Category Archives: To Be Filed

In 1958, journalist Bob Thomas authored one of the first books on how Disney artists did what they did. It was called The Art of Animation and I have a copy in my library. My copy, however, is lacking one thing that's in Floyd Norman's copy.

Bill Cosby did the final show of his current tour last Saturday night in Atlanta. He entertained a room with more empty seats than there would have been were it not for the many allegations of "inappropriate conduct" (i.e., rape) that have been made against him. One of the seats that was occupied was occupied by Joshua Alston, who reports on the evening.

Is this how it ends? Cosby just slinks off into retirement and the world forgets about him? I dunno. That doesn't feel very satisfying for the folks who think he's innocent or the folks who think he's guilty. But they all may have to just accept it…

I just saw last night's Letterman show with Howard Stern and Don Rickles. Stern wore out his "I'm here to make trouble" routine with me long ago and there were moments there when it looked like Dave was feeling as I do…but maybe not. I mean, you book Howard Stern, that's what you get. Dave couldn't have been surprised that Howard took control of the conversation, wouldn't let Dave run his own show and asked questions designed to make the host uncomfortable. That's what the guy does.

But Rickles…well, we've heard that for the last few years, he's had trouble walking. This is the first time he seemed to be having trouble talking. The mind seemed pretty sharp for a guy who just turned 89 but there was a definite speech problem there. Let's hope it's just wobbly dentures instead of something less fixable.

From 1963: Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett sing one of my favorite showtunes at Carnegie Hall…

We're flashing back to September 20, 2002, back to the prehistoric Internet where discussions were done primarily in things called "newsgroups." Much time was spent lamenting the axing of some favored comic book and it led to this posting here…

I have this friend named Pat O'Neill.  We get along fine in person and on the phone.  Nice guy.  On various discussion forums on the Internet, however, I rarely agree with him and often strenuously disagree to the extent where people write me and say, "Boy, you must hate Pat O'Neill."  I don't.  I don't think I "hate" anyone in this world…but if I did, it would have to be for something a lot more offensive than posting things I utterly disagree with in newsgroups.

I mention this because I'm about to disagree with Pat again.  The other morning, over in the rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe newsgroup, he posted the following…

Most commonly on these groups any decision a publisher makes that cancels a "critically acclaimed" title whose sales are in the toilet is derided.  In general, these groups act as if publishers were in business to publish the GROUPS' favorite comics, as opposed to publishing the comics most likely to be profitable.

Pat is right and wrong about this…and I should add that I was, as well, since I used to say almost the exact same thing in fanzines when someone would start weeping that their favorite funnybook had been axed.  But I think I was at least partly incorrect for two reasons, one large and one small…

One is that, first of all, a fan has every right to complain when something he likes is taken from him.  Such passions ought to be balanced with a little pragmatism and awareness of how things have to work in the Real World, true.  But I think it's unfair and probably unwise to demean or attempt to change that passion.  You can't expect someone whose only relationship to a work is as Enthusiastic Audience to suddenly snap to the mindset of one of the bean-counters in the accounting department…nor should they.  What a cold, unenjoyable media it would be if we all had to hook our sympathies up to the financial end of things and to accept every decision as a calculated profit/loss reality.  If I love something, I shouldn't have that love trampled by the business department expecting me to view it through their eyes.

That's the small reason.  The larger is this: When a publisher cancels a "fan favorite" comic book due to poor sales, there's a very good chance that publisher is wrong…often in the long term and sometimes even in the short term.

An amazing number of times — too often to dismiss as flukes, I believe — a publisher has cancelled The Invincible Flurp and all the Flurp fans get up in arms and protest, and the publisher says, "Don't you [idiot] fans realize that this is a business?  That Flurp sales are in the crapper and we're losing money and that we're not in business to lose money?"  And in the long run, with hindsight, there is ample evidence that the publisher simply gave up too quickly on a comic that might have built a new and profitable audience had the company stayed with it longer or done a better job of marketing.  (It has also been the case, though some have denied it, that someone in the office simply misread the numbers and terminated a profitable title, or killed one deliberately because of personal issues with its makers.  I don't think anyone will ever admit that in print, at least about themselves, but almost anyone who's been in the business for any length of time will tell you it's happened.)

