Well it looks like Eric Boehlert was right about the XFL.  The first week, its NBC Saturday night broadcasts notched a 10.3 rating (it started higher but declined throughout the evening).  The second week, they were down to 5.1 which, at least, was still above the 4.5 guaranteed to advertisers.  But the overnights for Week Three came in at 3.8 and are expected to drop to around a 3.5 when the final, national ratings are tallied — disaster by any measure.

Meanwhile, the games themselves are becoming something of a laughingstock. Best line I've heard so far was uttered by Bob Costas on NBC's own Late Night with Conan O'Brien.  It was something to the effect of, "I recall musing years ago that what TV needed was to take really mediocre high school football and combine it with the atmosphere of a tawdry strip club."  With so many in the biz eager to see both Vince McMahon and NBC exec Dick Ebersol cut down a few notches, it's all probably heading for the record books as a big, costly fumble.

Today's New York Times has a good article about Dan DeCarlo and his dispute with Archie Comics.  Here's the link but (a) you have to register to access the Times website, which you oughta do, anyway and (b) this will probably expire soon.  Needless to say, I am solidly in Dan's corner on this one.

Just back from another Vegas trip, mostly for recreation but also to get some work done.  In case you haven't been there lately, the new trend in gaming is for "name" slot machines, themed around TV shows.  Some are based on game shows, like Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, and I lost an entire two bucks playing a Press Your Luck slot.  (Press Your Luck was a terrific game show which went off the air in 1986.  It was never a huge hit but I guess they figure someone remembers it.)  There are also I Dream of Jeannie machines (with great pictures of Barbara Eden all over them), Addams Family machines and Munsters machines, while Beverly Hillbillies and Bewitched are said to be on the way.  If you hit big on the Beverly Hillbillies machine, you could win enough to move into the big house next to the Drysdales and have your own cee-ment pond and a whole back yard full of critters.  Old TV programs used to just fade quietly into obscurity on Nick at Nite.  Now, they move to Las Vegas and get into professional gambling.

Funniest Thing I Encountered in Vegas This Time: No, not a Windows error.  Walking the length of the Strip, I wandered past the Westward Ho, which is a dump of a casino next door.  I noticed that, while the Stardust — hardly a class act, itself — is featuring Wayne Newton, the 'Ho (as locals call it) is featuring Rusty Davis, a Wayne Newton impersonator.  A gent outside was trying to hustle folks to go in, gamble, eat cheap shrimp cocktails and see Rusty.   I asked him, "Why would anyone want to see a Wayne Newton impersonator when they can walk right across that parking lot and see the real Wayne Newton?"  Without pausing to mull, the man responded: "Our Wayne Newton is $14.95 and comes with a buffet."  Hey, works for me.

A couple of folks have written to say they wish I had more here on The Dick Van Dyke Show.  So do I, so do I.  In the meantime, while I write something else, you might want to check out the website of Vince Waldron.  Vince, who I think owes me a lunch or maybe I owe him, authored one of the best books on that fine series, and is an expert and historian of others, as well.  You'll find lots to peruse at www.classicsitcoms.com that's right up the line for those who find this site of interest.

It's still too early to tell if Eric Boehlert's predictions about the XFL will come to pass but, based on ratings for the second Saturday night airing, few are likely to wager against him.  One of the key points he makes in his latest article (which you can read by clicking here) is that the game ran over, delaying the 11:00 news and bumping Saturday Night Live to a post-Midnight start on the East Coast.  The XFL will have to make a lot more money in prime-time before NBC will allow it to endanger the health of one of their most lucrative — and network-owned — programs.  My guess is that someone has already sworn to Lorne Michaels that it will never happen again.

Advance tip for anyone who'll be near Vegas next month: Tim Conway and Harvey Korman are playing the Las Vegas Hilton March 8-10, along with my pal, the brilliant impressionist, Louise Du Art.  One forgets how truly funny Mssrs. Korman and Conway are, and Louise is always terrific.  If you can't make it to Vegas, they may be coming to your neck o' the woods soon.  You can track their appearances — and other swell acts which may be wandering near you — over at www.pollstar.com.

I hereby recommend at Michael Kinsley's two recent columns about the Reagan Legacy.  Here's the link to Part One and here's the link to Part Two.

Those Wacky Websites: If you live in Los Angeles and love it when they break into normal TV programming to show high-speed police pursuits, sign up at www.pursuitwatch.com.  When one happens, they'll phone you or your pager and alert you to hurry to a television somewhere to savor the moment.  They have a 3-month free trial offer and then the subscription fee kicks in.  And if you live outside L.A., don't feel left out!  They're expanding across the nation and may soon be serving your area, too!

