Monthly Archives: August 2013

Because there are some things you just have to watch again from time to time…

Woody Allen tells us some things he's learned.

Matthew Yglesias is outraged that Tripadvisor thinks the two cities in America with the best pizza are San Diego and Las Vegas. I think too much is made of this idea that the best pizza (or to hear some tell it, the only edible pizza) is in New York with the occasional outlier in Jersey. I've had lousy pizza in New York and when people proclaim it has the finest, they're not factoring those places into the comparison. They're measuring all other places against their favorite place in or around Manhattan.

Well, yeah. My favorite place for pizza is Vito's over in West Hollywood. It's a lot better than the Ray's chain all over New York and it compares favorably to the best back there. For that matter, the last time I was in New York, half the pizza places I passed seemed to be Sbarros and their pizza isn't better than anyone's anywhere. I'll respect anyone's raves for the wonderfulness of the pizza at one or more specific restaurants…but a blanket statement that covers all the pizza in some cities? Nope.

Then again, I also don't buy Tripadvisor's pick. I'll believe that when I go to New York and see places advertising "San Diego style pizza!"

Hendrik Hertzberg has some interesting observations on the Anthony Weiner scandal — a scandal, he notes, in which no laws were broken, no marriage busted up, no adultery transpired, no one was touched inappropriately, etc. I wonder how many people who shifted their vote away from Weiner did so because they believed he had committed an immoral act and how many just felt he was too foolish and reckless to hold public office. It's probably a combo for most people but I wonder in what ratio. (If I were a New York voter, it would have been almost wholly the latter.)

I think I promised this story a long time ago. My parents met in Hartford, Connecticut in the mid-forties. They dated for a time but there was enormous pressure for them to not do this. My father, you see, was Jewish. My mother, you see, was Catholic. The elders at their respective houses of worship told them flat out to break it off and forget about wedlock. So did friends and several members of their families.

My mother's one brother opposed the marriage. Her parents were hesitant but their attitude was a skeptical "We sure hope you know what you're doing."

My father's parents had both passed but both of his sisters were strongly against marrying outside the faith. Non-Jewish wasn't the main problem. It was the "Catholic" part that didn't fly with them, just as my mother's friends and clergy were basically saying to her, "Listen, if you absolutely have to marry someone who isn't Catholic, couldn't you find a man who isn't Jewish?" My father's four brothers had views that ran the gamut. Only one, Nathan, was supportive enough to say, "It's your life. Marry whoever will make you happy and forget about what anyone else thinks." The naysayers were strident enough that they finally succeeded in driving the Jew and the Shiksa apart. The woman who would be my mother tried getting over him by marrying someone else.

That trick, as Rocky the Flying Squirrel says, never works. The marriage was annulled after a few months and before long, Bernie and Dorothy were an item again. The anti-Semitism she'd experienced from Catholic friends and church officials had diminished my mother's loyalty to that aspect of her life. She'd basically decided that if it came down to choosing between the man she loved and her religion, she was going to go with the guy. So they resumed dating, well aware that the next step they were contemplating — i.e., matrimony — would upset way too many of the people they knew. Then again, they were also aware they couldn't live without each other.

My father had a thought. He was working menial jobs in Hartford. At age 40, he had no real career but he did have a fantasy about getting into the entertainment industry — maybe radio, maybe that new TV thing that seemed to be catching on. He'd made one attempt to get a job writing for radio twenty years earlier but his first and only rejection had been so painful, he gave up that dream. Since so many friends and relatives would stop talking to them once they were wed, maybe they oughta move somewhere else…somewhere they could start a new life together. Somewhere there might be jobs in radio or television.

New York was discussed but that was a little close and my father had a hunch he'd be competing against fewer job applicants in Los Angeles. Besides, it didn't snow in Los Angeles and it was then a much cheaper place to live. L.A. in those days also seemed to symbolize New Beginnings.

Beyond that, there was this: He was then working for the Internal Revenue Service in Hartford. It was not a job he liked. He never had a job he liked…just ones he took to earn money. The I.R.S. then needed employees in Los Angeles and they were offering a one-time bonus for anyone who upped and moved out there to work in that town. It was something to consider, especially when he read the fine print on the offer. He could take a leave of absence from the Hartford office, go to L.A. and look around for a better job…and then if he didn't find one, he could go to work out there for the I.R.S. and still claim the bonus.

It made great sense but still, it was just so…so life-changing. They were both a little frightened about actually doing it.

