Congratulations to Josh Fruhlinger, the Comics Curmudgeon. For my money he's the Bernard Berenson of the funny pages, who not only shares my enthusiasm for the soap opera strips but has shown me the hidden treasures of cartoons I either didn't know about, like Get Fuzzy, or had never paid any attention to, like Slylock Fox. A few months back he diagnosed the disease at the heart of the comics page in a Times Op/Ed that the papers continue to ignore at their  peril.

So nobody is more deserving of The Week magazine's uncoveted Blogger-of-the-Year award, which Fruhlinger took home a few days ago. I especially applaud The Week, for acknowledging somebody who isn't singlehandedly saving the Middle East or organizing election groundswells, but dealing with pop-culture artifacts that aren't immediately recognizable as weighty or important. (Though they did give the award for the CC's work on editorial cartoons rather than his more free-ranging criticism of the daily comic strips.) With the newspapers' increasingly untenable mandate to bring you the world every morning, Fruhlinger's is the kind of smartass, pomo meta-analysis that actually adds value to its chosen subject, and while I'd doubt anybody is hanging on the results of The Week's awards for anything, there are few people who deserve free food and drinks and a trophy more than the Comics Curmudgeon.

A new survey by the Public Policy Institute of California finds a big majority of Californians (60%) believe the state benefits from immigrants' hard work and job skills. Moreover, 64% of residents say illegal immigrants should be allowed to apply for work permits.

But Californians also believe illegal immigrants need exercise. They should be pedestrians, busriders and bike riders; 64% of likely voters oppose state legislation allowing them to get driver’s licenses.

In today’s La Opinion, Nativo Lopez, president of Mexican American Political Assn., rails against the suvery’s findings. It’s in Spanish so here’s a translation:

It’s something so contradictory, so selfish, so ignorant. It says that it’s fine for the undocumented to work for our benefit, for our service, cleaning our houses, mowing our lawns, cooking, but it’s not all right for us to give them a driving permit so they can get to these places where they work.

Francisco Estrada, spokesman for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, tries to put a positive spin on the findings:

I think the results demonstrate that although anti-immigrant sentiment continues to exist, people recognize the benefit of immigrants in our community.

The  PPIC survey, entitled Californians and Their Government: If You Lead, Will They Follow? Voters, Leaders Not On Same Reform Page, also has information on residents' attitudes about a host of other issues, including moving the presidential primary,  the economy and redistricting.

Today is Cesar Chavez day, honoring the legendary union organizer and civil rights activist who took on the California Grape industry. Chavez  (1927-1993) fasted, protested and organized a nationwide boycott of California grapes to force growers to improve what were often savage conditions for farm workers, and also to discontinue the use of toxic pesticides. Here's a selection of his quotes:

Do we carry in our hearts the sufferings of farm workers and their children? Do we feel deeply enough the pain of those who must work in the fields every day with these poisons? Or the anguish of the families that have lost loved ones to cancer? Or the heartache of the parents who fear for the lives of their children? Who are raising children with deformities? Who agonize the outcome of their pregnancies?

In the old days, miners would carry birds with them to warn against poison gas. Hopefully, the birds would die before the miners.  Farm workers are society's canaries.

The strike and the boycott, they have cost us much. What they have not paid us in wages, better working conditions, and new contracts, they have paid us in self-respect and human dignity.

It's amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn.

Do not romanticize the poor...We are all people, human beings subject to the same temptations and faults as all others. Our poverty damages our dignity.

Money is not going to organize the disadvantaged, the powerless, or the poor. We need other weapons. That's why the War on Poverty is such a miserable failure. You put out a big pot of money and all you do is fight over it. Then you run out of money and you run out of troops.

Our cause goes on in hundreds of distant places. It multiplies among thousands and then millions of caring people who heed through a multitude of simple deeds the commandment set out in the book of the Prophet Micah, in the Old Testament: "What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. Thank you. And boycott grapes.

