Saturday Night Live has another predicament on their hands.

On The October 4th episode they ran a sketch about the federal bailout of the banks.  I felt the skit was rather even handed, poking fun at both President Bush and the Democratic controlled congress, especially Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.  After the episode aired, five skits from the episode were posted to the web, including the bailout sketch, but on Monday the bailout one mysteriously disappeared.  If you go to any blog that posted it, you will see the following screen (please note this is a screen shot and not an actual embed, so no controls work in it)

What happened?  Conspiracy theories are running rampant, and I would usually ignore such things, but now there are reports that NBC is deleting any comments from their site that question where the video went.  This says to me that there is indeed something amiss here.

Michelle Malkin has posted a transcript of the missing SNL skit, and has also pointed out what could possibly be the reason behind NBC taking it down… it smells of legal threats.

I have a theory.

One of the rapacious couples featured in the skit was Herbert and Marion Sandler (portrayed by Darrell Hammond and Casey Wilson). Unlike the other composite figures, the Sandlers are a real-life couple.

Also lampooned: Left-wing billionaire George Soros.

As Todd Thurman at Heritage notes, the Sandlers are left-wing moguls who built a mortgage company whose major product was subprime mortgages and they sold it to Wachovia for $24.2 billion in 2006. And what do the Sandlers do when they are not peddling subprime garbage? They are busy writing checks to leftist groups like the Center for American Progress, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Yes that ACORN.

The Sandlers are seething over the skit. And George Soros must be livid as well. Anyone else smell a legal threat behind the disappearance of the vid?

It is true that the Sandlers are seething as mentioned in this article from USA Today, no clue if there is any truth to the statement about Mr. Soros.

Whatever the reason is for the removal, this stinks.  SNL has a long tradition of satire aimed at both sides of the aisle, and to show favoritism to one or the other is just not right, and it is certainly not keeping with the tradition of the show.  True, the skit did air, but it sets a deadly precedent for the show going forward.  Are they no longer going to be allowed to make fun of real life people for fear of future incidents such as this?  Perhaps the tag line under the image of the Sandlers that said “People who should be shot” was a bit much, but who cares?  It’s satire!

I defended SNL two weeks ago over the New York Times skit, and while I felt the skit was more about the media than the Republicans, I did say in the comments I was worried about the lack of material pointed at the Democrats thus far this season.  We did see some humor at the expense of Senator Joe Biden in the opening vice presidential debate sketch, which is still online, but with this one being yanked, the message is unclear.

Ali Gharib of the HuffingtonPost.com has a theory about how the sketch even came about.

But where did SNL get the idea? It’s hard to say exactly, but one possibility lies in the insidious web of neocon connections — a web that actually runs through the backstage halls of SNL.

Ayala Cohen, an SNL associate producer, is the wife of soon-to-be editor of the neocon journal Commentary, John Podhoretz (according to this site, and though I couldn’t confirm her title, I did confirm by phone that Cohen is still with SNL). Podhoretz, of course, is the son of longtime Commentary editor and neocon sage Norman Podhoretz.

Uh… yeah.  I’m sorry to inform Mr. Gharib, SNL has always poked fun at both sides, this is not something cooked up by “neocon connections”.  If this was remotely true, would we have had three Palin sketches already out of four episodes?  No.

So, why was the sketch removed from the Web?  Was it yanked for the Democrat portion?  Was it because of the Sandlers?  Was it because of Soros?  No matter which answer it is, it is a disturbing one.  Can political or financial pressure now dictate at whom the writers of SNL can point their wit at?  If there was something else about the sketch it would have been stopped before airing by standards and practices, and I do believe all SNL skits are run through the legal department before airing.

As of this writing, NBC and SNL have both not responded to inquiries made by various press outlets as to what happened.  With each passing moment this is becoming a more sinister situation, and the silence from the NBC camp is deafening.  If it is a situation where they can’t discuss it due to legal proceedings, than they need to say that.  If it was due to some form of other pressure, well, at least say something!

UPDATED AT 4:45 PM CST: Nikki Finke is reporting that the video is coming back online, but with the Sandlers section edited to take out the “shot in the head” comment and removal of the charge of corruption… way to go, NBC… you idiots.

The stock market fell another 369.88 points today.  So what?

While I am sure people will greatly disagree with me, I believe that the stock market has become nothing more than a giant gambling scheme where everyone has forgotten the most basic principle.  The stock market is a long term investment, and short term hiccups should be ignored.

While I understand there are those out there that need to move mass volumes of shares for funds and so on, for individual investors, you should always take the view that any stock is a long term situation.  Occasional bumps in the road, no matter how long they may last, need to be viewed in the overall long term projections you set for yourself when you purchased the stock.