In the meantime, an odd thing was happening to my father. People had begun stopping him on the street all the time and asking him to do something about the parkways or fix the sewers or support military action somewhere. This was because he looked an awful lot like a man named Abraham Ribicoff. Mr. Ribicoff would later become the Governor of Connecticut, a U.S. Senator from Connecticut and the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President John F. Kennedy. In 1950, which is the year we're talking about here, he was the U.S. Congressman representing the portion of Hartford where my soon-to-be parents lived. My father was spending much of his life explaining to strangers that he was not Abe Ribicoff.

One evening, he and my mother were dining in a restaurant, again discussing this daring idea of moving to L.A. and taking the vows. Suddenly, an angry woman marched up to their table and shouted, "Congressman Ribicoff! I've seen your wife and that woman is not your wife! I'm going to tell the whole world you're unfaithful!" She then stormed away, my parents laughed a lot and my father said, "Gee, maybe we oughta move out there just to save his reputation."

Adding a joke reason to all the real reasons for going west and getting hitched seemed to crystallize how real the real reasons were. Over the next few days, they refined the plan: My father would take the leave of absence from work and go out to Southern California on his own. He would get an apartment and then start looking for a better job than working for the I.R.S., preferably in radio and television. If he could, great. If he couldn't, he'd sign a three-year contract to work for the I.R.S. out there, which is what he'd have to do to get the bonus which would cover most of the cost of relocating. Either way, he'd then send for my mother and she'd fly out and marry him.

He came out, rented an apartment and made the rounds of TV and radio stations. The weeks he spent looking, he would later refer to as the worst weeks of his life. He had never lived alone before — there were always a few siblings on the premises — and he didn't take well to it. He also didn't take well to a parade of receptionists telling him they weren't hiring — and he wasn't even trying to get work as a writer. He was willing to take any job, however menial, but it didn't matter. No openings.

Before he'd started applying, he was prepared to take up to six months, if that was what was necessary, to secure a position in the entertainment industry. After two or three weeks, he changed his mind about the six months. The rejections were so total. The new apartment was so empty. And he was so worried. My father, as I've mentioned in these essays, was a world-class worrier. No matter how well things were going, he could always think of some possible if unlikely disaster upon which to obsess. He wanted very much to be with Dorothy and he'd lost her once to another man…

Well before even one of the six months was up, he went in and signed on with the local Internal Revenue office. After all, it was only a three-year contract. He could keep looking for something better after he and Dorothy were together again and forever. Then he quickly sent for his beloved. She shipped most of her belongings out, then shipped herself. On March 3, 1951, he picked her up at the L.A. airport and they drove directly to Las Vegas where they were wed at the Desert Inn, which was then a newly-opened motel.

Back in Los Angeles, they went about setting up housekeeping in a strange city, and one of the first things they needed was a local dentist. My father asked someone at his office if they could recommend a good one and he got the name of J. Darwin Harden, D.D.S., who had a practice in Westwood Village. Dr. Harden, a crusty gent who began every appointment with his signature line — "Well, let's see if you have any teeth left" — not only became the Evanier family dentist but an important resource. When my father needed a podiatrist, Dr. Harden recommended one. When my mother needed a gynecologist, Dr. Harden recommended one. And of course, he took care of my parents' teeth…and mine once I came along and grew some.

Every good doctor I've ever been to can be traced back to Dr. Harden. The surgeon who operated on my knee last month was recommended by my physician who was recommended by my urologist who was recommended by my previous physician who was recommended by the physician before him who was recommended by my opthamologist who was recommended by my previous physician who was recommended by the dentist who was recommended by Dr. Harden when he retired. (Anyone out there who remembers a comic book I used to write called The DNAgents may recall a character in it named Dr. Harden. Guess where I got that name.)

Now to understand the rest of this story, you need to keep track of a few relatives on my father's side. Keep this guide handy during the coming paragraphs. You'll need it.

• There was Uncle Nathan, whom I just mentioned. Uncle Nathan was my father's younger brother.
• There was Aunt Sally. Aunt Sally was one of my father's older sisters and a vocal disapprover of the Bernie/Dorothy union.
• There was Aunt Dot. Aunt Dot was the other of my father's older sisters and a vocal (but not quite as vocal) disapprover of said union.
• And there was Uncle Aaron. Uncle Aaron was my Uncle Aaron because he'd married my Aunt Dot.
• Also, my father had the three older brothers — Seymour, Irving and Henry.