Throughout comic book history, publishers have often been way too short-sighted and timid and terrified of losing even a very modest amount of money on new product.  At times, the financial risk in publishing the established sellers becomes so non-existent that they cannot bear to assume even a microscopic risk to publish something new.  Something different comes along and they don't know how to sell it and are afraid to try.  Usually, it works like this: Super-hero books are selling decently and, in a moment of uncommon wisdom, someone says, "We need to expand the audience and reach folks who don't like super-hero comics," so they launch some non super-hero comics, often with great confidence and a determination to build and nurture another marketplace.

That's until the first sales figures come in on the non super-hero comics and they don't immediately yield the guaranteed profits of the super-hero books.  Then someone has a panic attack and, without waiting for the folks who don't like super-hero comics to have time to find the new, non super-hero books, the publisher says, "Wait a minute!  Why am I publishing these when I could sell more comics per month by replacing them with super-hero titles?"  That has happened way too many times, despite the fact that the potential loss, even if the new books never catch on, is not all that great.  It also happens despite the facts that…

A. There are dozens of cases where a new comic was declared a flop and then, for reasons other than the publisher believing in it, it was brought back or continued a little longer…and it became not just a hit but a huge hit.  Marvel Comics' two biggest properties — Spider-Man and the Hulk — were both initially and prematurely declared failures and were cancelled.  And had we been around then and protested those cancellations, someone at the company could have said precisely what Pat O'Neill said above.  Later on, the publisher declared the then-new Conan the Barbarian comic an utter failure and actually did say what Pat said when fans protested its probable cancellation.  But as with Spidey and Greenskin, the Barbarian stuck around long enough to develop and show a following.

B. Sometimes, the sales of the comic book itself are only part of the story.  All the major companies have published comics that were, going strictly by this month's sales, unprofitable…but because the property was licensed for a movie or toy deal, loads of cash rolled in.  There were many years where Wonder Woman was technically losing all kinds of money on the newsstand but that comic served as a very effective loss-leader for very lucrative merchandise.

C. There are also dozens of cases where, years later, a cancelled comic still has a loyal following.  No one can ever prove that Bat Lash (to pick one example of dozens) would or would not have found an audience had it run another year or so but, given the extent to which people still recall it fondly, you have to wonder.  More to the point, some abruptly-cancelled comics are probably analogous to a movie that is declared a flop at the time of its debut but which, in re-release, proves to be enormously popular and profitable.  DC, for instance, has made an awful lot of money reprinting the old Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams issues of Green Lantern-Green Arrow which, back in 1971, was declared a money-loser that had to go.  Some don't think it was unprofitable then but, even if it was, the foreign sales and reprints have since made it one of the more lucrative things DC published that year.  Had they kept it going, it would have been a very good investment.

This is not unique to comics.  TV networks are often too quick to cancel a show if its initial ratings do not soar.  Seinfeld, which may turn out to be the most profitable live-action TV show of all time, was — like Spider-Man or Hulk — an "immediate flop" that many of the business-types wanted to junk, and might have.  The TV version of M*A*S*H, which may be the current holder of the "most profitable of all time" medallion, was definitely in that category, as well.  (I once worked for a producer who kept on his wall, a framed memo from a high executive at Paramount.  Going by early ratings, the exec was declaring Cheers a bomb and asking if the studio's lawyers could extricate them from having to produce any more episodes.  Next to it was framed a then-recent statement of the show's grosses, which of course made the first memo look even stupider.)

Fact is — and I'll bet it's the same in almost any field — business decisions are not always firm, intractable judgments.  A creative field like comic books is probably especially subjective.  The folks who have to decide what to publish and what to cancel might like to pretend that they have no choice…that they're only going by the numbers and you can't argue with them.  But you can.  Like William Goldman says of the movie business, "Nobody knows anything."

If you love a comic book and the publisher kills it, don't let anyone tell you you're naïve to protest or lament its passing.  Worrying about the profit or loss of the company is the company's job, not yours.  And besides, there's a very good chance that even as a dollars-and-cents decision, they're wrong and you're right.

Ezra Klein says cable news is in trouble and we may need to invade Iran (or something) just to save MSNBC.

On the other hand, he notes that Fox News made $1.2 billion in profits last year. That doesn't sound like an industry in trouble to me. It sounds like the answer to the question, "Why doesn't Fox News stop spreading bogus information?"

Mike Huckabee is one of those folks who I think will get as many electoral votes in the 2016 presidential election as I will. Others on that list include Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Lindsay Graham, Mitt Romney, Lincoln Chafee, Bernie Sanders and Woody Woodpecker. Well, maybe not Woody Woodpecker.