Am I some sort of economic and financial whiz?  Heck no, but this is one mantra I have lived by for eons.  Admittedly I have been out of the stock market for quite some time personally (I owned Wal-Mart for years until it seemed to go into an almost 2 year stall), and my parents got out some time back after some success, but the one rule we all lived by was, “Oh well, the market dipped, we aren’t in this for short term gains.”

This also brings up a point about the major indices that has always driven me mad: they are not the final say to the economic health of the nation.  If it was, why did it not start falling long before the failures began to happen?  Wouldn’t all these great “analysts” have seen it coming and inested more conservatively?  No, they showed once again that the market is more controlled by emotions than by actual facts and analysis.  The market is in freefall, but that does not mean the every day consumer is.

If anything, I would be more prone to buy right now than anything.  I’m not, but if I had money to be gambling with (come on folks, it IS gambling, it’s just very fancy gambling), I would be eying a lot of different stocks right now.  Yes, things are bad NOW, but this is mostly shake out of people that are just plain nervous.  Give it a few weeks and every one will begin regaining their senses, and while the market won’t boom, it will stabilize and people will start focusing on the things in the country that need the real fixing.

In the meanwhile, please don’t go investing in comic books.

I watch listen to a lot of TV as I do my writing, and the new onslaught of pitchmen and annoying products is just amazing.

Over there, to the right… do you see him?  Don’t look directly at Vince!  His crazy eyes have the power to hypnotize you into buying a ShamWOW! (”It’s made in Germany, and you know the Germans make the best stuff.”)  To call Vince annoying would be an understatement, but of course he doesn’t replace my least favorite TV huckster, Billy Mays.  Oh Billy, you’ve come so far, what with you now advertising Mighty Mendit.

So today I saw an ad for the latest in the never ending stream of junk that gets thrown at us via TV ads: The Snuggie.  What grabbed my attention that, besides this looking like the robe for some unknown cult, it came with a folding book light.

Huh?

What does a folding booklight have to do with a flannel cult robe?  So, being a curious sort, I headed over to their website, and no real clues as to the connection between the two items, but I decided to explore the site some, and discovered the horrifying truth… the same company is behind the ShamWOW!, Mighty Mendit, Mighty Putty (also hawked by Billy Mays), a few others, and my absolute favorite… the Pancake Puff.

What is wrong with normal flat pancakes?  Essentially you are making donought holes, call them donought holes!  And stuffing a “pancake” with pizza filling?!?  You really have to wonder who comes up with these things.

I think I am most shocked to discover they didn’t make the Handy Switch, I wonder how that one got away from them!  As I asked in my post about the remote light switch wonder, I really do wonder how orders these things.  If you read this, and you have bought any one of these items I’ve mentioned, or even one I haven’t, please explain to me and my readers why you bought it, and did it live up to your expectations?  That is the one thing I have always heard that they don’t so that is what causes a lot of my confusion.

Here is your chance folks, go down to the comments and let loose with your thoughts on anything you have ever bought from a TV ad!  I really am curious to hear from real people that have bought any of these items or the like.

It seems that the 1990’s have returned, and this is not a good thing for the comic book industry.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve worked in the comic book industry, and I can tell you first hand about possibly the darkest times in comic book history: the speculator boom of the 90’s.  During the early to mid part of that decade, the comic industry was under siege by a wave of collector speculation as we received an influx of new customers from the bad stock market.  This then set off the already existing collectors into a buying frenzy where they would purchase multiple copies of the newest and “hottest” books, sure they had an upper hand due to their understanding the market.

People went nuts, to be blunt, thinking they could buy a copy of a comic that had a million-plus print run and it would be as valuable as any Silver Age comic (books published between 1956 to the late 1960s/early 1970s).  The thing they didn’t understand was that Silver Age books were valuable due to the low number of copies that existed from the day they were printed.  No comic had ever seen print runs anything close to what we were seeing during this time period.

The worst example of the entire speculative boom was Superman #75, published in 1992.  This comic finished up a storyline entitled The Death of Superman, and due to a culmination of the speculation boom, a slow news period and good marketing on the part of DC Comics, this single issue sold numbers unlike anything seen in the industry before.  To give you an example, in my town of 17,000 people (23,000 counting college students), we sold 1500 copies in 8 hours.  People came in to buy copies on release day that had never bought a comic book before in their lives, but they had heard “this will be a good investment”. Copies were going for as much as $25 on the first day it was released.

I actually spent a lot of time trying to tell people that a) there are too many copies being printed for this to be an “investment” and b) do you really think they are going to kill off the most well-known comic book character ever?  I just went on eBay and took a look and see copies in mint condition that their auction is over and they had no bids at $.99.  Color me not surprised.

So, why do I bring this up?  Will, with the economy the way it currently is, it seems people are looking to jump back into the industry again.  In an article from the Wall Street Journal, the following section appeared on October 3rd.