Weeks before my parents married, Sally took ill. Very ill. The kind of ill that got her and everyone around her thinking about death. She was the first of the siblings to face the possibility and, as mortality does, it put some things in a different perspective. She began to think that maybe Bernie marrying a Catholic woman wasn't such a horrible thing. This got Dot thinking the same way. Neither was quite there yet but it began to feel wrong to condemn someone else's life choice.

Dot and her husband Aaron were contemplating a life choice of their own and so was Nathan. Bernard, you see, wasn't the first of them to move out of Hartford, Connecticut. Uncle Henry, who had risen to become one of the highest-ranked Jewish people in the Army, had been reassigned to San Diego, California. Uncle Seymour was preparing to relocate to New York. Nathan began to think he might like L.A. better, too. He was closer to my father than to anyone else in the family and he hated the winters of Connecticut. When he lost his job in Hartford, he decided he'd drive out to Los Angeles and check the place out.

Aaron also needed a new career. He'd been in the window display business. He and a partner had built a firm that manufactured low-cost display units you could purchase and put in your storefront window to enhance sales. The business had been quite successful but he'd quarreled so much with his partners that he wound up selling them his shares and getting out. Another business he tried was not successful so he decided he wanted to get back into the window display trade. The only thing stopping him was that when he'd sold his share, he'd signed a non-competition contract.

Ah, but there was a way around that. The non-competition clause only applied to the East Coast. He could set up any kind of window display business he wanted if he went, say, to the West Coast. With Henry in California and Nathan on the verge of emigrating there too, that seemed to be the place. Of course, Bernie was out there too but they weren't going to have anything to do with him and that…that woman he'd married.

Back in Los Angeles, my mother had been feeling ill, off and on. She finally called Dr. Harden who referred her to a physician who told her, as she sorta/kinda thought/hoped that she wasn't sick. She was pregnant. This is where I come into the story.

My folks were pretty happy about the news and that evening in their little apartment, they discussed how and whether to tell their respective families. My mother had been writing letters to her mother and of course would inform her…but what about my father's side of the family? My father decided to write to Nathan and tell him.

Just then, their phone rang. It was Nathan, calling not from Hartford but from a motel about six blocks from them. A half-hour later, they had a joyous reunion and they exchanged information: He told them that about Sally's failing health. They told him that another Evanier was about to come into the world. Nathan spent a few weeks seeing them, setting up his own apartment and finding a job. He lined one up working for Douglas Aircraft as a parts inspector — a position that would start in six months.

Then he began driving back east to Hartford, unaware that Aaron and Dot were driving west to visit California and see if they might like it out there. One morning in Kansas, Nathan decided to stop for lunch. He picked a little roadside diner at random, parked and walked in…and there he found his sister and his brother-in-law eating at one of the tables. A true story, everyone swore to me.

They had lunch, over which Nathan told them of the impending baby. That meant a lot to about-to-be-Aunt Dot, especially in light of Sally's condition. Sally had also been the hardliner against Bernie marrying a Catholic and her softening on the issue reduced Dot's opposition to it, as had the fact that Bernie and Dorothy had gone ahead and tied the knot so there was no point trying to stop that from happening any longer.

And now, there was this baby coming. She thought, "Gee, maybe he'll be a tall writer of comic books and TV shows and he might even be named one of the 25 Best Bloggers on the Internet by Time magazine…"

No, I apologize. She thought nothing of the sort. What she did think was that something was starting to feel right about that marriage…

After lunch, Nathan continued driving east while Aaron and Dot continued driving west. Somewhere between the diner in Kansas and the California border, Dot underwent an amazing transformation. The way she put it to me was, "I suddenly couldn't think of one good reason why Bernie and Dorothy shouldn't have gotten married." They decided that instead of heading for San Diego, their first stop would be Los Angeles.

So one day in L.A., Bernie was reflecting on how good his life was. He had a new wife and they loved each other very much. He had a new home in a new city. He had a new job and while it wasn't one he especially liked, it seemed to be steady…and maybe the best job he could get. And he was about to become a father. Everything was great, he thought, but for the fact that he was alienated from most of his family. He'd been trying to decide if he should write Dot about the pregnancy, just in case that made a difference to her, and had decided against it. "It won't change her mind," he told his wife.

The phone rang. He answered it. It was Dot. She was calling from the same motel where Nathan had stayed and she said, "So…I hear I'm about to become an aunt."

