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This week marks sixty years since the debut of what was probably my first favorite cartoon show of all time. I was six and I just loved this show then. I'm still fond of it. Here's what I wrote here ten years ago about it…

Last year was the 50th anniversary of the founding of Hanna-Barbera Studios — a fact which insofar as I can tell went absolutely unnoticed. I mentioned it on a panel at the Comic-Con International last July and a lot of people looked amazed that there had been no articles, no specials, no commemoration of the birth of a company that employed so many people, produced so many shows, meant so much to so many childhoods. This may be the first time it has been noted on the Internet…and even I'm a year late.

But I'm not too late to mention this: Today is the 50th anniversary of the debut of The Huckleberry Hound Show, the second H-B series. (The first was, of course, Ruff 'n' Reddy.) At least, the official date was October 2, 1958, which was a Thursday. The show was syndicated and aired on different days in some cities…but 10/2 was apparently the first day it was broadcast anywhere. It was the day the world "met" Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, Mr. Jinks, Pixie and Dixie.

The Huckleberry Hound Show was the first animated series to win an Emmy Award. Of greater significance is that it was what put Hanna-Barbera on the map and established the beachhead for animation on television. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera are often credited with inventing the whole notion of TV cartoons, thereby saving the animation business when the theatrical market fell apart. A more accurate assessment might be that they showed everyone how it could be done, both in terms of production technique and marketing. The endeavor that really demonstrated this was Huckleberry Hound.

And of course, the most important aspect of it all is that this was my favorite show when I was six, which I was in 1958. The local kids' shows in L.A. ran hoary theatrical cartoons, most of which were fine and most of which I had memorized by age five, World War II references and all. Huckleberry Hound was all new and all modern and even though the animation itself wasn't as wonderful as it was in the Bugs Bunny cartoons, that failing didn't matter to a six-year-old kid watching on a black-and-white Zenith with a small screen and fuzzy reception. In many regards, the simpler H-B graphics "read" better on the small screen.

They got away with the spartan animation because the stories were clever and also because Bill and Joe had an awesome secret weapon: The voice talents of a genius named Daws Butler. Daws was Huck, Yogi, Mr. Jinks, Dixie and many of the supporting players. Add in the considerable skills of co-vocalist Don Messick and you had more personality and humor than could be found in a lot of fully-animated productions. Later H-B shows would point up the shortcomings of their limited approach, and of course a lot of later H-B shows were simply not done very well. But I don't think it's just nostalgia for a childhood fave that causes me to still enjoy those cartoons. They really were pretty funny.

A couple of generations grew up on Hanna-Barbera shows, loving whatever was current when they were six the way I loved Huckleberry Hound. I know a lot of people care passionately about this work. What I can't understand is why the big five-oh was a stealth anniversary, unmentioned by darn near anyone.

Here's the opening of the first Huckleberry Hound show, pretty much as it looked on my little TV fifty years ago today. In fact, the screen is just about the same size…

In this article, Chris Crowley says it's time for politicians on the campaign trail to stop eating "the local food" to win over voters. I've long thought that and I wrote that here ten years ago…

One of the sillier rituals of political campaigning — they all do it, they should all stop doing it — is when the candidate goes around and shows "he (or she, in this case) is 'one of us'" by nibbling on the local cuisine. It's Al Gore eating a taco on the assumption that's the key to the Mexican vote. It's Mitt Romney proving he understands the needs of Italian voters by wolfing down a slice of pizza. For a while, candidates thought the way to the Jewish vote was to go to New York and be photographed in a deli with Ed Koch.

This is the lowest form of pandering. There might be something significant to the candidate physically going to certain neighborhoods if there was any reason to believe he or she would go to them (or ever return) except as a campaign photo-op. But it always struck me that whether they knew it or not, this wasn't a politician trying to get the ethnic vote so much as the stupid ethnic vote. You'd have to be pretty dumb to believe a candidate shared your views, felt your pain and bonded with your people just because he or she spent an hour in your part of town eating something greasy and fattening.

The essential stop on any such swing is Philadelphia and one of the many fine establishments that offer Philly Cheese Steaks. A fuss is always made when a candidate does this…and like I said, they all do this and they should stop doing this. Not that there's anything wrong with Philly Cheese Steaks. I like 'em, too. But it matters way too much, when it shouldn't matter one bit, which stand they go to (Pat's or Geno's) and whether the candidate has his "wiz wit." Never mind what they'd do about the economy or whichever war we may be in…does the person who wants my vote know to order theirs with Cheese Whiz and onions — and do they know the language of ordering?

