I am about to cost you at least a half-hour of on-line time, especially if you're interested in old show biz memorabilia — Bob Hope's, in particular.  The Library of Congress is currently hosting an exhibition of Hope curios and they've put a few dozen items on their website.  Browse around and you'll find photos, scripts for monologues, Bob's packing list for his U.S.O. tours…even his old business cards from vaudeville.  There are notes and telegrams from Al Boasberg (mentioned here last week) suggesting gags to Mr. Hope.  There are rundowns from vaudeville, radio and TV shows.  There are also a number of non-Hope items you'll enjoy, including pages from radio scripts and vintage portraits and…oh, stop reading this and just go there.  Here's the link.  It'll make you want to jump on a plane, go back to D.C. and see the whole exhibit in person.  I love this kind of stuff.

The Science-Fiction news organ, Locus, is reporting that "Mr. Sci-Fi," Forrest J Ackerman is in Kaiser Hospital following either a stroke or a heart attack.  First, they said he was — quote: "Not expected to recover."  Now, they're saying he's "doing quite well."  Obviously, at age 86, there is ample reason for his friends and fans to be saddened by the news.  Forry was the man behind Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine — an odd compendium of monster photos, articles and pain-inducing puns that inspired a lot of 10-year-old kids to become filmmakers, authors and artists.

He was also a literary agent, a founding member of science-fiction fandom, an authority on science-fiction and horror, an author and many other things, including being the creator of the character, Vampirella and the curator of a house full of books and monster memorabilia.

Years ago, cartoonist Scott Shaw! launched a campaign to raise money for what still seems like a good cause.  The idea was that when Forry died, he'd be stuffed, put on rollers and delivered to every comic book and science-fiction convention.  There, a tape recorder would endlessly replay the eleven anecdotes he told at such affairs.  Scott, if you're reading this…I think you ought to get the crusade going again.  I'm in for twenty bucks.

Okay, how many of you reacted to the news that Perry Como had died with the thought, "Perry Como was still alive?"  And how many of you instantly thought of that great SCTV sketch about him?

Two articles to recommend: We previously directed you to Eric Boehlert's amazingly-accurate article that predicted why the XFL would flop.  (Here's the link again)  Now that it has flopped and flopped big, Mr. Boehlert is entitled to write an "I told you so" piece…which he has done and which you can read at this link.

Also, for those of you still straining to make sense of all the press recounts of who won Florida — and they're far from over — the most recent is well summarized and analyzed in this piece in the Miami Herald.  Essentially, it's a list of silly errors that voters made which cost Al Gore the presidency.  They don't mention it there but now that Florida has decided to stop using the punch-card "votomatic" devices, they're selling off the old machines on eBay.  Honest.  Go there and do a search if you don't believe me…but don't think of buying one.  They're about as good for tallying votes as the Fizz Nik.

For those of you in Southern California: Next Sunday evening, May 20, the Alex Theater in Glendale is hosting a one-time-only salute to the late Steve Allen featuring — among others — Don Adams, Sid Caesar, Norm Crosby, Rodney Dangerfield, Dom DeLuise, Stan Freberg, Shecky Greene, Charlton Heston, Don Knotts, Art Linkletter, Rich Little, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., Louis Nye, Jonathan Winters and a "big band" comprised of musicians who worked with Steverino.  I'll be there.  If you want to be there, you might want to hurry to the Telecharge website, where a few seats are still available.  How can this not be a wonderful evening?

Michael Kinsley has an interesting piece today about free content on the Internet — and you can read it for free either at the Washington Post website or on Slate. Here's a direct link to the article on the latter.

As mentioned here weeks ago, Eric Idle is currently making a sequel to his "mockumentary," The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash.  This new one is called Can't Buy Me Lunch and I saw it this evening at a test screening/preview which Mr. Idle hosted to check for weak spots.  There weren't many.  It features leftover footage from the first, plus interviews with the likes of Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Garry Shandling, Jewel, Robin Williams and even Salman Rushdie.  At the moment, Idle can't say for sure when and where the thing will appear — but when it does, make sure to catch it.  Very funny, especially as his character of the inept interviewer from the original film grows increasingly less ept.