Elsewhere on this site, you'll find an article that I wrote about a great, unsung cartoonist named Owen Fitzgerald.  (Oh, hell…I'll save you the trouble of searching for it.  Here's a link.)  I just stumbled across a neat website run by an animation artist named Shane Glines.  He calls it The Cartoon and Illustration Paradise and it's where he posts examples of some of his favorites, including Erich Sokol, Hank Ketcham and Russell Patterson.  He has a section on Owen which includes a scan of a comic book story — "Moronica," about a hopelessly stupid blonde lady.

It's not Owen's best but it's still wonderful and will show you his famed inability to draw a figure that wasn't funny and/or interesting.  Go hunting around at www.shaneglines.com and, while we're on the subject, here are some links for…

• Hank Ketcham — the man behind Dennis the Menace.
• Chris Browne — who carries on his father's Hagar the Horrible along with his own creation, Raising Duncan.  (Chris has some good, interesting essays about cartooning on his site.)
• Mike Peters — the Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist and creator of Mother Goose & Grimm — has samples of both, plus fun web animations to offer.  (Hi, Mike!)
• "Uncle" Fred Lasswell — who has been drawing Snuffy Smith since the time of Charlemagne.
• Bob Montana — the man who was the main Archie artist for years, is no longer with us but his family is selling prints and displaying artifacts of his life at their website.
• Rube Goldberg — another late, great cartooning legend, and the world's greatest inventor.

I'll post more of these in a few days so you won't spend all night surfing cartoonist websites.

One of my best buddies, Paul Dini, is among those highly-responsible for some fine cartoon shows that have emanated from Warner Brothers Animation, lo these last few years.  More recently, he has combined his two main interests in life — Christmas and Women Who Mean Trouble — to create Jingle Belle, daughter of Santa and star of her own, occasionally-issued comic book from the fine folks at Oni Press.  You can read all about her (and even see what she's up to at this very moment, via webcam) by visiting her fun-filled website.  Here's the link!  And do yourself have a Merry Christmas, whenever that holiday actually is.  Around Paul, it seems to be all the time.

Eric Boehlert who authored the XFL article for Salon I mentioned a few days ago, has a fascinating article there now about the fuss over the gifts received by Bill and Hillary upon their departure from the White House.  Actually, it's about the press coverage of the gifts which, if we believe Mr. Boehlert, has been spectacularly inaccurate.  Give it a read by clicking right here.

Forget all previous tips here about how to get your daily dose of syndicated comic strips via the Internet.  Andy Ihnatko has the answer, at least for those of whose faves are among the 120+ strips carried online by the San Jose Mercury-News.  You want to visit their website by clicking here, then sign up for what they call a "passport" (it's free) which will allow you to build your personal funnies page of only the comics you want.  Thereafter, it's a piece o' cake to log in and get your fix.  Thanks, Andy!

Early yesterday A.M. we went over 3000 hits here, according to the free counter provided by honesty.com.  And of course, you can trust a web business called honesty.com.  I mean, they couldn't call it that unless they were honest, right?  Anyway, thanks to everyone for your patronage and if you keep spreading the word, I'll keep sticking up stuff you might want to read.

Every March the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills stages its annual William S. Paley Television Festival. For two weeks, great TV shows of the past and present are saluted with presentations — one per evening — that feature the stars and makers of those shows.  In years past, I've attended some wonderful evenings there because they always pick superb shows and then assemble a spectacular array of guests to discuss their contributions…

…until now.  The last few years have declined in glory but even last season, they managed a terrific evening on The Carol Burnett Show (with Carol, Harvey, Tim, et al) another on M*A*S*H (with all the people you'd want to see at such an event), one on Outer Limits, an evening with Garry Shandling…well, you get the idea.  The lineup for the 2001 festival, however, is a major disappointment, dealing mainly with current or recent shows.  Among them are Gideon's Crossing, Gilmore Girls, Judging Amy, Boston Public, Malcolm in the Middle and, for God knows what reason, Survivor.  Some of these may turn out to be classics but they've yet to stand that test o' time, and their inclusion feels more like promotion than any earned honor.  The only real "old" shows being spotlighted are Dark Shadows and a couple of specials.

One of the specials is Eric Idle's wonderful Beatles parody, All You Need is Cash, better known as The Rutles.  Mr. Idle, who is brilliant and very funny, is scheduled to appear (along with others who helped him make the film) so I bought tickets for that and also for an evening with Michael Moore, about whom I have mixed more feelings.  On the phone today, a lady selling tickets for the festival had a lot of trouble figuring out how to enter my order in her computer.  She volunteered that this was because, though tickets went on sale last Saturday, they haven't had many orders yet.  So perhaps the folks behind the Paley Fest will get the message for next year, but I'm not optimistic.