This ceremony reached some peak of inanity the year Bob Dole was running for Prez. Senator Dole was hustled to one of the steak shrines and handed a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich dripping with sauteed onions and Cheese Whiz to bite into for the cameras. What's wrong with that? Well, Dole only has one working arm. It is humanly impossible to eat a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich with one hand.

There was a look of panic on his face as the sandwich was thrust at him. I suspect Bob Dole could have faced down nuclear superpowers without flinching but he was genuinely terrified that the press was about to photograph him getting onions and gooey cheese all over his face and clothes.

Fortunately, his aides were ready. One rushed in with a sandwich that had been cut into bite-sized chunks and which had been cooked long enough before that the cheese had hardened somewhat. This just pointed up the absurdity. Grown men had actually planned for this. They'd sat around a conference room somewhere and said, "We need to have our guy photographed eating a Philly Steak Sandwich but he can't eat a Philly Steak Sandwich…what'll we do?" And they worked out that they'd get the photos of him with the entire sandwich, then switch it for one he could take a bite or two of. Reportedly, that's all he ate — a bite or two.

Bill Clinton carried Pennsylvania by 9%. I'm glad he won but I sure hope it wasn't just because he was able to eat his sandwich with two hands.

Anyway, I mention all this because yesterday, Sarah Palin made her stop on the Cheese Steak Tour. She did not go to either of the two biggies, Pat's King of Steaks or Geno's. She went to Tony Luke's. While there, she actually answered a question. Someone asked her about what we might do in Pakistan and she took much the same position that her running mate called reckless when it was voiced by Barack Obama. That's a bit of news…but I fear it mattered more to some people that she had her cheese steak "wit" Cheese Whiz and onions.

Each year on this day, I write something about Jack Kirby, who was one of the most important people in my life. He was one of the most important people in a lot of lives.

I looked back on some of those essays to figure out what I might say this year that I hadn't said before and I realized that for a decade or more now, I've been writing pretty much the same thing about Jack each year on his birthday. Here's the piece I posted here ten years ago today. Everything is the same except (a) I miss him ten years more, (b) he's even more famous and beloved now and (c) He would have been 101 years old today. Oh, and this hasn't changed: He would still have been coming up with fresher and newer ideas than comic book creators a fourth of his age.

Here's a photo I took of Jack Kirby at some early San Diego Con (I think) back in the days before it was even called Comic-Con International. I seem to have a lot of photos of Jack in one of his two natural habitats, the other being "seated at his drawing table." This one is "surrounded by admirers," which he always was at any gathering of folks who knew anything about comic books.

At cons today, I meet a lot of people who feel a genuine sense of loss that they never got to meet Jack…never got to shake the hand that drew some of their favorite comics, never got to tell him that they were their favorite comics. When fans first started telling me this a few years ago, I was a little startled. It was like, "How could you not meet Jack Kirby?" He was always so accessible, so approachable. For a couple of decades, all you had to do was show up at a San Diego Con (or one of many others he attended) and be willing to wait in line for twenty minutes. Or if you had his phone number — and everyone did — you could call up, talk to him and maybe even get an invite to drop by the house for coffee.

And then I remind myself: Jack died in '94. Since then, an awful lot of humans have discovered his work, which remains increasingly in print. There's something about it that grabs readers in a way that few comics can. He drew stories that radiate, as Jack himself did, a certain energy and excitement. Larry Lieber, who wrote scripts for Jack at one point, has said, "If Jack drew a rock, it was fascinating. It was like the rocks had personality." And as someone else (I think it was me) pointed out after Larry said that, at one point, Jack drew a whole pile of personality-filled rocks which they called The Thing and it was one of his most personal, enduring characters.

Jack would have been 91 years old today. Of all the personal, enduring characters he was involved with, the most personal and enduring is turning out to be Jack.

This is the demo tape of the late, great voiceover god, Paul Frees. All voiceover actors have at least one demo and some have several — one for animation, one for narration, one for trailers, etc. Mr. Frees had a "one size fits all" demo. Actually, he had a couple different ones but they all had a wide variety of what he did, and of the three or four I have, this one's the best.

It's five minutes. Note to anyone who's considering a career in voiceover work: You would be a fool to make your demo five minutes. No one who can ever possibly give you work is going to listen to it and many of them will think less of you because you don't know that. You are not Paul Frees.

Actually, given his rep, his demo probably wasn't used primarily to get him work. It was probably more like a catalogue so that people who were already thinking of hiring him could get a fix on which Paul Frees voice they wanted. Even then, if Mr. Frees were around now and looking for work, this demo would be two minutes. The business has changed since his day and now agents and casting directors figure that if they don't hear something wonderful in about the first minute, there's no point in listening any longer. That's probably valid.