A company called BFS has just brought out six episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show on DVD.  The episodes are as follows: Never Name a Duck, Bank Book 6565696, Hustling the Hustler, The Night the Roof Fell In, A Man's Teeth Are Not His Own and Give Me Your Walls!  All of them are completely watchable but I would rank none of these installments among the show's finer moments.  (This is not supposed to be the "six best," but if it were and I were asked to pick, I'd include It May Look Like a Walnut, Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth, That's My Boy?, The Bottom of Mel Cooley's Heart, The Impractical Joke and then either Talk to the Snail or October Eve.  But that's just me.)  Still, there is good news in that this new DVD DVD is supposed to be the first of many releases — and at bargain prices.

This DVD goes for under ten bucks.  Matter of fact, DVD Planet has it for $7.49 plus postage…$2.50 for the first item and 50¢ for each item thereafter.  You'll probably want to amortize that "first item" cost by ordering several DVDs at the same time.  DVD Planet used to be known as Ken Crane's Laserdiscs, and it was (and still is) the best place in the world to purchase those now-antiquated items.  They also have the best prices, best selection and almost the best service for DVDs.  I say "almost" because they tend to slightly delay your first-ever order to make triple-sure your credit card is legit.  But once they deem you Kosher, they ship instantly, and you won't want to order from anywhere else.  End of plug.

For those of you who like the political-type articles I occasionally link here, I have one for you.  John Harris of the Washington Post recently published this piece about how the press is treating Bush, as opposed to how they treated Clinton, and why.  Here's one chunk that jumped out at me:

The truth is, this new president has done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if they had occurred under Clinton. Take it from someone who made a living writing about those uproars.

Harris covered the Clinton White House for years, wrote many stories about scandals therein…and is now saying that the current Washington press is not holding Bush to the same standard. I suspect he's right — but he won't be, for long.

The unseemly man on the comic book covers above is Maurice Gosfield, who played Pvt. Duane Doberman on the old Sgt. Bilko TV show, also known as The Phil Silvers Show and/or You'll Never Get Rich. (There was a Sgt. Bilko comic and it did quite well for a while.  Since DC was paying a flat fee for the rights, they decided to try and get a second hit comic out of one license fee…so Doberman got his own book.

And wouldn't you know it?  It started outselling the Bilko comic!)  This weekend, the cable channel TV Land is rerunning three installments of that fine program, including the pilot and "The Face on the Recruiting Poster."  The latter is an episode about which the late Phil Silvers told me a wonderful anecdote.  I'll share it with you in the next paragraph…but first, I have to observe Internet decorum and post a SPOILER WARNING.  In telling the story, I'm also going to tell the ending of that episode.  Proceed with caution.

Now then: The premise is that the extremely unphotogenic Doberman is accidentally selected for a recruiting poster and no one has the heart to tell him that he will not be appearing thereupon.  One officer after another withers at the task until, finally, the Army calls in the toughest soldier in the service.  The punch line to the episode comes when he arrives and, since he looks almost exactly like Doberman, says, "Very good-looking soldier.  He should be on the recruiting poster!"

The Casting Director was sent forth to find a ringer for Mr. Gosfield and located a guy who worked in a carnival pulling a cannon with his teeth.  All week long, the gent practiced his few lines, invariably getting them wrong.  As Silvers told the tale, the cannon-puller kept getting more and more flustered and kept muttering, "I can't understand it…I've been in show business for twenty years…"

Finally, the evening of filming arrived.  The man playing the tough general was out of his mind with stage fright.  Just before they were about to roll film, he ran up to Phil Silvers and said, "Mr. Silvers, I just had a thought that would make me feel better.  How about if, when I make my entrance, I'm pulling a cannon with my teeth?"

Phil Silvers told me this tale over brunch at Nate 'n Al's delicatessen in Beverly Hills.  He said, "From that moment on, any time I was doing a play and I felt a twinge of stage fright, I thought about entering, pulling a cannon with my teeth — and I'd laugh and break the tension."  (By the way: The actor went on, sans cannon, and did his lines perfectly.)

If'n you have the slightest hankerin' to hear tell about that there picture show what they named Song of the South, there's a right purty website what's harder to resist than a tarbaby in a briar patch and…I'm sorry.  I couldn't keep that dialect up any longer.  What I was trying to say was that I came across this terrific site — expertly designed and crammed full of info on the most elusive of the major Disney animated features.  The gent who put up the site, Christian Willis, couldn't have done a better job.  Go there, Br'er Websurfer.

