Well, negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and the AMPTP have collapsed, which does not come as a shock to anyone with a lick o' sense and a sense o' history.  This always promised to get ugly and it will surely get even uglier, even before the dreaded Writers Strike of '01 could possibly commence.

I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that my brethren and I will soon be carrying picket signs…but I can tell you a few things that will happen.  We'll see in the trade papers, beginning in the coming week, pieces that quote high-profile writers as saying that strike at this time would be suicidal; that it will rip the Guild asunder; that it cannot possibly be cost-effective.  There will be articles wherein studio and network heads claim that they not only can endure a prolonged strike but might even welcome it as a chance to purge their inventories of leftover material, and to cancel contracts that they wish to get out of.  Support for the WGA from other unions will be mixed.  And at some point, the two sides will reconvene at the bargaining table and try again to make things work.  Stay tuned.

Just in case you haven't heard: NBC's Later show has been running old, chopped-up installments of SCTV.  The editing's a little weird and the selection of episodes, a little weirder.  But even with all that, it still stands out as one of the bright and shining lights of television sketch comedy.  Later follows Conan O'Brien Monday through Thursday nights.  (Well, actually, it's Tuesday morning through Friday morning, but you know when I mean…)  Just tune it in and enjoy.

One of the perks of having a web presence is that old friends find you.  In the last two weeks, I've heard from three people I hadn't talked to in a long time…in one case, since high school.  Of course, it helps to have a weird last name.  It used to be that when folks mauled "Evanier," I envied the Mike Smiths of the world.  No longer.  If you enter my name into any decent search engine, darn near every hit is me or my cousin David.  It would not surprise me if, in the future, we saw fewer and fewer people with odd surnames change them to something simpler.

If it's been mentioned anywhere in the press, I've missed it…so let me remind/inform you that in the next few days, your local PBS station will be airing a two-hour special in which Carl Reiner receives the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Award.  I haven't seen it but, given the event and the guest list (Dick Van Dyke, Jerry Seinfeld, Mary Tyler Moore, et al), I can't imagine it not being worth tuning in or programming your VCR or TiVo.  To find out when it airs in your area, you can visit one of the many sites that list TV schedules, like search/tvgrid.com or tvguideonline. Or better still, root around at www.pbs.org.  You'll want to search for "Kennedy Center."

I haven't recommended a book on comics lately so here's one.  If you're the least bit interested in the history of EC Comics (and William M. Gaines, its publisher pictured above right), you must, must, must have Tales of Terror! by Grant Geissman and Fred Von Bernewitz.  It's an exhaustive and entertaining compendium of info, interviews and insights about one of the two-or-so greatest lines of comics ever produced.  They couldn't have done a better job with this one.  This is one of those books I started flipping through, figuring I'd sit down later and read it through.  I got hooked and wound up spending an hour or three flipping through it.  Buy a copy and see if the same thing doesn't happen to you.  Reading this book is almost as much fun as reading an EC Comic.

I don't do many conventions these days but I've agreed to show my puss at this year's Wondercon in Oakland, which is April 20-22.  You can get more info at their website and you can get there by clicking here.  These are good, friendly gatherings that remind me of the early San Diego gatherings.  When one speaks of comic conventions, there is no higher praise.

This last item is for those of you who have money riding on the XFL — not on the games but on the ratings.  Let us review: First week, they had a 10.3 in the overnights, which went down to a 9.5 in the nationals.  Second week, they had a 5.1 that dipped to a 4.6.  Third week, they had a 3.8 which became a 3.1 in the nationals, making it the lowest-ranked prime-time show on any of the four major networks for the week.  Could it get worse than that?  Yes.  The overnights for last Saturday were at 2.9, so the nationals will come in around 2.6 or below, which is wrist-opening time.  (Remember: The guarantee to advertisers is 4.5)  Ratings on the XFL's UPN broadcasts aren't much better so we may be looking at the biggest flop in the history of professional sports and in network television at the same time.  Looks like the cheerleaders will all be back at their clubs offering table dances any day now…

Increasingly, cartoon voice artists are finding it advantageous to establish personal websites upon which one can hear their demo reels and, sometimes, view other fun stuff — like photos, résumés, advice to beginners, etc.  In case you're a casting director — or just a fan of folks who make silly sounds for a living — here are some sites I've encountered…