I once asked a top voice agent, "If this demo came to you from an unknown, how far into it would you get before you decided you wanted to take this person on as a client?" He said, "Halfway through the first voice on it." That's even discounting the most impressive thing about it, which is that about 80% of these are from real jobs Frees had, some of which were quite successful and loved. So was he, and I think you can hear why…

This originally ran here on 3/23/11 but I have edited in an excerpt from a post from 8/12/07. The last line is inoperative because not long after it ran, I got my mitts on a DVD of a VHS of a performance of the show. While it was of course diminished by being on video — and a mediocre-quality video of it at that — it was still jaw-droppingly brilliant. And don't ask for a copy because I promised not to make any.

One performer of many who always interested me is/was the late Dick Shawn. Shawn was in two of my favorite movies — It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Producers — and almost starred in the original Broadway production of one of my favorite musicals, Li'l Abner. He was actually cast in the role of Abner, not because the show's creators thought he was ideal for the part but because they were set to start rehearsals and they couldn't find anyone who was. Then they found Peter Palmer. A not-dissimilar attitude seems to have accompanied his hiring for Mad World. Because of its size, the role of Sylvester Marcus should have been played by a major, established comedian…which Shawn was not at the time. He was nowhere near big enough to share a screen and billing with Sid Caesar, Milton Berle and Phil Silvers. Fortunately for Shawn, neither was anyone else who was the right age, a bit muscular and convincing when playing a maniac. So he got the job and in this case, they didn't find anyone preferable.

Even his participation in The Producers is a bit odd. He played a hippie named L.S.D. who was essential to the plot of the film but easily and effectively jettisoned later for the musical version. "The character never quite fit in," writer-director Mel Brooks said when asked about the deletion…and I get the feeling that Dick Shawn, in shaping that character, contributed mightily to that disconnect. Mel was right: L.S.D. doesn't really blend seamlessly with the rest of his wonderful movie. It almost feels like he was filmed for some other picture and then edited into this one. That may in part be because there isn't one shot where you see Shawn in the same frame with the stars, Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. I once asked Brooks if he was even on the set at the same time as the two leads and he said "Sure" and seemed surprised when I mentioned that you never see them together. You don't. I don't think I've ever even seen a still of Shawn with either of them.

Since Shawn died spontaneously in 1987, he's probably been best-remembered for how he died. It happened on stage during a performance of a one-man show he wrote for himself called The Second Greatest Entertainer in the Whole Wide World. As I'll explain in a moment, the vehicle was just the kind of thing that might have ended with the star faking his death on-stage and indeed, many audience members that night left wondering if they actually had seen Dick Shawn drop dead or if it was all an elaborate, unfunny joke. Andy Kaufman was probably very jealous.

All of that upstages something that is too often unsaid about that show. At least when I saw it (twice) and its star didn't croak, it was truly one of the most brilliant, memorable evenings you could ever spend in a theater. It was the kind of show you cheered and gave a couple of rousing standing ovations, then went outside and gasped for air, aware you'd witnessed something you'd never forget.

My first was in 1978, I believe, at what was then called the Solari Theater. A well-respected acting teacher named Rudy Solari had taken over a theater in Beverly Hills and renamed it, he said, in memory of his father. I recall he took a fair amount of criticism for that…people feeling he'd named it to honor himself and was using the old man as a shield. He didn't deserve any such grief because he ran a fine operation which took in a lot of wonderful, often-experimental shows and gave them a place to live — and not in some converted welding shop in a bad neighborhood but in a wonderful, comfortable room in a classy area.

When we arrived that night, the house was closed and the audience was all crammed into the lobby, waiting awkwardly to be let into the theater. We finally were, just minutes before showtime and we would soon learn the reason for the delay, which I guess occurred at every performance.

There was no curtain. The stage was a replica of a seedy apartment — a flophouse wherein a derelict with a few bucks might dwell — and the floor was covered with hundreds of pieces of crumpled newspaper. We did not know that Dick Shawn was under all that newspaper and the delay in seating us was to minimize the amount of time he would have to be there.

The show began with a recording of a female chorus singing a little song called "Hail to the Audience." They then played it again. And again. And I think again. At some point, Shawn emerged from under the debris. He'd been on stage all that time and would not leave it until the conclusion of the show.

He then began a stream of consciousness monologue/rant about his life. He was playing a drunk, has-been/never-was entertainer whose life was in ruins because his genius had never been recognized. Everything he did was either over the heads of the audience or under their crotches — too high or too low, never just right. Had that ever been said about Dick Shawn? I'll bet it had. The topics covered ran the field…some about show business; others about life and relationships and how so little in the world made sense to him. It was, probably deliberately, hard to tell if it was Dick Shawn or the character talking…or if either one of them utterly craved or totally rejected our sympathy.

