Harlan and Susan have been showing me (in addition to the rough cut of the marvelous documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth -- a bio on Harlan) the USA series Burn Notice. Thanks to their recorder, I'm catching it from the beginning, but the episodes pretty much stand on their own, too. Check it out; it's a favorite here.

Sitting at Harlan Ellison's table and mulling the delights of the past week ... Right now. Harlan is chatting about the ABC mini-series Masters of Science Fiction. And when I say "chatting," well, it's Harlan, who never exactly chats.

Back to the post: The week following San Diego has been wonderful. And yours?

The Mattel booth contained displays of upcoming Cars cars scheduled for release in the months to come. The variety was incredible, and my guess is that all the cars in the film (including "bit players") will be released eventually. There's a colored-wig-wearing Luigi, the helicopter, the tractor, and on and on and on.

Moreover, plans are in place for an entire line of Cars mini-cars: sorta half-size, to be packed two to a pack. They're cute as heck and sure to be great stocking stuffers (what with the hoped-for release date around November). I've got two grandsons who possess vast numbers of the models released so far -- and I trust they'll have bin room for many, many more.

I mentioned the Comic-Con Harry Potter tote bag and thought I'd provide a follow-up, considering eBay is filled with listings at the moment. (One auction closing in less than two hours has it at $36 including shipping. You can see it by filtering for, say, Potter, Hallows, and Bag.)

I stopped by the Scholastic booth on Sunday to ask for details of the bag. Scholastic had shipped in 6,000 bags. They were snapped up quickly, and the booth sported a big hand-lettered sign announcing they were gone by the time I asked. (Was it noon Sunday? Probably earlier.)

In any case (and I thought this was charming), on Sunday, the Scholastic folks were handing out Captain Underpants T-shirts free -- to children. The booth worker said they'd been careful to bring only size "S" and were monitoring to be sure that it was the kids who got the promotional item.

For most, it seems to be great. Many family types seem focused on what they can get for free. Others seem to be focused on celebrity-watching. I rummaged through boxes, looking for oddball beat-up 1950s reading copies. And the high rollers were looking for art or comics or other collectibles I can only dream of. One dealer told me he wasn't seeing the sales he'd seen in previous shows, but I haven't had time to do any sort of compare-and-contrast.

When I dropped by the Terry's Comics booth, I was startled when proprietor Terry O'Neill brought out a copy of my own Comic Art #1. I was even more startled to see the price tag the issue sported. From Spring 1961.it was priced at $400. Whuf! Which did bring up the idea again of some sort of list of early comics fanzines. What do you think?