The museum's website has the whole schedule but it's a bit hard to find.  Go there, click on the word, "exhibitions" at right.  Then, when you get to the next screen, click on the words, "William S. Paley Television Festival."  And I hope you find more there to get excited about than I did.

I've been playing with a free software program that was written by a fan of newspaper strips.  It's called WinComics and the way it works is that you pick your favorite current strips from a list in its setup program…then you run the main program and it logs into various syndicates' sites and downloads today's installments of those strips.  This is a terrific idea and, if you can get it to run right, better than the e-mail delivery that Universal Press has arranged for their strips.  If you want to experiment with WinComics, you can download it by clicking right here.  (I have nothing to do with it, so I assume no responsibility, nor can I help you with setting it up.  You're on your own…)

Since around the time of the Louisiana Purchase, I've been collaborating with Sergio Aragonés on comic books of a very silly nature, many of them issues of Groo the Wanderer.  About 90% of these have featured superb coloring by the talented and brave Tom Luth.  Why "brave?"  Because coloring Sergio's ornate, well-populated work is like trying to sweep the beach clean of sand or count all the gardeners in L.A. named "Juan" or correct all the typos and HTML errors on this website.  I once had to fill-in for Tom for about a third of an issue, back when we did it all by hand and…well, if not for a drop-dead deadline, I'd still be at it.  Just when you think you've tinted every last figure on the page and you rinse your brush, you find eight more.  Now that it's all being done on computer, Tom isn't rinsing brushes but he's probably saving very little time since he is doing more precise, intricate coloring…and Sergio and I couldn't be happier with the results.

All of this is leading up to a link to his website, www.thomasluth.com, where you can see samples of his coloring, as well as many other artistic endeavors, such as illustration and book design.  Take a peek and see what else Tom can do besides rendering our nonsense.

I have about as little interest in football as you could have on a subject, but I sometimes like to follow ratings games.  It is only on that basis that I'm intrigued by what will happen with the new XFL venture.  Eric Boehlert wrote a piece for Salon that argued that it can't possibly succeed…and argued it so thoroughly that I found myself thinking, "Hmm…even NBC can't be that far wrong."  (You can probably read his piece by clicking here.)

It's too early to tell if he'll be proven right.  Overnights on the first broadcast were huge — as you can see by clicking here — but they went steadily down as the evening progressed…and, anyway, Mr. Boehlert forecast a strong start.  He may yet turn out to have made one of the most on-target predictions I've seen in the field of TV journalism and analysis.  Or maybe just the opposite.

If you're in the market for tapes of old TV shows, then by all means check out www.kinevideo.net.  It's run by a fine gent named Bruce Simon who I've known since around '67.  He was a charter member of the infamous Los Angeles Comic Book Club, which I've written about many times in my column…but don't hold that against the man.  Bruce is an honest merchant, as well as a lover and preserver of vintage television and he has the only or best copies of some genuine treasures of the medium.  So stop reading this and click above!  Then go over there and buy stuff.  And tell him his old pal Mark sent you.

Just found out DC Comics is putting out a paperback in June that will collect all six issues of Fanboy, a mini-series I did last year with Sergio Aragonés and about two dozen terrific guest artists.  Sergio and I are just starting work on yet another Groo mini-series for Dark Horse.  And Graphitti Designs is bringing out a signed, limited edition hardcover collecting the two Groo graphic novels we did — The Death of Groo and The Life of Groo.  So that's the answer to the question (which people actually write to ask) of what comics I have coming soon.

Based on a couple of conversations over the weekend, I'm going to slightly revise my statement about a possible WGA strike and move in the direction of cautious optimism.  From what I hear, they are talking, and seriously — which has not been the norm in any Hollywood labor negotiations for quite some time.  We seem to have convinced them we have a fair amount of solidarity — something that has either been in too-short supply since the early eighties or we had it but couldn't make anyone believe it.  More importantly, they believe we have it now, months in advance of the expiration of the current contract.  Some years ago, I was on a committee at the WGA which studied the long '88 strike and attempted to determine what could be learned from it.  One key finding was that, once the AMPTP makes its first "final offer," they have a devil of a time, for internal reasons alone, moving off it, agreeing even among themselves to an improved offer.  Ergo, the time for a Guild to show its resolve is not, as it has been with past WGA strikes, after we got an unacceptable offer thrown at us; the time is before Management gets locked into a lowball.  While it's too early to be confident they'll arrive at a deal and head off a work stoppage in May, I do think the current Guild leadership has avoided at least one big sand trap.  Maybe.

