The 1961 animated feature 101 Dalmatians changed the cartoon industry a lot…and some are still debating if it changed it for better or worse. Here's an interesting article about this controversy.

The team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby launched Captain America in a comic dated March of 1941 which went on sale just before Christmas of 1940. The first patriotic super-hero to wear a facsimile of the American Flag? Nope. The Shield, published by the company later known as Archie Comics, debuted late in 1939.

There were threats of litigation before it was decided, somewhat gentlemanly, that both heroes could co-exist. I suspect that if anyone then had dreamed how valuable a property Captain America would turn out to be, it would not been so gentlemanly.

The Shield has come and gone from the newsstands more times than I can count. One time, it was even revived for the Archie company by Simon and Kirby. Anyway, that firm is about to bring out yet another new version and the cover, seen above at right, is a parody (that's not quite the right word) of the cover of Captain America #1 seen at left.

I don't see anything wrong with that except that — and you won't be able to see this in the images above but trust me, it's there — the artist for the Shield cover signed it "after Kirby." That's a way of saying, "Yes, I acknowledge I'm copying Jack Kirby." And the problem there is that it's really a cover by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

As you probably know, I knew Jack and worked with him…but I also knew Joe. Two of my favorite people. Their memories of who did what on some stories were not identical and then let's add that scholars of their comics often debate if a given piece of work from the Simon-Kirby studio was mostly or all Simon or mostly or all Kirby.

Jack's standard answer if you asked him who did what in that studio was "We both did everything." They didn't sign that first, iconic Captain America #1 cover but if they had, they would have signed it "Simon & Kirby."

I also know Dan Parent, the fine artist who drew that new Shield cover. I don't know if he's the one who decided to omit Joe's name but I'm sure no malice was intended. (John L. Goldwater who was the publisher at Archie Comics for many years was very fond of Joe.)

It's easy to understand why Jack's name may be more familiar to some people who came to comics after there was no Simon-Kirby team. Okay, fine, that's not an excuse. Joe was a gifted and important maker of fine comic books. Let's not cancel him out of his own history.

Back in 1967, a group called Yellow Balloon defined the phrase "one-hit wonder" with their one hit. You know what it was called? "Yellow Balloon." That's right. The one hit of Yellow Balloon, a group founded by Don Grady of the My Three Sons TV show, was called "Yellow Balloon."

And you know what was on the flip side of "Yellow Balloon?" A song called "Noollab Wolley," which was "Yellow Balloon" spelled backwards. They named it that because all it was was the same recording played in reverse. I always thought that was funny. Most "one-hit wonder" performers technically had two hits because the A side of the record sold a zillion copies and then the flip got a free ride because even though nobody ever cared about it, it also sold a zillion. But Yellow Balloon actually was a one-hit wonder with one hit.

Here they are lip-syncing their one hit at Angel Stadium on the 1967 TV show Shebang with your host Casey Kasem…

Introducing a new feature on this blog…

I graduated High School in 1969. While I was there, the radio station that almost everyone on campus listened to was 93/KHJ, which called itself "Boss Radio." We all listened to other stuff — I was starting to get more interested in jazz, show tunes and (all my life) comedy/novelty records — but we all also listened to KHJ. It was kinda required of every L.A. teenager.

It was a good station if you liked hearing the Top 40 of the present and near-past played over and over with occasional older flashbacks. The disc jockeys — they called them "Boss Jocks" — were fast and funny and most of them seemed to know that they should just shut up and play records. It all had a certain nice energy…but I rarely listened to KHJ directly.

I taped KHJ. I had a reel-to-reel tape recorder that I'd hooked up to a radio so I could record off the radio…and the radio also picked up the sound of local TV stations so I could record their audio, too. I couldn't always stay up late enough to watch Johnny Carson but I could record the audio of his show…or sometimes Dick Cavett's if he had a better guest lineup. So long before there were TiVo or even VCRs, I could record TV programs and watch them — well, listen to them — at a later date.

But getting back to KHJ: I recorded a couple hours of it every now and then, then I'd do some editing, yanking out my favorite songs along with their intros and outros by the Boss Jocks. I'd splice those hunks o'tape onto one tape reel so when I felt like listening to KHJ, I'd just play that reel and hear only my favorite songs. It eventually got to be around a hundred tunes and it felt like KHJ was programmed just for me. Which it should have been.

After I graduated University High (rah!) I kept this up until around 1972, which is why I call it my 1972 "mixtape," using a noun that I don't think existed in 1972. I played that thing a lot, though less so as time wore on and the tape wore out, as did my reel-to-reel tape deck. Fortunately, I have a list of what was on the tape…though if I didn't, I could probably recreate it from memory. What was on that reel is burned forever into what I laughingly call my brain.

