver had behaved himself. They probably just transferred Henry to other routes with maybe a little scolding and a warning that began, "If we get any more complaints about you…" Today, I'd like to think that sixteen-year-old Alice or seventeen-year-old Bonnie telling them that their driver was critiquing their body parts would have prompted them to at least look into it sooner.

That's basically the story but when I saw Speed, with that Santa Monica blue bus careening madly down the boulevard hitting cars and objects and almost hitting people, I had to think of that episode in my life. And when I heard they were making a sequel, I almost asked my agent to get me a pitch meeting with its producers. I would have started by saying, "Now, if you really want an incredible story involving danger and crazy people…" and then I would have told them about Henry.

Gary Picariello wrote…

I might have read it on your site or within the pages of Jack Kirby Collector but somewhere it was noted that Wally Wood was lobbying to be the inker of New Gods and maybe the other Fourth World titles as well. Obviously, that never happened. Was it a matter of reliability on Wood's part? Lack of control on DC's part? I think that would have been a great match!

Wood applied to be Jack Kirby's inker at DC in 1970 but he applied too late. Vince Colletta already had the job. Even if Wood had applied earlier, I don't think he'd have gotten the position for a number of reasons, one being that Wood was more expensive than Colletta. For a time there, DC liked to try and balance the cost of a high-priced pencil artist with a low-priced inker.

The savings were not great — just a couple bucks per page — but they tried to do this whenever they could. For a while there, the work of Curt Swan (high page rate penciler) was inked on stories (not covers) by low page rate artists. It seemed to be hurting sales so they gave up on that idea and assigned Murphy Anderson (higher page rate inker) but that didn't mean they stopped trying to do that wherever they thought they could get away with it.

So there was one reason I don't think they'd have given the job to Wood. Another was that the two main people at DC who determined who drew or inked what at DC — Editorial Director Carmine Infantino and Production Manager Sol Harrison — both thought Colletta was terrific at inking Kirby. They could have had Frank Giacoia do it. (Giacoia told me they said he could ink as much of Kirby's art as he could handle…then gave it all to Vince.) They could have stolen Joe Sinnott away from Marvel but they didn't want him. There were other choices.

They wanted Colletta. After Mike Royer replaced Colletta, Sol Harrison kept telling Kirby that Colletta was better…an opinion, I believe, that had everything to do with the fact that having Royer ink Kirby circumvented Sol's Production Department. And I think they had other books they would rather have had Wood handle.

Matter of fact, I think if Carmine had called Jack and said, "We're going to have Wally Wood ink your comics," Jack might well have said, "Don't waste him on that. Wally Wood is a great talent. Let him create, write and draw a new comic on his own!"

Would Kirby/Wood have been a great match on Jack's DC books? I dunno. The more I look at their 1950's collaborations on Challengers of the Unknown and the Sky Masters newspaper strip, the less I like the teaming. I know some people think it was the greatest match-up of penciler and inker ever in comics and I used to love it. But my tastes have evolved and I prefer the inkers who let more of the Kirby through.

Interestingly, the first time I met Wally Wood in 1970, he told me he didn't think he'd done right by Kirby's penciled art. He felt he'd "overinked" and that what Joe Sinnott had been doing over Kirby on Fantastic Four was more the way Jack's art should be inked. Wood said that if he'd gotten the job of inking Jack at DC, he'd have tried to do it more like Sinnott. (He meant after Joe's first year or so inking Jack. Sinnott also decided he'd been changing Jack too much and dialed it down.)

Wood only got to ink Jack once after that…Sandman #6 in 1975. It was not an impressive pairing but it may not have been a fair test. It was a comic Jack hated drawing and Wood's work was quite variable at the time based on his health and who he had assisting at any given moment. Wally Wood was such a great talent and I don't think the industry usually knew what to do with him or how to treat a guy like that.

I regret that I haven't kept up with it the last decade or so but soon after it debuted in 1982, I became a big fan of Forbidden Broadway, an off-Broadway (and touring) franchise that parodies whatever's playing on The Great White Way at the moment, plus a few golden oldies. Every few years, they come out with a new edition but the truth is that the show is constantly changing in order to keep timely with what's playing in New York.