He was still in shock that evening when they all got together — him, Dorothy, Dot and Aaron. The folks who would soon be my parents could not get over that Dot and Aaron were not only here but were saying they were moving here permanently. "We were going to explore San Diego and San Francisco," Dot explained. "But if I'm going to be an aunt and he's going to be an uncle, Aaron and I agree we should be right here with you." Everyone hugged, symbolically if not physically, and all the nonsense was forgiven, forgotten and never mentioned again. I never knew any of this was ever an issue until I was around twelve and my parents thought I was old enough to hear and understand the story.

Dot and Aaron moved into a little apartment in the poorer part of Beverly Hills and Aaron began setting up his new window display business. Soon after came word that Sally had passed, followed by news that Nathan was driving back out to live and work in L.A. Both he and Bernie kept their same jobs — Nathan working for Douglas Aircraft, my soon-to-be father working for the I.R.S. — for the rest of their lives. Neither of them ever went back to Hartford either, not even to visit.

Nathan returned in time to be there, along with Dot and Aaron, when I was born…delivered, of course, by an obstetrician recommended by Dr. J. Darwin Harden. D.D.S. In later years, I'd be given credit for binding the family back together again, as if I'd done anything to make that happen. Personally, I always thought most of the credit should have gone to Dr. Harden.

Our Stan Freberg Day celebration continues! I mentioned how Soupy Sales on his legendary kids' show would have puppets mime to Freberg records. He wasn't the only one who did this. Jim Henson started his Muppet Magic on a local TV show in Washington D.C. called Sam and Friends between '55 and '61. Here, Mr. Henson and one other puppeteer perform to Stan's record of "I've Got You Under My Skin." (The other puppeteer is probably Jane Henson, Jim's wife.) That's Freberg's voice you hear coming out of the mouth of the Kermit prototype…

Just watched the president's appearance last night with Jay Leno. It was better than the last one but it was still someone asking a political figure questions that the political figure wanted to be asked before a TV camera and was quite prepared to answer.

I understand why some hosts want to engage in such "interviews" for the ratings value and the prestige. I understand why other hosts want to boost their chosen candidates or leaders by having them on and lobbing them softballs. Leno would probably be the best example of the former; Sean Hannity typifies the latter, having inherited the mantle from Keith Olbermann. (I liked Olbermann's commentary and reporting but did he ever ask anyone a question the interviewee didn't know was coming?) And of course, I understand why the politicos love those opportunities. I understand it all…but don't like it.

I don't see a lot of interviewers or reporters out there who strike me as fair in the sense that they'll ask tough questions of everyone. If there are such people, they don't get the guests; not when there are so many venues where a political figure can appear and get a hot stone massage. These days, Reince Preibus of the Republican National Committee seems to be angling to cut down on Presidential Debates next time around, the theory being that the G.O.P. hurt itself with all those debates in which Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain tried to outdo each other dragging the party not to the right but to the nutcase right. It would not surprise me if next election, we never see the major candidates get into a situation where they can't control the questions asked of them.

In the above photo, the guy with the glasses is Stan Freberg. The fellow at right is his clothheaded friend Orville who accompanied Stan on his occasional forays into ventriloquism. His other lines of work have included doing voices for cartoons, recording hilarious and best-selling satirical records, producing brilliant funny commercials, writing books and articles, and just being one of the cleverest minds in all media. Today is his birthday and I wanted to wish him many more.

I've been fortunate to know and work with many of my heroes. He and his terrific wife Hunter came to my birthday party last year, which was not so much my birthday party as it was an excuse for my mother to meet an awful lot of my friends while she still could. (It was darn near the last time she was well enough to leave her home for anything non-medical.) A lot of people said to her, "It's easy to see Mark got his sense of humor from you." Sometimes, she would reply — and she wasn't kidding — "Actually, I think I got mine from him." But at times, she'd point across the room to Stan and say, "I think Mark got his sense of humor from that man." She wasn't kidding about that, either.

I first knew Stan from his records, which achieved the highest honor you can have as a satirist. People even loved and laughed at Freberg records when they didn't know the material he was spoofing. Beginning at around age eight, I bought them all and played them over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. They are all deeply embedded in my memory. A few years ago, Stan, Hunter and I were riding in a limo in San Francisco and he challenged my claim that I knew every one by heart. I said, "Name one." He chose "B-B-B-Ball and Chain," which is a fast-talking, impossible-to-sing tune with about eighty words per square inch. I sang it for them and didn't miss a syllable.