Our pal Kevin Cunningham has relocated his extremely-funny website of political humor.  It's now found at www.politicalstrikes.com and is well worth the visit.  And if you're a fan of the late, great comic artist Doug Wildey, you'll be interested in Ken Quattro's article on him which is on-line at www.comicartville.com.  (My own obit on Doug is available on this site if you click right here.)

Here's another site worth a visit but only if you have a fast Internet connection and a good monitor.  Go to www.skylinesoft.com and take an aerial tour of some city of the world.  It's one of those things that doesn't seem scientifically possible, even as you watch it.  You know…like Cher.

Regarding the just-settled Writers Guild negotiations: The press is carrying a number of articles that purport to reveal what happened behind-the-scenes.  If you compare them, you may note that they differ to the extent that they cannot all be true.  Based on what I've heard from folks actually in the bargaining sessions, none of these pieces give an accurate picture.  More likely, they represent the beliefs (or spin) of one or two sources.  In any case, what I've seen of the deal does not impress me much, though I'm not saying this was the time to go to war for more.  Everyone in town seems relatively happy today — even, reportedly, the waitresses at Art's Deli — so I guess that story's over.  The media can now turn its attention to the Screen Actors Guild negotiations (which absolutely no one believes will result in a strike) and the real important issues…like whether or not the death of Robert Blake's wife can successfully be turned into another O.J. trial.

Turning to other business: In honor of our 10,000th "hit" here, we have unveiled a major facelift of this site, which has involved moving a number of things around and (probably) creating some new "bugs" that will be fixed in the coming weeks.  If some of it doesn't make sense, know that the new design will make upkeep duties easier for me, and that some of it's configured with an eye on future expansion.

The photo above is to give you a "heads up" that the TV Land cable channel is going to run some vintage episodes of The Phil Silvers Show (aka You'll Never Get Rich and Sgt. Bilko) on the weekend of May 12-13.  Next week some time, I'll post a story that Mr. Silvers told me about one of them.  I don't know the full list I'd make if I had to itemize the all-time best situation comedies…but I do know that the exploits of M/Sgt. Ernest T. Bilko and his loyal platoon would be very near the top if not in first position.  Silvers was wonderful and it wasn't just him.  There was also a terrific supporting cast (especially Paul Ford and Joe E. Ross) and superb writing, mainly by Nat Hiken but also by other folks.  Anyway, tune in when I tell that anecdote.  You'll enjoy it.

And the answer the two most-asked questions from my e-mail: Yes, I have tickets to see The Producers in New York.  I'm going in mid-June, and only because I was able to secure house seats from the author.  (I don't mean Mel.  I mean Franz Liebkind.)  And I am now moderating eleven panels at this year's Comic-Con International.  Folks interested in vintage DC history will not want to miss the one we just added to the schedule.

Well, I've been saying there wouldn't be a Writers Guild strike but it's still nice to hear them say so on the news.  For what it's worth: What I believe happened here was that our Guild approached the negotiations with a new, preemptive attitude that paid off.  In the past, the Producers came to each contract negotiation — with all the Hollywood unions; not just us — with a mindset of "We don't bargain.  We don't listen to your demands.  We tell you what we're going to give you and then you get the hell out."  To that end, the Producers would agree among themselves on what that offer would be and from that point forward, they had a very difficult time moving off it.

The seven studios that comprise the AMPTP (Fox, Disney, WB, etc.) operate under a "rule of one," meaning that any of them can veto any offer.  That seems to have been what prolonged the '88 strike.  Six of the studios would be ready to make the deal that would end the writers' walkout and then they'd get to squabbling internally and the seventh would play Spoiler.

This time out, the WGA managed to prevent Management from getting stuck on an initial, lowball "final offer."  We had a good show of solidarity before the Producers agreed among themselves on a bargaining position.  Usually, one sees little in the way of Guild spirit until we've already gotten the insulting proposal and have to rally against it.  Moreover, we seem to have positioned the whole dynamic of this negotiation such that the onus was on the Producers to sit down with us — in our offices, whereas we usually go to theirs — and work to make a deal.  The result was that, long before the contract expired, we'd already had hundreds of hours of discussions with them.  That process of sitting down and actually talking does not usually commence in show biz labor negotiations, until the union is marching about with picket signs.  Regardless of the terms of this deal, if we have changed the nature of Hollywood labor relations, that may be the greatest victory.