I don't know if this show was ever properly videotaped or otherwise recorded. I hope it was, not only because I'd love to see it again but because there's no way anyone could adequately explain it to anyone who didn't see it. I'm not even sure you could explain it to someone who did see it and I'm not the only one who felt that way. Charles Champlin, the roving critic of the L.A. Times wrote…

What Shawn did was not easy to describe. It was a seemingly free-associative skein of bits, thoughts and actions. It was a comedy about comedy, a performance about performance and the performer's peculiar relationship with his audiences. And it was, finally, a kind of acted-out speculation on the reality of the absurd and the absurdity of much of what we think of as reality.

See? He couldn't tell you, either.

Act One ended with Shawn (or maybe his alter-ego) collapsing on the floor…and during intermission, that's where he remained. He was just lying there while the crew cleared the stage around him of all that crumpled newspaper. I think the premise was that the character was stricken with a heart attack or something of the sort, and that Act Two was all a fantasy that raced through his mind in its final minutes. What I know for sure is that in the second half, we saw the character's fully-realized nightclub-type act and I also know that the transition to it was one of the most stunning, I-can't-believe-he-just-did-that moments I ever witnessed in a theater.

Okay now, picture this. The stage still looked like a crappy apartment. Dick Shawn was lying on the floor in shabby clothes. The whole visual screamed failure, failure, failure. Then suddenly there was recorded music (all the music in the show, and there was a lot of it, was on tape) and there was a timpani drum roll as the Big Star was introduced…

…and then the stage went black…

…and then, after what seemed like only three or so seconds, the lights came back in full-force and everything was different. Dick Shawn was on his feet wearing a glittery tux, singing into a microphone and looking for all the world like a stellar Vegas headliner. The filthy apartment was gone and all around were curtains and sequins and sparkles, and behind him was a full orchestra — of mannequins, similarly attired.

All of us in the audience had a brief moment of whiplash. It even surprised me the second time I saw it when I knew what was coming. A friend of mine described it as the best example he'd ever seen of live theater achieving an impact you could never in a million years replicate on movies or television. In film, professorial folks sometimes speak of something called a "smash cut," in which you leap from one locale or action to another in a manner that is so jarring that you are conscious of the editing, utterly aware they just went from something shot in one place at one time to something shot somewhere else at another time. Dick Shawn did a "smash cut" live before our eyes.

He then performed the entertainer's act — Mr. Fabulously Fantastic Jr., singing and dancing and juggling oranges and expanding on topics covered in the first act. It probably lasted thirty to forty minutes and you simply could not take your eyes off that incredible person up there with so much energy and so much unpredictability. There was never a moment when you knew what he was going to do next. He must have in some way because of the intricate light and music cues but he never let you think you knew where he was heading. I gather the stage crew was aware he would hit certain marks and give certain cues but only he knew, and I'll bet it changed from night to night, how he was going to get to them and in what order.

At the end of Mr. Fantastic Jr.'s performance, there was some sort of audio explosion and he collapsed again. You blinked and he was somehow back in the bad apartment with crumpled newspaper raining down on him from above. There were also bananas on wires dangling over the audience. (Bananas were a recurring theme throughout the show as some sort of link between apes and comedians.) I do not recall how he closed after that but I remember endless standing ovations, and Shawn coming fully out of character to give a long post-show speech, mainly introducing friends of his in the audience.

The second time I went, my friend Bridget and I were seated next to Merv Griffin and Eva Gabor. During the first act, Eva sat next to me and obviously didn't understand one word of Shawn's odd stream of onstage consciousness. After intermission, they switched seats and I sat next to a man who laughed harder than I've ever seen a human being laugh. During the few moments when he wasn't convulsed, he was whispering to me and everyone around him, "Isn't this marvelous?" He sounded just like Rick Moranis doing Merv Griffin, except more unctuous.

After the play, Shawn did an extended chat with the audience that included introducing many celebrities in the audience. He pointed out Merv, who stood to great applause. Shawn asked him who he'd brought as his date and Merv got a huge laugh by gesturing absent-mindedly to me. I stood up, started to embrace him…and then acted hurt when he corrected himself and introduced Eva. On the way out, people were telling Bridget, "He's better off with you" and I kept saying, "Yeah, but do you know how much money Merv has?"