Reporters are now pressing Huckabee to defend his involvement in selling a diabetes remedy that sounds like outright quackery. Huckabee's reponse on Face the Nation yesterday was, and I quote: "I don't have to defend everything that I've ever done."

Utterly fair question for Mike Huckabee: "If you were the Republican nominee running against Hillary Clinton — yeah, like that's gonna happen — would you accept that answer from her on a question involving her financial dealings?"

If he says no, he looks like a massive hypocrite. If he says yes, he's throwing away half the campaign the Republicans intend to mount against her.

Here's a pretty rare clip. It's The Tonight Show for New Year's Eve of 1965. As you can see, Woody Allen is in Johnny's guest chair but this is a segment with the Muppets, who were then pretty new to network television. The bearded gent you'll see in there is Skitch Henderson, who was Johnny's bandleader at the time…

Here's a list — not complete but still impressive — of old restaurants in Los Angeles that are still in operation. This is not to be confused with the splendid website run by the proprietor of the one you're reading at the moment. Old L.A. Restaurants covers ones that are no longer in operation.

I have not been to the oldest one on the list of those still serving but I have been to the next two. Cole's and Phillipe the Original both opened in 1908 and both claim to have invented the French Dip sandwich, which is still their specialty. I don't know which one to believe and I doubt there's a way to ever settle that one. I do know that I have a small preference for the sandwiches at Phillipe. Also, the parking. The next oldest one listed that I've been to is one I visit often — the Musso & Frank Grill and then maybe a fourth of the rest. If you're of the area, you will probably want to check off the ones you've patronized, too.

Fred Kaplan on what Congress will or won't do with regard to the N.S.A. and its power to snoop on our phone conversations. My first hope is not that Congress extends The Patriot Act but that they read it. Only then might they decide the right thing to do with it.

I've officially been an orphan since October of 2012 when my mother passed away. As I've detailed here, her death was not a tragedy. The tragedy — if you can call it that with a woman who lived far longer than any doctor would have expected — was how her health deteriorated the last ten years or so. Inability to walk much or see much or eat anything she liked or go three months without being carted off to an emergency room had left her wishing it would end. She just wanted it to end. If there had been a legal, painless way to make that happen, she would have eaten three chili dogs, then pushed the button.

(Actually, in her condition, if she'd eaten the three chili dogs, she might not have lived long enough to push the button.)

On March 3 of that year, one day after I turned 60, I held a big birthday party for my little ol' self and invited 120 of my friends. If you felt you should have been among them, I apologize…but I have way more than 120 friends and that's about all the restaurant could hold. I chose that particular one because of her — because she liked it and it was close to her home. As if all the other problems I mentioned in the first paragraph didn't restrict her ability to enjoy life, there was this: She sometimes and without much warning got incredibly tired and had an urgent need to go to bed and stay there for 8-10 hours. One day, I took her on a day trip to a place she'd always wanted to go that was about a two-hour drive from her bedroom. The fatigue hit her there and it was quite an ordeal to get her home and safely under the covers.

After that, she was unwilling to ever be in a situation where she was more than about twenty minutes from that bed. She wouldn't let me take her to the theater or to a show because, as she put it, "What if we get there and the show is just starting and I suddenly need to be home?" She agreed to come to the party because I assured her that (a) if she suddenly needed to go to sleep, someone would immediately take her home and (b) it would not be me. I convinced her to let me take her to the party since we would be getting there before it started but she made me swear I wouldn't leave my own birthday party in progress to chauffeur her back to her abode.

With all that agreed-upon, she agreed she'd attend my 60th birthday party. She said, "I guess I should since I was there for your last one, fifty years ago." Actually, she was there for all of them but the previous one was, indeed, fifty years before.

I don't recall my first few. My earliest memory would be of one that was around age five or six. I remember a lot of neighborhood children and their mothers, we kids dressed up nicer than we wanted to be. I remember sandwiches and cake and presents and paper hats. That's really all that stayed with me about the next few and about all I recall about going to the birthday parties of friends of mine unless they were cruel enough, as some were, to hire a clown.

Clowns do not belong at kids' birthday parties. They belong at circuses and in cartoons and Red Skelton paintings and nowhere else.