The Writers Guild website — www.wga.org — is currently featuring a funny article by Steve Martin about the "possessory credit" that is an issue in the pending WGA strike.  You'll also find the writers' side — and therefore, the correct side, as far as we're concerned around here — of other issues in the current negotiations.  The possessory credit is a major issue which will probably be dropped from the discussions any day now.  (By the way: There's a funny, official website for Mr. Martin at www.stevemartin.net.)

And no, I can't tell you if there will be a Writers Strike or not.  I think it's encouraging that there are negotiations at all.  The posture of the AMPTP (i.e., Management) when past contracts with the WGA expired was to refuse to listen to our demands, to hand us a "final offer" filled with rollbacks and to throw our negotiating team out the door.  So at least, this time, they're talking. On the other hand, the Guild is asking for some pretty solid upgrades…and not only are the producers greedy swine, they're greedy swine who have successfully kept all the Hollywood unions on the defensive for years.  They surely don't want to let one labor organization make significant gains, for fear it'll start a trend.  So I think it's going to get ugly…and your guess is as good as mine as to how ugly.

Just returned from a quick (one night) trip back to Vegas for a business-type meeting.  In the baggage claim area at McCarren Airport, there's a monitor that's supposed to show you which carousel your Samsonite might be showing up on.  Instead, it had the "blue screen of death" which every Windows user knows as the sign that your system's gone kablooey.  What is it about Vegas and Windows error messages?

Had a beautiful room at the relatively-new (and quite beautiful) Mandalay Bay resort.  It would have been the nicest non-suite hotel room I ever had in Vegas, had the mattress not had the consistency of one of Fred Flintstone's tires.  I didn't take a computer on this jaunt, not even my little palmtop Jornada — first time I've gone 24 hours without touching a computer since I got my first, steam-powered laptop back in the Mesozoic Era.  I almost went through withdrawal and started wondering if they have some kind of patch you can wear to break the addiction.

I was very glad that my buddy Lee Nordling wrote his tome on newspaper syndication, Your Career in the Comics.  About three times a month, someone writes or calls to ask me how to sell their sure-fire, can't-miss, certain- to-eclipse-Peanuts strip idea.  You have no idea how much time it saves to just tell them to go buy Lee's book.  It really is a wonderful overview of a complicated, capricious business, and it explains things far better than I could ever manage.  If you're interested in syndicated comics, it's a must-buy.

The thing that gets me is that, ever since I recommended it in my column, I instead get calls and e-mails inquiring as to how and where one might procure a copy of said book.  Well, how about almost any large bookstore anywhere?  It can't be that difficult to find, considering that the websites for Amazon-dot-com and Borders both say it usually ships in 24 hours.  How lazy and/or dense do you have to be to e-mail me instead of typing in www.amazon.com and doing a search for "Lee Nordling?"  Or picking up the phone and calling Waldenbooks?

If you're interested in the press recount of the votes in Florida, a fine site to visit is that of the Miami Herald, which is doing their own audit, as well as reporting on others.  Somewhere on the page you'll reach by clicking that name, you'll find a section called "Florida Count: What Went Wrong."  This will help you wade past the Bush partisans who have no idea what the ballots said but will never admit their boy didn't get more votes, as well as the Gore supporters who have no idea what the ballots said but will never admit their boy didn't get more votes.  It's kinda frustrating that the history of this whole sorry blight on democracy will be written by whichever of those groups is more adept at spin and press manipulation and not, say, by people who want to know what the actual vote was, or should have been.

Lastly for today, I want to thank all of you who've written nice e-mails about this site and chatted it up across the web.  I'll be adding more columns some time in the future…whenever I feel you've all read most of what's already here.  And I have a few other add-ons in mind, if and when I get the time.  I don't know when that might be, either.

There are many reasons to pay regular visits to www.doonesbury.com — that is, presuming you have even a fraction of the admiration I have for Garry Trudeau's newspaper strip.  One is that you can order your Doonesbury books there and, for no extra tariff, they'll come autographed by Mr. Trudeau.  Secondly, the site features some very clever games, activities and web animations.  Thirdly: You can also now sign up to have the Doonesbury strip e-mailed to you each day.  (Actually, they don't e-mail you the actual strip.  They send you an e-mail that contains a link to take you to their website — www.ucomics.com — where you can view that day's strip…in full color, no less.)  Matter of fact, you can subscribe for any or all of the Universal Press strips, including Garfield, Ziggy, Cathy or even Calvin & Hobbes flashbacks.

You can also sign up for any or all of them over at www.garfield.com.  I assume other strips have done this before but for features of this importance, daily e-mail delivery — even of strips that are a bit out of date — is quite significant.  And it may have a lot to do with the way comic strips will be distributed in the future.