That second time was in 1985 in the same building, which was now the Canon Theater — named not after anyone's father but after the street on which it was located. Shawn's first stay had been a short-run tryout. A full seven years later, he brought it back for what turned out to be a long, smash run. I'll bet a lot of those who rushed to buy tickets were, like me, folks who'd seen it the first time and were eager to see it again and to treat a friend to the same experience. Bridget raved about it for years after and thanked me not only for taking her but for not telling her anything in advance about what we were going to see.

It was two years later that Shawn passed away during a performance of Second Greatest Entertainer in San Diego. I have read or heard several different accounts but they all say that he collapsed on stage, apparently at the end of Act One where the script called for him to collapse…and then he just plain never got up.

After the intermission, he continued to lie there and the audience, which had returned to its seats, eventually began to giggle. After a longer while, the stage crew began to realize the pause was running much, much longer than it ever had. Defying Shawn's instructions to never interfere no matter what occurred on stage, someone went out to check on the star (some reports say it was his son) and the audience thought it was part of the script. When he asked for a doctor, they thought that was part of the show, too. And when an ambulance was called and the audience was asked to leave, some of the playgoers still thought that was all part of the show, as well. Forty-five minutes later in a nearby hospital, Dick Shawn was pronounced dead from a heart attack at the age of 63. Maybe then they all believed it was true.

Boy, I wish you could have seen this show…and never mind you. I wish I could see it again. More than a quarter-century later, I still think about it.

…and by that, I mean the stars recorded the messages, not that these messages appeared on stars' machines.

You may remember answering machine messages. Nowadays, it's unfashionable and downright geeky to have your voice mail say anything more than "Hi, I'm not in right now. Leave a message." It's insulting to the caller if you even say "wait for the beep" because everyone with a third of a brain in their heads knows you're supposed to wait for the beep.

But back when we all first got answering machines, we were all producing these elaborate, amusing outgoing messages to put on them. Cecil B. DeMille did not work as hard on some of his movies as acquaintances of mine did on their outgoing announcements…and frankly, some of what Mr. DeMille produced was not as entertaining. I wrote an intricate poem for my first machine, and I knew people who recorded songs or incorporated sound effects. Occasionally, professional recording studios were even involved. It was almost a sign of achievement to be able to say, "My friends just call to hear the message. They're disappointed if I'm home and I answer."

My current message is as bland and quick as can be…but back in the eighties, I had a series of messages recorded by the great voices of the cartoon business. Since I consider these some of their greatest performances, I'm going to share them with the world. Here's the first one…

Let's repeat a post that I put here on February 27, 2004. A conversation that I had at WonderCon with an artist who hasn't gotten a lot of work lately made me think this was still timely…

Every day or so, someone sends me a link to a website on which they display cartooning or other creative work they've done. They are not, they say, getting any or enough work. Could I please look at their samples and tell them if they're wasting their time pursuing a career as a writer or artist? And of course, could I suggest anywhere they might sell some of their work?

To the latter, the answer is almost always no. I just don't know of very many places these days that are looking for writers or artists. Everyone I know who hires or buys at all has more submissions than they can handle. And of course, the fact that I might like the work doesn't mean anyone else will. So I usually wind up writing a reply that reads…well, like this one I just wrote to someone who sent me a link to a website that displays their cartooning that no one is buying…

There are two aspects to what you're asking me. One is whether the work is any good. I liked what I saw on your site very much but I'm afraid that doesn't mean a lot in terms of you selling it.

I know a lot of very talented artists who aren't getting much work, including many who once did. It's a sad fact of life that in a field like this, there are only so many openings. If a given company needs 10 good artists and 25 good artists apply, 15 good artists get turned away. Those 15 aren't necessarily doing anything wrong except to try and sell their wares in an oversaturated market.

I believe it's important in this world for everyone, even an artist, to have some measure of financial stability. Perhaps to attain it, you might have to modify your short-term goal. It may seem like giving up or being untrue to your muse to look to non-artistic sources of income, and you may even be able to tread water for a while longer. But the work of a creative individual flows in many ways from his or her life, and if that life involves constantly worrying about the Visa bill, that will eventually destroy something. To artists or writers living on the edge, I sometimes suggest finding something steady to pay the rent, getting a little cash in the bank and then perhaps returning to writing or drawing as time permits. Monetary desperation is just plain bad for the soul, especially when one gets beyond the "young beginner" stage of one's life.

I never tell anyone to give it up but I also never assure them that it's merely a matter of time before the world discovers the wonderment of what they create. The world isn't that perceptive and sometimes it isn't even a matter of talent but of the right talent in the right place at the right time. Persistence up to a point is an admirable quality but at some point, it can become a matter of investing too much of your future in a risky proposition.