All of that seems to comprise about half of what prevented the Great Writers Guild Strike of '01.  The other half came from somewhere up in the corporate offices of Time-Warner, Disney, et al, where wise folks looked at the current state of the economy, looked at how much they lost taking a stubborn line in '88 and at the uncertainty of new and changing markets, and told their Negotiators to make a deal.  I can hear the collective exhale, not just of writers…not just of the actors who'll have an easier time making their deal now…but of the waitresses over at Art's Deli on Ventura.  It is by their financial well-being that the hardship of any Hollywood strike is measured.

As I write this, the little counter on the Home page tells me we're closing in on 10,000 distinct hits since this silly site went up last December.  Assuming I read the stats correctly — never a safe assumption — these standings have less to do with the quality, if any, of the writing therein, than with the fact that if you enter certain terms into search engines like Google and Yahoo, you wind up at one of my columns.  Lately, you were also directed to this site if you entered these actual searches that brought web-surfers to this page…

• HOW TO DRAW LIKE JACK KIRBY
• SHOW US YOUR LARK
• HARRAH'S FOOD IN THE ROOMS
• SAM KINISON DEATH SCENE PHOTOS (Note: There are no Sam Kinison Death Scene Photos on this site.)
• HOW DID SAMMY DAVIS JR DIE (We don't cover that, either.)
• CLOVERINE BRAND SALVE
• COMIC BOOK WRITERS ARE IDIOTS
• MAKE MILLIONS DOING CARTOON VOICES
• HOW CAN I HIT SOUPY SALES WITH A PIE
• HOW CAN I HIT GEORGE BUSH WITH A PIE
• HENNY YOUNGMAN NUDE

That's right.  On the 'net, you can find pictures of Madonna nude, of Geena Davis nude, of all the Victoria's Secrets models nude…and someone was actually searching for Henny Youngman nude.  I've seen some pretty sick things in Cyberspace but…

Speaking of aberrations:If you're interested in the question of what happened with the vote down in Florida, you'll probably want to read an article by John Lantigua which is running this week in The Nation.  It details an amazing list of things that state officials allegedly did to prevent minority voters from exercising their rights to cast ballots.  Here's a link to that article.

DC Comics is bringing out a collected edition of the Fanboy series that I wrote last year, illustrated by Sergio Aragonés and some amazing guest artists.  The book goes on sale the week of July 4 but you can see a preview of its cover above.

Certain urban legends live forever on the Internet.  Ever since I got my first modem (300 baud), people have been sending me the story of the $250 cookie recipe.  This week, three people sent me the same story that goes roughly like this…

Some company makes great chocolate chip cookies. Someone calls the firm and asks if they sell their recipe. The person at the company says, "Yes…for a charge to your credit card of two-fifty." The caller says that's reasonable, authorizes such a charge and soon receives the recipe. Soon, the caller also receives their credit card statement and discovers that the charge is not $2.50 as they expected but $250.00. The caller is so angry that they post the recipe on the Internet for all to read and use. End of story that supposedly happened.

For a while, it was the Mrs. Fields' chain that had supposedly ripped someone off for that amount for their cookie recipe. Later on, it was Famous Amos and lately, it seems to be Neiman-Marcus. And my question is not, "Where does this story come from?"  That, we'll never know.  My question is: "Has anyone ever made these cookies?"

By the way: I once met Famous Amos — a charming gent — and he told me that the cookies that made him famous were not great because of the recipe.  The recipe, he said, was pretty much what you get off the bag of Nestlé's (or maybe it was Hershey's) toll house chocolate bits.  The secret was in using quality ingredients and skill in baking.  He said something like, "Thinking you can make great cookies because you have a secret recipe is like thinking you can paint like Rembrandt because you have a list of the colors he used."  And he didn't say this but I gather that he's not particularly proud of the product now marketed under his handle by the company to which he sold his operation…even though they may be using the same recipe.