Hang in there, Mrs. Butterworth! The glass ceiling that has kept not only women but racially embarrassing corporate avatars out of the top ranks of American business may finally be cracking. The New York Times reports that Uncle Ben, the fictional mascot for a line of rice and side-dishes, likes his own product so much he bought the company:

"Uncle Ben...is being reborn as Ben, an accomplished businessman with an opulent office, a busy schedule, an extensive travel itinerary and a penchant for sharing what the company calls his 'grains of wisdom' about rice and life."

A visit to Uncle Ben's boardroom hints at what a thankless task it is to try and explain away these uncomfortable institutional histories. Couldn't they at least have let Ben lose the bowtie? It's an effort that reminds you of the "Cook's Chicken" plot in the movie version of Ghost World; the attempt to revise the past is almost as embarrassing as the actual past. It turns out the Uncle Ben logo isn't some turn-of-the-twentieth-century icon that existed into the postwar era; he was actually invented in 1946. Not exactly recent history, but not colonial history either: As early as the 1934 version of Imitation of Life (not as good as the Douglas Sirk remake but worth watching, among other reasons, because it's partly set in this reporter's home town: get both versions on a single DVD!), the use of Louise Beavers' mug as the logo for a product she doesn't get to own was a major plot point—and even back then the audience was clearly supposed to understand the irony in that.

It's an interesting site. Among the features are Ben's appointment calendar and little book of aphorisms. These illustrate the kind of self-doubt and fearful circumspection that go into an effort like this—and yet you still can't help thinking it all sounds too white. What exactly are they getting at with the Uncle Benism "How about some respect for the meat & rice man?" And isn't there a hint of Robert Ripleyesque exoticism in Ben's writing about his adventures "traversing through Bengal and Doab...Turkey, Persia, the Steppes, and the Blue Mediterranean...magnanimous countries"? Or this item from Ben's appointment book: "travel to Australia—meet with Tasmanian Aborigines. Demonstrate why my Instant Long Grain White Rice is far more expedient than a mortar and pestle."

And what's with that hyperurbanized writing style? "Tree sledding in Japan, while remarkably exhilirating, has a chafing factor that I had not fully taken into consideration." Or: "[T]he ground rules of proper gentlemanly etiquette prevent me from revealing my chronological age." For a while I thought the diction was supposed to sound overly clunky and high-falutin'. But then I noted that even in his jotted notes, Uncle Ben makes sure to respect the registered trademark logo, as in: "Perhaps this is why plates of my READY RICE® pilaf are so popular..." Never attribute to malice what can be explained by a tin-eared copywriter.

Related: Josh Glenn reveals the hidden kinship of Jane Austen and Aunt Jemimah.

Between Universal City and the Hollywood sign for now. No buildings touched yet, though it did get really close to the Oakwood. Video here. You probably should think about avoiding the Cahuenga Pass this afternoon.

If you're heading to Greece for spring break, have a wonderful vacation. But beware of the women's volleyball hooligans.

One man was killed Thursday and seven others wounded in a skirmish between rival Greek volleyball clubs Panathinaikos Athens and Olympiakos Piraeus; as a result, play in all Greek professional sports has been suspended for two weeks. We've all heard about the open warfare that can break out between rival countries in soccer matches, but seriously -- women's volleyball?

Sports are inherently tribal (my high school/college/city is better than yours, because my steroid-enhanced gladiators can beat up your steroid-enhanced gladiators), but in Greece and some other countries it's so tribal that the fan experience becomes something like gang warfare. After Thursday's volleyball riot, police raided supporters' clubs and found an arsenal of makeshift weapons like pickaxes (they probably weren't being used for digging), iron bars and baseball bats. Repeat after me, Greek sports fans: Styrofoam fingers, good. Weapons of mass destruction, bad.

Maybe that's just the way it is in homogeneous societies (in this country, we like to divide our gangs up by race rather than sports affiliation). Or maybe the land that spawned the Olympics just takes its volleyball a little too seriously for its own good.

The Freeway Series began last night with a bang (pictured) and a triple play, signaling to a grateful nation of baseball fanatics that our long winter nightmare (occasionally referred to as "the offseason") is finally at a close. For Angels and Dodgers fans out there, here's a roundup of links to get you ready for Opening Day:

* The L.A. Times' own Angels and Dodgers pages.