Monday evenings in 1932 and 1933, an NBC radio program called Five Star Theater presented episodes of a comedy series called Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel starring Groucho and Chico Marx.  Only a small amount of audio from these broadcasts still exists but in  1988, someone found copies of almost all of the scripts in The Library of Congress.

A number of different groups recorded those scripts with Groucho and Chico impersonators but the most ambitious effort was done in the early nineties for BBC Radio.  They took some liberties with the material, sometimes combining two or more of the original scripts to make one episode, sometimes interpolating songs. In one, their Groucho sings "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" which the real one sang in the 1939 movie At the Circus. The tune probably hadn't even been written when Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel was originally airing.

Still, the shows are entertaining and every so often, the BBC puts them up on their website for our listening pleasure. "Every so often" includes now. For the next 26 days, you can listen to the first episode at this link and others will be available there in the future. Don't thank me. Thank Chris Collins, who always lets me know when they're back up so I can alert you.  As I just have.

This was posted here on this day in 2003. If the teacher in this story did that today, we would all have been plunged into a discussion about the propriety of teaching Gay Marriage…

Among the many joys of today is that I am no longer subjected to a humiliating ritual of elementary school.  It was that on this holiday, we all had to buy valentines for everyone in our class, even of the same sex.

I guess it was someone's solution to the problem of avoiding the "Charlie Brown" problem of a kid not getting any, or not getting as many as someone else…or something.  But a week before 2/14, the teacher would pass out a list of all the students to everyone, and we all had to go out and buy those boxes of cheapo valentines (usually depicting cartoon characters) and address one to each of our classmates, including the ones whose guts we hated.  One year I remember, we had 36 students in my class, plus I needed one for the teacher and two for the teaching assistants.  I didn't need one for me, so that meant 38.

Unfortunately, the stores I went to that year didn't sell boxes of 38 or even 40.  They all seemed to be multiples of 25 or 30, which meant buying two boxes.  The extras were handy, though.  Not wishing to send another guy a card with the slightest romantic suggestion, I had to reject a lot of them.  If it said, "Will you be my valentine?", I could send it to a girl but not to another boy.  It was just too embarrassing.  If I'd given Louis Farrell the card that said, "Be My Valentine, Cutie," I'd still be hearing gay jokes.

Most of the other guys managed to find (or make) cards that just said "Happy Valentine's Day" to give to others of like gender — but somehow, even the year I bought an extra box, I didn't have enough non-sexual ones for the males in my class.  I had to sit there and decide which guy was going to get the one that said, "Let's Be Valentine Buddies."  It went to the one I figured was least likely to use it against me.  The card makers seem to have gotten hip to this dilemma and most of those I now see in stores are about as non-romantic as they can get and still pass the things off as Valentine's Day cards.

The teacher usually assigned a student to tally everyone's valentines and make sure no one got shorted.  If you were short — say, you didn't fill out one for dumb ol' Sidney Passey — you had to quickly hand-make one.  One year, a student enrolled in our class on 2/13 and everyone had to whip up a card for this kid who was darn near a total stranger to us.  I wrote on mine, "Happy Valentine's Day, Whoever You Are."

I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore.  Now, I look back and marvel at how the school system managed to take a neat idea like Valentine's Day, drain it of all its meaning and turn it into an ordeal.  But then, they did that with just about everything.

Ten years ago tonight, I did what I said in this rerun. I am pleased to say that Larry Storch, who celebrated his 95th birthday last month is still with us…and sad to say that that's not the case with several folks mentioned in the article. It's important to celebrate these guys while we've still got them around to celebrate. A few years after this birthday party, I got to see Mr. Storch perform a stand-up routine up at the Comedy Store. He was 91 and still funny. I'm not particularly hoping I'll be able to do what I do when I'm 91. I'm just hoping I'll be. So here's a blast from the past, a post that ran here on 2/8/08, ten years ago…

Earlier this evening, I attended a terrific surprise birthday party for the great comic actor, Larry Storch. That's Larry at right in the above photo, posing with his F Troop co-star, Ken Berry, who was among the friends of Larry's in attendance. There were a lot of great comic actors present, including Chuck McCann, Jackie Joseph, Marty Ingels, Hank Garrett, Warren Berlinger and Ron Masak. There were also top cartoon voice actors like Wally Wingert (who threw the shindig) and Katie Leigh, plus I got a hug from Stella Stevens. That alone was worth the drive out to the valley.