Mostly, I had tiny, family-only parties at ages seven, eight and nine…and then when I turned ten, my mother insisted on throwing a big gala birthday celebration for me. I had not asked for one. She just felt it was something a parent was supposed to do for a child and she seemed way more excited about it than I was. It was only in ostensible adulthood that I began to not hate being the center of attention of anything. Still, I somehow felt obligated to go along with this party thing so at her request, I specified twelve friends I would like to have attend.  She contacted their parents and arranged the kids' presence and the assistance of a few moms.

It was all planned as an afternoon of events. The first was that with the aid of some other parents and their autos, we all caravaned to a miniature golf course on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica and played a round of miniature golf. Then we drove to our house and there was food — hamburgers, hot dogs, lemonade and (of course) cake — and then a Badminton tournament in the backyard. Somewhere in there, I unwrapped a lot of presents.

Fun? Not one bit. I hated the entire day. Could not wait for it to be over.

The miniature golf course part of it just seemed so awkward — getting thirteen kids there and dividing that prime number into smaller groups since thirteen kids cannot all play golf at the same time. The golf course was a ramshackle slum that was torn down a few years later. It might have imploded on its own on my tenth birthday if I'd had a better backswing on my niblick.

There were all these parents around taking pictures of us and…well, there were a lot of things I didn't like about being a kid and one of them was being thought of as "cute" in the same tone of voice you'd use to describe a "cute" trained dog act. It also didn't help my disposition that I finished dead last in the tournament. None of my friends were classy enough to throw a few putts and let the Birthday Boy win.

Then it was back to the house for chow with all these adults taking photos and also now 8mm movies of how cute we all looked wearing our party hats and eating cake. I made a wish and blew out all the candles with one breath but I didn't get my wish: The party continued. Some of my friends embarrassed me with spillage and mess-making and there was my poor mother running around, trying to wait on all these kids and making a special lunch for one girl who didn't want to eat a hot dog or a hamburger.

Not one of the presents was something I wanted or could use. I've rarely enjoyed getting gifts because I'm terribly hard to shop for. I'm larger than people think, I have all those food allergies and I don't drink…so probably a good 70% of all the presents I've received in my lifetime, unless I told the person what to give me, have been items of clothing that didn't fit me, food I couldn't eat or wine I wouldn't drink. I also buy or receive review copies of every DVD or book I want so there's not much chance of giving me one of those I don't have. It's always made me feel bad when someone goes to the trouble and expense to buy (or worse, make) something I can't wear, eat, drink or use. Friends have succeeded in giving me wanted gifts but not often.

That day at my tenth birthday party, I did my best to smile and thank the givers but I was as bad an actor then as I am now and I'm pretty lousy now. Then the Badminton game was chaotic with the net falling down and no one knowing how to keep score or even play…and again, I lost. The whole afternoon just felt so wrong to me in every way.

When all my friends had finally left, my mother came up to me and asked if I had another wish for my birthday. I yelled, "Yes! I would like to never have another birthday party as long as I live!" Then I ran to my room, slammed the door and stayed in there for about five minutes, crying and sulking.

It took the full five minutes for my ten-year-old brain to realize that my parents — my mother, mainly — had gone to a lot of trouble to give me a wonderful day and it wasn't their fault that it hadn't turned out that way. I went out into the living room. My father had gone out somewhere but my mother was sitting in her chair, crying.

It was the worst moment of the day, maybe the worst moment of my admittedly-brief life until then. I had taken a bad situation and made it worse and I had hurt my mother.

"I'm sorry," I said to her. "I'm very, very sorry."

She said she was sorry I hadn't liked my day. I told her I was sorry that she was sorry and that I really liked what she tried to do. She looked at me hard and said, "I should have known. You don't like Halloween either!"

I nodded yes. To me, Halloween was and still is a day when you disfigure yourself, go around and extort candy you probably won't eat and — again — do things adults think are "cute." Never liked it. I've just never been big on holidays. I figure if you can live life so you're reasonably happy on non-holidays, you don't need the holidays. They become less important. A friend of mine later would tell me, "I lived all year for Christmas because it was the only time there was no screaming in our house." There was almost never screaming in the house where I grew up.

That afternoon, my mother and I continued to apologize to each other for about the next ten minutes. I was sorry I hadn't enjoyed my party. She was sorry she hadn't realized I wouldn't enjoy a party…and indeed, I didn't have another one for an entire half a century.