Mark Craddock, manager of Comic Book World, in Florence, Ky., says stock-market investors also are turning to superheroes. “There’s kind of a buying frenzy” in vintage comic books, he says.

The “Silver Age Comic Book Pricing Index” of 32 frequently traded ’60s comics, was up 14.2% in the 18 months ending in July, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index was down 11% in the same period. Mark Haspel, president of Certified Guaranty Co. in Sarasota, Fla., which grades comic books, often for investors, says it’s on track to handle 200,000 books this year, up from 150,000 in 2007.

“Spiderman is going to be here in 20 years — he’s not going away,” Mr. Haspel says.

The comic book industry saw an explosion of new stores during the a fore mentioned speculative boom, and when it was all done, all those stores closed… and so did many old stores.  The industry was crippled by that influx of collectors, and I fear the same thing could happen with another wave of speculators coming into the industry.

The other thing that concerns me is that they are buying books, at least for now, that they have no understanding of how to properly care for them, their historical significance to the art form or do they understand that they are actually creating a false market.  They may drive up prices for now, but how will they ever find people that are able to afford these new prices?  Golden Age and Silver Age comics have very small markets due to their already prohibitive costs, and with the prices being driven up by an influx of “investors”, that market will shrink even more.  This will leave these people with the option of selling their books to retailers, whom of course are not going to be able to pay them their going price guide value, but a percentage thereof so that they can in turn make a profit.  This is if they can even find a store willing to purchase them because not all stores are equipped to deal with such specialized books.

In short, I hope this is just a minor blip, and no one is considering this seriously.  If you are, I beg of you to rethink your investment strategy.  If you insist on going forward with it, try to learn from the past, and please, I beg of you, make sure you learn to properly care for these pieces of history you’re putting into your portfolio.

Cover of Prez: First Teen President #1 from Gorilla Daze.  And, yes, it was a real series.

It’s episode 12… I’ve been doing this for three months already?!?

- The economy, how messed up are we?

- Will the economy take down your favorite sites? This is in relation to a post Mark and I did on Mashable this week.

- Will the economy make Hollywood’s output even worse? Probably.

Here’s a link to the MP3 for those who wish to download it.

On July 20th, 1989, the very first thing I did when I got up, I went to register to vote.

It was my 18th birthday, and my first act as a legal adult was to go down to my local County Clerk’s office and fill out my voter registration card.  This was the single most important thing to me that day, everything else was secondary.

My mother had spent several years involved with the League of Women Voters, and a few years as the president of the local chapter.  One of her duties was at each major election, she would go down to an office on the Truman State University (then Northeast Missouri State University) campus, sit outside the office where the votes were counted, and as tallies were given to her, she would call them into the national ABC News office.  I was in my early teens and I would go and sit with her, but a few times, due to my excitement over the process, she would let me make the phone calls into the national office.  (She always stood next to me and would double check the numbers I gave to make sure I reported them correctly)

I learned very early on about the importance of being a voter.  I learned that no matter how much you thought only one vote didn’t matter, it really did.  Unfortunately, there is one thing I hate a lot in life, and that is standing in lines.  It never stopped me from doing my patriotic duty, I just grumbled about it a lot.  Luckily we can now vote up to six weeks before the election in my area, so today after lunch, I went down to the same County Clerk’s office I went to in 1989, walked in, got my ballot, voted, and walked out.  Yep, I have already cast my vote in the 2008 presidential election.  Even if my candidate doesn’t win, I will know I at least had my say.  If the opponent wins, I know I will at be able to say for the next four years, “Don’t look at me, I didn’t vote for him.”

If you aren’t registered to vote, why not? It just so happens that I did a list over at Mashable today called 10 Resources for Voter Registration.  It couldn’t be easier to register to vote nowadays, and if you need some motivation, watch the video below.

Come on folks, it’s time to make sure you take full advantage of your freedoms.

Back on September 7th I made a post about Save The Superman House.

News was circulating that the house that an 11-year-old Jerry Siegel, along with his friend Joe Shuster, came up with what would become Supermanwas falling into complete disrepair.  An author named Brad Meltzer decided to set up a fund, Ordinary People Change The World, to raise funds to save the house where an American icon was born.

I am beyond thrilled to announce that their efforts raised $111,047 to date, and work is beginning on the house tomorrow, October 2nd, to make the necessary repairs.  The original goal was $50,000, but the extra funds will allow them to fix both the exterior and interior of the household.  The house currently is occupied by an elderly couple, but there is no word on what will happen to the house after they move or pass on.

While I have no clue if any of my readers contributed, I still must send a thank you out to the entire Internet.  This was, and is, a part of American history that should not have been neglected.  Kudos to each and every person out there that donated even a penny to this cause.  I know times are tough for most, there is no denying that, and to donate to cause such as this, something that could have easily been laughed off, means the world.

Thank you to each and every one of you for saving this landmark of American pop culture.