Stan intersected with most of the things I loved as a kid. He was the other voice, the guy who wasn't Mel Blanc in a ton of Warner Brothers cartoons. He and the brilliant Daws Butler were Beany and Cecil and everyone else on Time for Beany. He was involved with the early MAD magazine. He was in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He was even an unwilling participant on The Soupy Sales Show. I first "discovered" Stan when the puppets on that program would mime to Freberg records.

I am hardly the only person who feels this way. Going places with Stan is like what traveling with The Pope must be like. People grovel before him and figuratively (occasionally, literally) kiss his ring.

One night a few weeks after Stan's first wife passed, I dragged him out to dinner — at Matteo's, a very famous, old school Italian restaurant on Westwood Boulevard here in L.A. I picked it because he liked it and, to amuse myself, because it's about 200 yards from the former site of the record store in which I purchased my first Stan Freberg LP.

I haven't been to Matteo's since it changed ownership a few years ago but under the old owners, the foyer was practically a shrine to one of their past customers, a fellow named Frank Sinatra. When you came in, the maître d' would often act like he was granting you a rare privilege when he said, "I'm going to seat you in Mr. Sinatra's booth." That was impressive until you learned that at Matteo's, every booth was Mr. Sinatra's booth.

As he led Stan and me to "Mr. Sinatra's booth," we passed a wall of Sinatra photos. One of them was this picture…

It's from a party thrown by Capitol Records, back when they were one of the biggest entities in their industry. The gent at lower left is Glenn Wallichs, who was one of the company founders. The other men were their top recording artists back then — in the back row: Sinatra, Danny Kaye, Gordon MacRae and Nat King Cole. In the front row, we have Wallichs, Dean Martin and Stan. Stan's the only one in the photo who is still with us.

As we passed the photo in Matteo's, I said something like, "Hey, Stan…there's you with Mr. Sinatra." The maître d' turned in shock and gasped, "You…you actually met him?" (Stan not only met Frank, they were close friends. Stan was even the opening act one year when Sinatra did a tour of Australia.)

We had a lovely dinner. When it was over and I asked for the check, our waiter said, "It's been taken care of." I thought Matteo's was comping us but no. A minute later, he came over with a napkin on which another diner in the restaurant — one, the waiter said had already left — had written in ballpoint pen…

Mr. Freberg…you don't know me but your work has meant so much to me over the years. It's an honor to pay you back in even a tiny way by paying for your dinner tonight.

Stan gets that kind of reaction a lot and with good reason. Anyone with that body of excellent work deserves it and more. Happy Freberg Day, Stan!

James Engel sent me a link to this great photo of Johnny Carson. It's identified as him backstage at The Tonight Show but I don't think it is. For one thing, Johnny never wore anything that casual on The Tonight Show. Secondly, it sure doesn't look like backstage in a TV studio. It looks to me like backstage at a Las Vegas showroom or some other performing hall. But it's a good picture…

Bill Carter on the battle between Time-Warner and CBS…

Several media analysts suggested the standoff might be protracted, with predictions ranging from about 10 days to as long as six weeks.

Translation: Nobody has a clue how long this thing might last because there are no precedents and no real insights into the financial stubbornness of both sides. Make a guess. Yours will be no worse than any of the experts or "several media analysts." Yes, the fight might be protracted. It might also be settled this evening. As Jack Germond used to say, "The trouble with the news business is we aren't paid to say 'I don't know.' So we have to say something even when we don't know."

Let's go to the 2012 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony in London as Monty Python's Eric Idle favors us with a medley of his hit…

[EDIT, AN HOUR OR SO LATER:] Okay, it played when I embedded it but now it doesn't.  If you want to see that clip, you'll need to go to this link at YouTube.  Sorry.

Kevin Drum discusses fact-checking. The deficit is falling. In fact, it's falling at a pretty good clip, even though a lot of folks think it's likely to start growing again. So when Eric Cantor refers to our "growing deficit," is he wrong? I'd say he is because he's deliberately (it seems to me) painting an incomplete picture. If he said, "Yes, our deficit is falling now but there's good reason to believe it will begin to start growing again," he'd be accurate. But his goal pretty clearly is not to admit anything is good news under Obama…so I say it's a lie. Or a willful distortion, if you prefer.