Among many others who were present was Lou Scheimer, who used to co-own and run Filmation Studios. Lou often hired Larry as a voice actor (The Groovie Ghoolies, for instance) and for on-camera live-action (The Ghostbusters). And I got to meet one of my favorite composers, Neal Hefti, who expressed disbelief that I knew the obscure lyrics to the title song from a movie he scored, How to Murder Your Wife. He quickly learned otherwise, and the look on his face was almost as good as a hug from Stella Stevens.

Larry Storch has, of course, been doing wonderful work for most of his 85 years on this planet. I probably first knew him as a recurring character on Car 54, Where Are You?, one of my favorite shows. (Hank Garrett was a regular on that series. He may be the last person alive who was.) I always thought Larry was screamingly funny as Corporal Agarn on F Troop, which is one of those rare shows that looks better with each passing year. He was also on a short-lived, unjustly-forgotten series called The Queen and I, which I would love to see again.

Not much else to report except to again wish Larry a happy birthday last month. One reason he was so surprised by the surprise party is that his birthday was in January. But no one cared. It was just nice to see him and to get all those people together in one room.

In a post here in January of 2009, I wrote that I'd been part of an audience on which the pilot for the series I Dream of Jeannie was tested before NBC decided to put it on the air every week. That led to this follow-up…

A couple of folks wrote to ask what else I remembered about going to the audience testing for I Dream of Jeannie and Camp Runamuck. As I recall, it was early in 1965, several weeks before either was announced as a series, so our reaction may have been a factor in them landing on the NBC fall schedule. I'm pretty sure both pilots that were shown to us that afternoon were longer than what aired the following September and different in a number of ways.

The venue for the testing was a place called Preview House up on Sunset Boulevard, a few blocks east of Fairfax. I went with a friend of mine named Steve Hopkins and we had to wait in line for quite a bit. Through some confusion, we were actually a bit too old to be there — the testing was of kids 12 and under, and we were thirteen, but they let us in. We were shown to seats equipped with little handheld dials on cords. You could turn the dial all the way to the left to indicate you didn't like what you were seeing or rotate it to the right to show approval. Steve and I took our assignments seriously but a lot of boys and girls around us seemed to be just randomly spinning the thing because it was fun. As I recall, the place held around 200 of us.

A gentleman came out and talked a while, making it sound like the entire future of commercial broadcast television was in our hot little hands. Then he taught us how to use our dials and showed us a Mr. Magoo cartoon. I'm not sure if the man said this or if I read it somewhere later but the idea was that the Magoo film was the "control." It was shown at every Preview House screening and our responses to it would be measured against the responses of other test audiences to see how we weighed in against them. When we were asked if we had any questions, Steve wanted to know if our responses were individually recorded. Did they register that the person in Seat A-7 liked this or that? Or did they just record the responses of the audience as a whole? The host said he couldn't get into technical things like that and so we never found out. I might have felt a lot less self-conscious if I'd known.

Questionnaires were then passed out. We'd been promised that there'd be a drawing later for prizes and we were now asked to decide which items we'd select if we were the lucky ones. For instance, someone was going to win a case of cookies. In the booklet were photos of about ten popular brands of cookies and you had to check off which kind you'd like if you won. You then had to pick which candy bar you'd want if you won the case of candy bars and which kind of cereal you'd want if you won the case of cereal and so on. It seemed rather odd to me to have everyone fill out their choices this way. Why couldn't they do the drawing and then ask just the winner which brand of soft drink he or she wanted? Hmm…

After we all filled out the forms and passed them in, we were shown the Camp Runamuck pilot, which we kinda liked. It took place at a summer camp where the counselors were more childish than the youthful campers, and there was a lot of physical comedy and food fighting. I remember thinking that it was copied from the Disney movie, The Parent Trap, even to the point of having the same actor (Frank DeVol) play the camp supervisor. As I later learned, self-plagiarism was at work. The Parent Trap was written and directed by a man named David Swift…and David Swift was also the creator of Camp Runamuck. (Frank DeVol, by the way, was replaced when the series debuted the following fall. I hope my clumsy dialing wasn't the reason.)

We filled out some forms about how we liked what we'd seen, then it came time for the second pilot, which was preceded by several commercials — one for cookies, one for candy bars, one for cereal and so on. Then came the I Dream of Jeannie pilot, which we liked a lot. I darn near broke the dial, whirling it clockwise every time Barbara Eden was on the screen. Forms were passed out for our comments on Jeannie, and if there'd been a place I could have written something in, I'd have been the first person to ever demand they show Barbara Eden's navel.