All those songs are now on a thumb drive, along with hundreds of others, that I can play in my car when I'm traveling somewhere. Almost all the songs that were on the tape are also on YouTube in little videos of the recording artists performing (or often, lip-syncing) those hits. So I've decided to put one of them up here every day or three in no particular order. When you see this banner —

— that means it's a song that was on my KHJ mixtape compiled between approximately 1967 and 1972. Some of the songs are from before '67 since KHJ played "oldies," defining them as anything (I think) that had been off the charts for more than about eight weeks. This is one of the later entries on the tape. It's "Love Grows," a '72 hit from Edison Lighthouse and I'm sorry I no longer have the Boss Jocks announcing and/or back-announcing the music of my high school years…

Back when Las Vegas was seriously shut down because of The Pandemic, there was a prevailing theory on the Vegas chat boards I sometimes read. It held that when the time came to reopen, the hotels and the airlines and everyone in the tourist business would offer all sorts of discounts and cut-rates and deals to lure visitors back.

Well, Reopening Time is now and the prediction couldn't have been more wrong. Those visitors appear so desperate to get back to the city and the gaming tables and the slot machines and the Elvis impersonators that the folks who run the businesses seem to be saying, "Quick! Raise the price of everything! They'll pay whatever it is!"

And if someone complains? Blame in on The Pandemic.

It's today's all-purpose excuse and it probably will be for a long time. Your business is delivering lousy service? "Sorry but because of The Pandemic, we're still understaffed!"

The price of something you buy just went way up? "Sorry but because of The Pandemic, we're having a lot of trouble getting things from our suppliers."

You haven't paid some bills that are now way past due? "Sorry but because of The Pandemic, my accountant is not in his office and I need to confer with him."

Real simple. And it's going to be this way for a long time. Five years after the last coronavirus germ is gone — which will probably never happen but let's assume it does — people will be saying, "Sorry, I was late for my appointment because of The Pandemic."

I have more examples but I have to go finish a script that was due weeks ago. And I have to figure out how I'm going to blame its lateness on The Pandemic rather than admit I spent all last week playing Sudoku instead of writing. (I usually win but when I lose, I blame it on…well, you know.)

I just felt like watching this today so I might as well share it with you. It's the "We're in the Money" number from the Broadway musical, 42nd Street. I once found a dime on the real 42nd Street in New York and I didn't break into this tune. But I probably should have…

Back in this post, I talked about the Citizen App I put on my iPhone a month or so ago. I described my mixed feelings about it and some of you sent links to articles about it and I read them and thought more about it…

…and now I've taken it off my phone and canceled my subscription. This post is about why. It has to do with my distaste for all the forces in our society today that seem to want us to live in a perpetual state of fear. You know what I'm talking about —

— politicians whose platforms pretty much come down to "If you vote for my opponent, he will take away your guns and your freedom and your religion and your free speech and your car and all your money and your Netflix® and your cocker spaniel and your flat-screen TV and your Chick-Fil-A and of course, you and your loved ones will be murdered in your beds in your home which he'll also take away."

— or people who want to sell you insurance or alarm systems and it's like "Buy my product or you and your family will die."

Once in a while, there's a smidgen of truth there but I hate that "I have to keep you scared for my purposes" attitude. You should not live your life in constant fear of what might happen. Planning for emergencies is fine. You should. But just because it's theoretically possible your home could be attacked by snakes doesn't mean you should keep a batch of live mongooses in your basement and worry you might not have enough of them.

The more I read about Citizen, the more I saw it as one of those "keep you terrified" campaigns. That's a shame because it did give me some useful information. I wish someone would invent the same thing but make it so you could adjust what it shows you and when and how it tells you that someone might have been held up at gunpoint X.X miles from you. But the Citizen app is just Every Possibly Bad Thing Near You and I decided I was better off without it. So my phone now is without it and I am more comfy without the distractions.

Awful news. Writer (and musician and comedian) Pat McGreal died this morning. I don't know his age. I don't know the cause of death. I only know that he was an awfully nice and talented guy.

Pat was a prolific writer of Disney Comics for the Egmont Company overseas, much of it later republished in this country. His non-Disney work included three graphic novels for DC/Vertigo: Chiaroscro; The Private Lives of Leonardo DaVinci, Veils and I, Paparazzi. Among the comic books he wrote for were Captain Marvel, Tarzan, The Simpsons, Judge Dredd, The Flash, Justice League, Indiana Jones, Martian Manhunter and Fighting American.

He was an Eisner Award nominee and a past president of the Comic Art Professonal Society. And a real good person to be around.

Here's a letter I received the other day from someone who obviously is among the billions on this planet who no have real idea who I am or what I do, nor do they care…

And I'm not saying he should; merely that he's clearly fibbing to pretend he does. I get one or two of these a week lately, leading me to suspect some autograph-collector site published my address and that it said something about me working in cartoons or comic books. That led him to the erroneous assumption that a little sketch by me might at least be worth what he spent on postage to send me five index cards and a stamped return envelope.