The problem, of course, is that he said it on Fox News where no one, except Chris Wallace on token occasions, is going to say to him, "Congressman, you refer to our 'growing deficit.' The Congressional Budget Office says the deficit is shrinking at the fastest rate in over 60 years." And then he'd say, "Yes, well, that's a short term look at the problem and here's why…" and it all might result in a true picture of the situation, especially if anyone noted that projections of future deficits are not the same thing as current reports of what's actually happening. The deficits might not increase the way Cantor (and to be fair, some Democrats) expect.

As for Politifact and a few others like that, I think they're usually accurate if you carefully parse the claims they're analyzing but they sometimes don't look at what the public is likely to hear. In the above example, all most viewers are going to hear from Cantor's statement is that the deficit is currently growing. Which it isn't. You know, when the stock market goes down, we say it's going down. We don't say it's going up because we know that eventually it will.

We're still following this battle between CBS and Time-Warner, fantasizing there's some way we can get our CBS-owned channels back but both sides in the dispute can lose. My guess would be that most subscribers think it's all just a matter of corporate avarice and that Time-Warner — because they seem to be satisfied with the status quo and no price increases — is the lesser greedhead by a slim margin. CBS Channel 2 has now disappeared completely from my TV and been replaced by what I think is the Starz Kids channel. My TiVo, of course, has no idea what it's showing.

There's a lot here I don't understand. One thing is why if Time-Warner wants to keep the good will of its customers and put pressure on CBS, they don't give that cherished Channel 2 spot over to free access to a great premium channel that everyone will love. The Showtime channels (owned by CBS) are off but some of us would be really happy with a free channel that showed the same kinds of things. That seems like it would be cost-effective to Time-Warner based on how it would get the public on their side.

Another thing I don't get is this…

[Time-Warner Cable CEO Glenn] Britt…called on CBS to stop blocking Time Warner Cable customers from viewing programming on the Web. CBS makes a substantial amount of its programming available on its website CBS.com but has been blocking access from Time Warner Cable's Internet subscribers since Friday afternoon.

Wouldn't it be in CBS's best interests to make those shows viewable on the web? It would stop some fans of ongoing series from drifting away. It would make CBS look like it cared about its viewers. It would cause many of Time-Warner's customers to think, "Hey, we don't need Time-Warner Cable." I know the premise is that if folks can't watch The Mentalist, they'll call Time-Warner and threaten to switch to DirecTV or Dish or (gasp!) roof antennas…but Time-Warner isn't afraid of those complaints. They can just tell those callers, "We could have the CBS stations back in two minutes if we pay them what we want but then your bill will go up."

Not a lot of folks are actually going to switch because they figure that the minute you go to DirecTV — which can involve a lot of hassle, plus often the abandonment of all you've saved to watch on your DVR — DirecTV will be fighting over retransmission fees with Disney and then all those channels will be off. Granting access to Time-Warner subscribers to watch CBS shows on the web would also enable them to insert commercials and plead their case to Time-Warner subscribers.

So far, the impact on CBS ratings is microscopic. Last night, their Big Brother cleaned up in the numbers.

Anyway, let's keep watching the knife fight. It's a lot more interesting than watching anything that's been on CBS lately. All I care about is that they get this settled in time for me to watch The Tony Awards next May. Especially if Neil Patrick Harris hosts again.

Baby Panda video! Baby Panda video! Baby Panda video!

Jerry Beck, who's a pretty good blogger himself, informs me that I made the 2013 Time list of the 25 Best Bloggers. I am reminded of what the late Jack Kirby once said to me when I told him he'd been nominated for some honor. He said, "Remember — when you win anything, just thank the little people and get off!" So…thank you, little people. I'm not going to mention any names. You know who you are.

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I said in yesterday's piece on my father that one of the things that turned me against the Vietnam War was when Richard Nixon's announced "secret plan" to end it turned out to be illusory. Well, as several folks have informed me, it was illusory in that Nixon never promised any such thing. His fabled "secret plan," which I believe was ridiculed in opposition commercials, was the invention of a reporter who first used the term. Others picked up on it but Nixon apparently never said, "I have a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam." There are those who insist that he pointedly did not deny it because he wanted to make that claim without making that claim, if you follow me. But he didn't say it. Its non-existence was hardly the only reason my dislike for Nixon and that war grew…but we should set the record straight on the one thing.

And boy, it feels odd to correct a fib about Richard Nixon.

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My knee's a bit better but I won't be begging, proposing marriage, praying or singing "Mammy" for a while. I also have deadlines looming so for that reason and to prove Time wrong, I won't be blogging much the rest of the day. Gonna post a Video Link and go back to work…