Yes, I’m alive. Thanks for checking on me. And thank you for all the encouraging comments. I’m looking forward to the day we can forget about the Web and talk about more important things, like Anthony Bourdain’s new season, but that day is not quite here. Maybe next week.

There is at least one important thing I did not mention yesterday. The new site will be searchable. That’s right! Everything that we do here will be tagged and archived. In the past, if you wanted to find that old cartoon where Arlo tells Janis he’s going to the “batroom,” you had to wade through a swamp of old pages and dubious links before giving up and writing me to ask if I’d repeat it. I would intend to, of course, but then I’d forget, and you’d never see that cartoon again. Now, just type “batroom” in the search box, and… voila! Well, that’s the theory, anyway. I’ll believe it when I see it, myself.

As I was saying, I hope this site will progress rapidly. However, for the next few days it’s going to be something of an amalgam, a 50-cent word for “Frankenstein’s monster.” For example, I’m about to show you four old cartoons featuring Janis, but I haven’t yet developed a WordPress page that will show the cartoons in the clarity you’ve come to expect. So I’m going to link you to some old pages, which you’ll find very familiar. Sure, this will work, but when the cartoon resides on a new page, you’ll be able to “comment” on it right then and there. That’s when the real fun begins. Oh, I almost forgot: the four old cartoons. (The quickest way to get back here is to close the window that opens when you click on the previous link. After you’ve looked at the cartoons, of course.)