Usually, the signature-seekers take the time to at least Google your name and drop in one line to personalize their requests…like instead of saying "I very much respect the work you do," they'll amend the prepared text to say, "I love watching The Garfield Show." The person who sent this letter couldn't even be bothered to do that.

Another guy in comics who gets way more of these than I do told me once, "I used to sign and return a card if they only sent one of them. I figured maybe it is a true fan who will treasure it. But then I saw even those turning up on eBay so now I just toss the request in the trash. If I can peel off the stamp, I keep that and use it."

I don't feel good about tossing the requests and I don't keep the stamps. I just don't know what else to do. Past experience has told me that if I do sign the cards and send 'em back, the recipient will rush to the chat boards that cover this kind of thing and report that the address is valid and I do respond…and I'll get twenty more.

I've learned that and I've also learned one other very important thing: Don't leap to the conclusion, however tempting it may be, that just because someone asks you to write your name on something, that makes you important or famous of anything of the sort. In a way, I kinda like getting letters like this because they remind me of that.

I was going to write a piece here about what Memorial Day means but I looked back on what I wrote here two years ago and decided I'd just be saying the same thing. So here's what I wrote two years ago…

Memorial Day is meant to honor those who have died in the military service of the United States. That seems to get blurred by some into a general "thank you" to anyone who has ever served, including those who didn't die but that's okay. It wouldn't be so horrible if we just had two Veterans Days a year. It wouldn't even be a bad thing if we thought about those folks and honored them year-round so we didn't need a holiday to remind us of what we owe them.

I suppose in some ways, Memorial Day is also for the surviving friends and loved ones of those who died in uniform. The friends and loved ones especially had to cope with those deaths. A woman I know lost her husband in the Iraq War and suffered greatly. She's still suffering so don't tell me we don't owe her too.

I don't have anything that eloquent to say here except that I think the best way to honor those who have died or suffered because of military service is to create fewer of them in the future. There is a mindset out there that does not seem to put that high a value on the lives of American servicemen and servicewomen when there's talk of sending them into combat.

The most powerful piece I've read about this topic is this article by retired U.S. Army Major Danny Sjursen and I urge you to experience it. If you don't have time to read the whole thing, at least read this paragraph…

Do me a favor this year: question the foundation and purpose of America's wars for the Greater Middle East. Weigh the tangible costs in blood and treasure against any benefits to the nation or the world — if there are any! Ask how this country's political system morphed in such a way that Congress no longer declares, and presidents turned emperors unilaterally wage endless wars in distant locales. Ask yourself how much of this combat and death is connected — if at all — to the 9/11 attacks; why the over-adulated U.S. military mainly fights groups that didn't even exist in 2001.

Not much I can add to that. Like many of you, I did not serve in the military but like all of you (I hope) I am awfully appreciative of those that have…and those that do.

Who's the modern-day master of sleight-of-hand with cards? I can think of a couple of contenders and Horret Wu is among them…

John Oliver is off this week. And by "off," I mean off as in "off the rails"…

• I don't believe the reports that Donald Trump is furious about mounting legal bills. I mean, it's not like there's any chance of him paying them or anything.

I don't have any stories about Gavin MacLeod. Met him once briefly…no memorable chit-chat…seemed like as nice a man as you'd expect the guy playing Murray Slaughter and Captain Stubing to be. The thing I thought was great about him was how you could divide his acting career up into three acts…

Act One was everything before The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He did dozens of parts (maybe hundreds of parts) on dozens of shows (maybe hundreds of shows)…the all-purpose Day Player. Every so often, he'd be recurring or a way-in-the-background regular like on McHale's Navy or two Hawaii Five-Os. In the later, he played an odd, sick villain character. Did you ever see him play Big Chicken on Five-O? (The original one, that is.) Weird casting. I think they couldn't get Telly Savalas so they picked another bald guy at random. But that was Gavin MacLeod then.

Act Two was The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was where he changed it up. Before that, he wasn't on anyone's radar…a character actor who probably worked enough to make an okay living but without anyone really knowing who he was. He went in to audition for Lou Grant. He came away with Murray…a key component in one of the most beloved TV shows of all time. I think he worked on it because he, Ed Asner and Ted Knight all had such different relationships with the star. He wasn't the funniest but he was the most human.

Act Three was Love Boat, which probably paid him a lot more. He had no clout or name when he was cast on MTM but he was a big star when he signed aboard that ship. There was a time when even his most supportive agent couldn't have imagined him as toplining a series that ran for nine seasons on network and forever after in syndication. That was after being a supporting (but strong) player on an acclaimed series that ran seven seasons on network and forever after in syndication.

We'll be seeing a lot of Gavin MacLeod on TV forever. As will future generations, long after we're gone. What a nice career for a nice man.

• Within two years, every single person on the planet over the age of twelve will have a podcast and every single person over the age of twelve will have guested on every single one of these podcasts at least twice.