Its creator, Gerard Alessandrini, writes and directs and he used to actually perform in it. In the video clip below, he's the guy playing Tevye and Richard Burton. He's also very good at finding great performers who play in Forbidden Broadway for a few years, then go on to bigger/better things. The first song you'll see in there is sung by a young and hairy Jason Alexander. For a time, I hung around Forbidden Broadway a lot and became friendly with a lot of its players and even hired some when I was voice-directing cartoons.

We have here a half-hour-or-so of clips from the earlier days of the show. Some are from episodes of The Merv Griffin Show when he showcased the then-current production, and you'll see some songs repeated. For a while, a regular feature of every new version was some lady who was too old to play Annie dressed up as Annie, singing about how she was too old to play Annie.

There's no production of Forbidden Broadway running in New York at the moment, though someone may be doing the show somewhere near you. The shows being spoofed keep changing, the songs keep changing, the performers keep changing but this package of excerpts will still give you a good idea what it's like…

For some odd reason, I like this video. It's a collection of moments from recent baseball games when a foul ball was caught by a ballboy or ballgirl. Some pretty impressive moves there.

The Senate — which doesn't seem like its members could all get together and agree on what day it is — just voted unanimously to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. No more springing ahead in the Spring, no more falling back in the Fall. If the House goes along with it and Biden signs it, how will it affect you?

It won't affect me. I work at home. I sleep when I want to, get up when I want to and rarely leave the house early in the morning when it will still be dark much of the year. But I have the feeling that when a parent has to be up before the sun is and get the kids off to school — and whoever goes off to work off to work — in what will feel like nighttime, it ain't going to seem like a change for the better.

And I just realized: If it passed the Senate unanimously, it'll probably pass the House with enough votes to override a presidential veto. Well, let's see if people who at the moment like the idea of it are pleased with the change once they get it home.

I'm kinda/sorta following certain controversies and matters in the news these days…trying to keep up on them without allowing them to occupy so much of my time and brain (two very limited resources) that I don't get other things done.  One topic at which I am peeking is the co-called "Don't Say Gay" bill in Florida. Its backers insist it's just a simple, necessary prohibition of very small kids being protected from those who might groom them to be grow up to be gay or trans…or even tolerant of those who are.  Or something.

There's a lot of arguing over what the bill says and what it would do.  Mark Joseph Stern has an analysis that suggests it might not be as innocent as Florida governor (and aspiring G.O.P. nominee) Ron DeSantis insists.

Some of you who've seen me rave about my buddy Frank Ferrante's Groucho show but never had the chance to see it because, as he's criss-crossed this nation, he hasn't Grouchoed anywhere near you. Well, shortly he'll be no farther from you than your TV set and your local PBS station. We now have dates when many of those stations will be airing the newly-filmed special of his show.

I've seen this video and it does as fine a job of capturing his performance as any capture could. Like any good magic act, it's more remarkable in person but it's still pretty wonderful on TV. Here's the list and as you can see, it debuts in Los Angeles on April 1 on KLCS and KVCR, and on April 14 on KOCE.

And if you're in Southern California, you can see Frank perform it before your very eyes at the North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach on May 2 and 3. I've seen him do it in that very venue and it's the perfect stage for him — not too big, not too small and located in the same shopping center as my favorite Japanese restaurant. He's doing it in other cities before and after that and the current list is right here. Even if you catch him on PBS, catch him in person if he Grouchos your way.

My post about how Groo migrated from Pacific Comics to Marvel's Epic line brought the following question from more than one reader. I went eenie-meenie-minie-moe and picked Al Blackman's e-mail to quote here…

OK, so Groo moved from Pacific to Marvel but in-between, there was a special issue from Eclipse Comics. How did that come about?

I'm glad you and all the others asked that, Al. Pacific Comics was in some amount of financial trouble and they weren't able to get all their books published. I forget if it was Steve Schanes or Bill Schanes but one of the Schaneses who owned the company called me and said they wouldn't be able to publish Groo bi-monthly for a while. And I forget if it was his idea or my idea but we decided to suspend doing the regular comic but to assemble a one-shot 48-page special that they could publish.