* The Hardball Times' Five Questions series (Dodgers, Angels); plus Joe Florkowski's five good things and five bad things about the Angels' spring.

* ESPN.com writer Eric Neel's terrific multimedia piece on Dodgertown in Florida.

* For my money, the best local baseball websites:
Jon Weisman's Dodger Thoughts
Rev. Halofan's Halos Heaven
Rob McMillin's 6-4-2 -- an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

Play ball, and let the trash-talking begin! I'll start: Angels will win at least 12 games more than the Dodgers....

(Photo: AP)

As horror films have grown more gruesome and graphic, so have their advertisements pushed the boundaries of the taste envelope. Yesterday, the Motion Picture Assn. of America said the ad campaign for one such film, "Captivity," went too far, and it imposed sanctions that could actually sting the distributor, After Dark Films. Read more about the sanctions and why the MPAA may be unusually sensitive on the violence front at the Bit Player blog.

Is Sacramento a minor league town? Depends how you look at it. It's not the biggest kid on the block, dwarfed by L.A., San Diego, amorphous San Jose, even puny San Francisco, which looks and acts like the Big Town despite its sub-million population. But Sactown is the locus of enormous power, the control center of California's $100 billion state budget, the place where decisions are made about what kind of light bulbs you can use and whether you can drive in the HOV lane.

For now it's still refreshingly minor league. Triple-A, to be sure, and on the cusp of major league status, with sprouting highrises, respectable rush hour gridlock and, as basketball fans try to tell me, an actual NBA team in the Kings. But the place remains smalltown and homey, and nothing drives home the point better than a trip across golden-spired Tower Bridge and the Sacramento River to West Sac and Raley Field, where the River Cats' rally in the ninth inning just fell short last night in the preseason exhibition game against the parent club, the Oakland A's.

They love their 'Cats in this town. Fans ate every single Dinger Dog (I missed out), and the food stands also ran low on salmon tacos and tri-tip. But no one seemed to mind as they watched Mike Piazza slug a homer. This was one of those games where you cheer for both teams--the hometown youngsters, and the guys like  Nick Swisher who graduated to the Show.

Who knows what kind of movers and shakers were sitting up in the luxury boxes--and yes, they have those at Raley Field. But there was not much evidence in the stands of the Other Sacramento--the electeds, the lobbyists, the political consultants. This was a Thursday night, after all, and those guys get out of town every Thursday afternoon, on the Southwest to Burbank, the I-80 to the Bay Area, or wherever else they spend their long weekends. This time they won't even be coming back for a week because it's spring break at the Capitol. Maybe they're in Palm Springs, or South Padre Island.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez went to Paris, by the way, killing any chance of hammering out a prison reform solution with Republicans before Easter. Now that's bush league.

Most TV viewers who caught D. Kyle Sampson’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday were probably reminded of another chubby, balding and sheepish man: George Costanza, Jerry Seinfeld’s sidekick.

But for political junkies of a certain age – my age – the appearance of the sorcerer’s apprentice of the U.S. attorney firings recalled a witness from almost 35 years ago: John W. Dean, who ratted out the Nixon administration before the Senate Watergate Committee.

I’m not positing a physical resemblance – Dean was lean and still had his hair in 1973 – nor am I suggesting that Sampson has done anything criminal. The point of similarity is age: Dean, the former White House counsel, was 34 when he faced Sen. Sam Ervin; Sampson is 37.

The latter's (relative) youth provoked one of the dismissed U.S. attorneys to gripe that "it looks like that authority was delegated . . . all the way down to a bunch of 35-year-old kids." (A Washington Post reader wondered whether you can still be a kid at 35.)

But it’s an open secret in Washington that many decisions are crafted – and many speeches are written – by thirtysomething aides. (The Supreme Court is different: most of the justices’ law clerks are in their 20s.) Perhaps the Almanac of American Politics should consider merging with this publication.