In those fifty years, I don't think I ever had another harsh word or moment of unpleasantness with my mother. She was smart and understanding and she just accepted that her kid was not like other kids. Actually, I'm not sure there are any kids who are like other kids but if there are, I'm not one of them. So after the debacle of my tenth birthday, we had an unspoken pact…

She never did anything just because it was something other parents did. And I, because I knew just how exceptional she was and how everything she did was at least intended to be for my own good, never faulted her for anything. There was really nothing to fault but I had a good imagination. I could have made up something if I'd wanted to. Years later, I stood by as my then-girlfriend — one who was not out of my life rapidly enough — screamed at her mother. What the mother had done was immaterial. It was wrong but not destructive and certainly not malicious. Still, my lady friend yelled, over and over, "Mom, you ruin everything!"

And I just stood there, cringing at the scene and thinking, "Gee…my mother never ruined anything!"

She certainly didn't ruin my 60th birthday party. Quite the opposite. She was the star attraction, getting way more attention than I did — which was fine because I intended it to be less about me and more about her getting to meet a whole lot of my friends she had not met and vice-versa. I knew she wouldn't be in any condition to do that by #61 so I had the party and I planted her at the first table by the door. It didn't matter if guests congratulated me on entering my seventh decade but they all had to talk with my mother. As it turned out, I had a good time because she had a great time.

Biggest thrill of that evening for her? Talking with so many of my friends and especially Stan Freberg. Stan was not only there but though I'd admonished all there were to be no gifts and no performing, he wrote and insisted on reciting a poem about me. And then since he'd broken the rules, someone else insisted they all sing guess-which-song.

She didn't get exhausted. She wound up staying for the entire evening and then Carolyn and I drove her home. After she passed, I realized it was the last time she'd left her house for non-medical reasons.

The morning after the party, she called me up to thank me for, as she put it, "wheeling me there." I made like I was annoyed she'd upstaged me at my own party and she laughed, then said, "Well, I'm more important than you are!"

She said, "People kept saying to me, 'Oh, I can see where Mark got his sense of humor.' I told them, 'No, I got my sense of humor from him.'" That's something we both believed. She explained to them, "Mark started picking up all these funny things from comic books and books he read and TV shows he watched. I had to start talking like him so we could communicate. It was like if your child suddenly began speaking Swedish, you'd have to learn Swedish." At one point, Freberg asked her where I got my sense of humor and she said, "I think he stole some of it from you."

Today, as you're probably well aware, is Mother's Day. My mother never wanted to do anything on Mother's Day. The restaurants were always too crowded, she said, and she preferred to get flowers and gifts from me when she didn't expect them and they didn't seem like an obligation. It was pretty much the same attitude I have about all holidays. If you always treat your mother like it's Mother's Day, there's really nothing out of the ordinary you can do for her on the second Sunday in May except wish her a happy Mother's Day. So I'd do that and then I'd take her out to dinner the next time she felt like leaving the house.

The last Mother's Day she was around, she didn't want to go out. She didn't want to go out the next day or the next day or any day for weeks after…and then she was in the hospital for a week. Finally in late June, I gave her an ultimatum: Redeem your Mother's Day "coupon" now or forfeit it. She said, "Okay, if you insist, you can bring over some El Pollo Loco this evening and we'll eat together here."

I said, "That's not a Mother's Day dinner. I brought you El Pollo Loco last week…and I think, the week before."

She said, "Yeah, but it wasn't Mother's Day then."

I said, "It's not Mother's Day today."

She said, "Hey, I'm your mother and if I say it's Mother's Day today, it's Mother's Day today. I want four drumsticks and a couple of thighs — enough to have some for tomorrow. I have a feeling it's going to be Mother's Day tomorrow, too."

How could you ever find a reason to get mad at someone like that?  How?

Seven years ago, the Los Angeles City Council made a law that restricted the opening of new fast food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area inhabited by half a million low-income people. The idea was that this would somehow lessen obesity. As I said here and here at the time, it sounded like a misguided idea to me.

So how's it working out? According to this, not so well.

Here's an odd bit of TV history — the pilot for a talk show starring Orson Welles. It was filmed in the late seventies…and it was filmed (not taped) apparently with one camera like a movie, with Welles directing in addition to starring. (A pseudonym is credited at the end.)

The guests are Burt Reynolds, Angie Dickinson and the Muppets, with special interviews of Jim Henson and Frank Oz. The show has an odd, staged feel to it and the person who posted it to YouTube says the audience questions were scripted and that the audience members were directed (presumably by Welles) on how to ask them. They probably did multiple takes of many of the things people said during the show and there seems to have been a lot of editing and sweetening. My guess is that one of the reasons the show didn't get picked up is that someone was afraid it couldn't be done once a week or on a reasonable budget. The slow, ponderous pacing probably scared them off, too.