It was advertised in Groo the Wanderer #8, which we didn't know at the time would be the last issue that Pacific published. Then Sergio and I whipped up this special, we turned it in and it was sent off to Murphy Anderson and…

"Murphy Anderson?" Comic book devotees are probably startled to see that name pop up in a historical note about Groo the Wanderer. Murphy Anderson was a fine comic book artist who worked for years for DC Comics on books like Hawkman and The Spectre and The Flash and The Atom and he drew a wonderful strip called "The Atomic Knights" that ran in Strange Adventures and he inked Curt Swan on Superman for many years…

…and he was a very nice man who, at that moment, wasn't doing much artwork for comic books. He had set up a company that was doing color separations for various publishers and I guess I need to explain what color separations are or were…

It's all done by computer now but a few decades ago, comic books were hand-separated, meaning that someone would prepare the book for printing via overlays. Murphy's crew would make a red plate which would indicate the areas on each page that should be solid red, the areas that should be a 50% red dot pattern, the areas needing a 25% red dot pattern, etc. They'd do this for each color for each page and then the printer would be able to print the comic on a four-color press.

No sooner had that call ended when I got one from Murphy checking to see if I'd heard and asking me, pretty please, if we took the Groo Special to some other publisher that we remember he had a full set of separations done for it. He was hoping they would be used and that he could be paid for them…certainly a reasonable request. Then I called whichever Schanes I'd just spoken with and said something like, "Hey, you want me to get that Groo Special and Murphy's bill off the list of things you have to worry about?" He said great, fine, thank you.

By this point, we'd made our deal to do Groo with Marvel so I called our editor there, Archie Goodwin, and asked if they wanted to publish the Groo Special along with the regular Groo comic that was soon to commence. He asked, "Why wouldn't we?" and I told him that I didn't think the content of the special made it a great introductory, jumping-on space for whatever new readers we'd pick up there. But if they wanted to publish it, it was theirs, providing they use Murphy's seps and pay him along with us. Archie said, "I'm not sure we can use his seps. Let me call you back."

He checked with whoever he checked with and called back to tell me the problem: Murphy had configured the color separations to the specifications of the printer that Pacific used. This was not the printer Marvel used. Theirs had different specifications and the seps Murphy had done weren't right for their presses.

Archie and I agreed I should find another place for it and I did. The company that printed Eclipse Comics was set up to use Murphy Anderson color separations and, in fact, already did. I called Dean Mullaney at Eclipse and he was more than happy to put out the Groo Special. And that led to him picking up a few other Pacific Comics that were left homeless and that's a long answer to a short question but, hey, you asked. (Well, some of you did…)

The latest from Mr. Randy Stewart Rainbow…

• I'm convinced that at least once a week at the corporate offices of Trader Joe's, someone consults a computer, takes note of the items I like and purchase there and then immediately discontinues those items.

We haven't had baby pandas on this blog for a while but I can fix that. The Beauval Zoo in France has seven-month-old twins named Yuandudu and Huanlili. Let's see how they're doing…

If you logged into this site in the last hour or so, you may have seen strange things happening with its design.  That was me trying to fix some software problems caused by the fact that I constructed this site a long, long time ago.  If you've been working on a P.C. for a while, you probably have some program that worked like a dream under Windows 95 but doesn't work at all under Windows whatever-number-we're-on-now.  Well, that's kinda what I'm experiencing.

I just spent some time talking with a very smart/helpful Tech Support gent at WPEngine, which hosts this site, and then I did some research and came to the conclusion that (a) I probably need a whole new construction and (b) I've got at least six months to get it built and installed before further tech advances make this one totally dysfunctional and unfixable.  I'm also thinking (c) I have neither the time nor the knowledge to build the new one myself.  So I'm going to start figuring out where to turn for that.

In the meantime, more strange things may happen here.  Please forgive them.  And if you tune in here some day and find unbridled praise for Donald Trump, Bill Cosby and cole slaw, that's when you'll know things are really broken here.

Happy 101 to the jocular Mr. Allan Jaffee, born March 13, 1921.  Al started cartooning in 1942.  He did his first job for MAD magazine in 1955 and he did his last job for MAD magazine in 2019.  He also did a lot of work not for MAD, including vast quantities of comic books for Timely (now Marvel) Publications, the syndicated newspaper strip Tall Tales, and tons of advertising work and gag cartoons and book covers and I can't even begin to list it all.  He's sticking around to prove once and for all, that not all the good die young.  Some of them make it into their second century on this planet.

• There oughta be a law that says if you're fighting to undermine gay rights, you can't dance to the Village People singing "Y.M.C.A."