• Corey Burton — A fine announcer and character voice who is more or less ubiquitous on the airwaves.  His site also contains some wonderful nuggets of advice for those entering the trade.
• Scott Innes — When Don Messick passed away, Scott (a disc jockey by trade) turned up with the most dead-on Scooby Doo simulation imaginable.  And he now does Shaggy, as well.
• Dan Gilvezan — Another good announcer/character guy.  Once upon a time, he was the voice of Spider-Man and Dennis the Menace's father, among zillions of other roles.
• Hal Rayle & Maggie Roswell — He's a terrific mimic and cartoon voice thespian; she's a fine comedienne, heard often on The Simpsons.  Together, they're a top writing/performing team of, among other things, wonderfully inventive commercials.
• Beau Weaver — One of the workingest "promo" announcers around, but he also dabbles occasionally in cartoon voices.  (He was Superman on the Ruby-Spears series, for instance.)
• E.G. Daily — One of the three-or-so most popular voice actresses, most often heard as little kids.  She's also a terrific singer.
• Townsend Coleman — He was one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and he's also has one of those voices you hear on eight jillion commercials.
• Nancy Cartwright — aka Bart Simpson, though she's done a lot more than that.  I met her when she was one of Daws Butler's prize students and he'd be very proud to see what's become of her.
• Thurl Ravenscroft — Here's a man who's had an incredible career as a singer and cartoon voice actor, including many decades as Tony the Tiger.  And just try and spend a day at Disneyland without hearing him half-a-dozen times.
• Keith Scott — The top voice guy in Australia, the new voice of Bullwinkle, the replicator of many other classic voices and a fine historian of animation and animation voices.

I have about 50 more of these, so maybe I'll post more or even compile a big, permanent list here.  And then again, I may not.  There's no telling what I'll do.

Next Sunday, March 4, the Arts and Entertainment Network is running a two-hour documentary called It's Burlesque, filled with clips of great burley-q routines and performers, including Abbott and Costello, Phil Silvers and Mae West.  I mention this because some of you may like it and because it gives me an excuse to put up this great photo I found of Lou Costello.  I always liked Costello in spite of a lot of bad movies and worse anecdotes in show biz biographies.  I'm not saying the anecdotes probably weren't true but they sure didn't help me like him more.

Wanna see what's happening in Times Square at this very moment?  You can at Earthcam's Times Square webcam.  If the site included the sickly sweet smell of honey-roasted nuts, it would be your complete New York experience.

And I just wrote the foreword for DC's forthcoming trade paperback of Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle.  This will be the fourth collection of Jack's Fourth World series, this time reprinting #11-18 of Mister Miracle in, alas, black-and-white again.  I don't think this is Jack's strongest work — his heart went out of the project when the other two books were cancelled — but even weak Kirby is head-'n'-shoulders above most other comics, past and present.

Actually, the original plan was to also reprint The Hunger Dogs in this fourth collection.  That was the graphic novel Jack did years later to ostensibly wrap up the Fourth World saga — probably an impossible task.  (Imagine an author who plans a 100-chapter epic novel, gets stopped about a fourth of a way into it…and then is asked to come back, years later, and wrap it all up in one or two more chapters.)  No one, Jack included, was too happy with how it came out so at DC's request, he redid it, expanding the thing and adding new pages.  No one seems to feel the revised version was much better than the first and some of us feel it was inferior.  What we were going to print in this new book was the first version, which has aged very well, I think.  At least, I like it now a lot more than I did then.  Unfortunately, various complications are preventing its inclusion…so now we all have to lobby DC to put out another volume, preferably in color.  Spread the word.

While roaming about my harddisk the other day, I came across a file I downloaded a few years ago — a day-by-day diary of the second O.J. Simpson trial (the one he lost, the one with the wide-awake jury), kept by Harry Shearer.  Engaged by Slate to cover the festivities, Shearer turned in one of the best pieces of writing I've encountered, among those done wholly for the web.  Anyway, though the case is ancient history, I started reading his account and got sucked into digesting the whole, long (almost 100,000 words) mesmerizing tale again.  I just checked and you can still read it on the magazine's website.  Here's a link to Shearer's first dispatch and then you can find your way from there.  Harry, in case you don't know, is a writer-actor with stellar credits and, of course, is presently best known for what is probably his easiest gig, which is as a voice actor on The Simpsons.

But he's been involved with wonderful TV shows and movies and has a fine radio program called Le Show, which I wish I could catch more often.  He also, needless to say, has a website and here's the link to it.  Check out his on-line video files of clips from broadcasters saying odd things in front of the camera but before the broadcast commenced.

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.