I'd be curious to know where they intended to sell this. With commercials, it would have been a ninety-minute show, presumably for syndication. If you were a local station, where would you have put it? During the day? At night? Local stations usually put once-a-week shows on the weekend…but where on the weekend?

In some ways, it's a pretty good show. Burt Reynolds answers some probing questions. The interview with Henson and Oz is interesting. But the whole thing just has the feeling of being shot on another planet or something. Take a look…

There were plans to expand the San Diego Convention Center, the place where Comic-Con International is held. Then the plans were off.

Is there a chance they could be on again? Well, it's not impossible but according to this, it's not looking likely.

I said here a week or three ago that I couldn't see why Jay Leno wouldn't accept the invite to appear on one of David Letterman's last shows. My thinking roughly paralleled this article from some time ago by Luke Epplin. I have also heard from many that Dave regrets how nasty their little "feud" got and that the two of them have had many friendly phone calls lately. I figured Jay would like the world to see that Dave no longer holds any grudges for real or imagined offenses.

Then yesterday afternoon, I had a phone conversation with a friend who knows Jay pretty well and he suggested a few reasons why Jay won't go on one of Dave's last shows and he convinced me to not expect it. He said, "If it were three or four years ago, even if Jay were still on opposite Dave, you'd be right. He would have shut his program down for a night and jumped on a plane to New York as he did when Dave wanted him in that Super Bowl commercial. But Jay has now moved past all that."

My friend went on to suggest a few reasons Jay wouldn't want to do it now and I'm not sure how many of them were his thinking and how many of them were what Jay's thinking but they convinced me not to expect that reunion.

So Dave's last three shows will probably be sans Leno. Everyone's assuming that he'll have Tom Hanks and Bill Murray plus Regis Philbin either as an announced guest or a surprise cameo. Sounds to me like there's room for one or two more big guests in there and I have no idea who they might be.

I know what I'd like to see but Dave will never in a thousand years okay this. I'd like to see him bring on a good interviewer like Bob Costas with the express mission of interviewing the host about how he feels about the show ending, what he's proudest of about it, what he can imagine for himself in the future, etc. But Dave won't give up that control of his own farewell.

A couple of folks have written me to ask, "Why are you asking about what Dave will do next? People do retire. Couldn't he just be retiring?" I don't think so. You can retire from selling plumbing fixtures and you don't get frequent offers to come back and sell one more toilet float or one more flush valve. Entertainers don't usually retire voluntarily, especially beloved entertainers. They just scale back and make occasional reappearances.

Yeah, Johnny Carson went away forever but he didn't really intend to. On his last telecast, he said he expected to come back with something. As it turned out, he never found that something. Everything presented to him either looked like an embarrassing comedown from his former heights or something that could flop and leave him looking like a failure as opposed to that guy who went out on top as a capital-L Legend.

I've been trying to figure out why I don't feel Dave will do what Johnny did. Johnny was 67 when he did his last Tonight Show and Dave is 68 so you could certainly make the argument that he's not too young to do what his idol did. I guess the reason it feels different to me is that Johnny always seemed like a part of the show business era that preceded him — Benny, Berle, Hope, Skelton, etc. He had seen plenty of those performers outlive the demand for their talents and appear, in some cases, somewhat pathetic as a result.

I don't think Letterman identifies with comedians who are older than him. Admires, yes; identifies, no. Just the way he talks, I think he feels like part of the generation that includes Jerry Seinfeld (age 61) and Steve Martin (69) and Martin Short (65) and Bill Murray (64) and yes, Jay Leno (65).  These are all guys who are still working, none of whom has trouble finding an audience or worthwhile projects.

If Dave gives up performing now, he takes himself out of their category and makes himself older than he has to be. A lot of folks around Carson — and if I've heard this, I'm sure Dave has — felt that once Johnny had no audiences in his future, he started gaining weight and getting out of shape and aged a lot. Dave has an eleven year old son. That's a pretty good reason to not want to descend into Old Man mode and to instead stay active and healthy. Also, Johnny grew up at a time when being almost seventy was a lot older than it is today.

Maybe this is wishful thinking on my part and I should stop trying to predict. One thing I do know about Dave Letterman with reasonable certainty is what I once heard one of his writers say about him. He said, "Dave's going to do what Dave's going to do." I just hope what he does is not what Johnny did.