As these packets were collected, someone called our host away and informed him of some dire news which he then passed on to us. Apparently, there was a problem with those questionnaires we'd filled out earlier — the ones where we picked the kind of cookie we'd want if we won the case of cookies, the kind of candy bar we'd want if we won the case of candy bars, etc. "We accidentally gave some of you the wrong questionnaire so just to be fair, we're going to ask you all to fill them out again!" New forms were passed about, though they looked like the exact same forms to Steve and me. We both noted that in each category, one possible selection was a product which had been in one of those commercials we'd seen and…

Hey, you don't suppose it was all a test to see if those commercials had caused us to change our minds, do you? Naah, they couldn't have been that sneaky.

That was about it. We were told that if we won the prizes, we'd be notified…and of course, we weren't. Given how sneaky these people were about getting us to fill out the prize form a second time, I'm skeptical that anyone got a case of anything. The host thanked us for coming and out we went. I suppose we should have felt somewhat exploited but it was kind of cool. The next week at school, we could tell our classmates that NBC had tested its new shows on us…and of course, we made it sound like the Head of Programming had called us into his offices and said, "Mark…Steve…I value your judgment so much that I'm going to let you program Friday night at 7:30!" Soon after, when Camp Runamuck and I Dream of Jeannie were announced, we could flaunt that we'd seen them, whereas the commoners had to wait 'til September. (Runamuck was a quick flop but managed to last all of one season. Jeannie was a hit for five years.)

Whatever "specialness" we'd felt at being a part of a select testing audience pretty much evaporated over the next year or so. Preview House got very active, I guess, because everywhere you went in L.A., there were teenagers handing out passes to go there and watch pilots and win valuable prizes. I declined at least one a week.

A friend of mine went once and reported back that he'd seen the pilot for a Batman TV show starring someone named Adam West. He'd also seen the same Mr. Magoo cartoon plus some pilot that never made it to series, and they'd done the same stunt about redoing the questionnaires that told them which prizes you wanted if you won the drawing, which I still don't think anyone ever did. I don't know how much the networks paid them to run this operation but I'll bet it was enough that they could have afforded to send someone a case of cereal once in a while. If anyone who was ever involved with Preview House reads this, I still want Cheerios.

It was in August of 2007 that I shared my Buffalo Bob story with all of you here…

Okay, here's my Buffalo Bob Smith story. It took place at the Licensing Show in New York in the early nineties, and I guess it helps make the point if I explain what happens at those events. The Licensing Show is a place where companies exhibit, either because they own great properties (famous characters, copyrighted designs, etc.) that someone might want to put on a t-shirt or lunch box, or because they license the rights to put great properties on those t-shirts or lunch boxes, or because they broker deals to make that happen…

Well, anyway, just understand that this is a convention about the marketing and licensing of identifiable properties and that most of those present are involved in some way with licensing. There are exhibits all over and many of the booths are filled with celebrities and freebees, the better to attract wanderers to the displays.

This particular year, Buffalo Bob Smith — star of the legendary Howdy Doody kids' show — was there to promote a new wave of Howdy Doody licensing from King Features Syndicate. He was appearing in the King Features booth and when I heard this, I decided to amble over and see if I could meet him. That was until I saw the line. It looked like about a three hour wait to meet Buffalo Bob, get one of the autographed photos he was signing and shake his hand. The line, filled wholly with folks in the proper age bracket to have watched Howdy Doody when they were eight, snaked through the entire hall, down past booths where you could get your photo with W.W.F. wrestlers or Playboy models or some suffocating person in a giant Snoopy costume.

The length of the queue caused me to pass. I mean, with a line like that, how much time could you possibly get to talk to the guy? Twenty seconds? So I took a look at him — older but still handsome in his Buffalo Bob jacket with the leather fringe — and I continued walking.

Later on as I walked past, the line was still just as long, if not longer, but I heard someone call my name. It was a friend who worked for King Features. She welcomed me into their exhibit space and we chatted for a while. Then she said, "Would you like to meet Buffalo Bob?" I said sure but there was that long line…

"You don't need to stand in line," she said and she led me over to Buffalo Bob. We came up behind him and she interrupted his signing to do introductions. He threw down his pen, turned around and got up to shake my hand, then we talked for two minutes or maybe three, I, of course, said all the geeky stuff everyone said to him about watching him when I was a kid and being happy to see him mobbed by fans, etc. And all the time I was saying such things, I was eyeing the line of people who'd been waiting half the afternoon for thirty seconds with him. Eyes were glaring at me with raw hatred and I could hear them all thinking, "Who's this rude clown who thinks he's so much better than us that he doesn't have to wait in line?" Well, of course. If I'd been there for 3+ hours, I'd sure have resented the hell out of me.

It made me nervous so I said to Mr. Smith, "Listen, I'd love to talk to you longer but you have all these people here waiting to meet you…"

He ignored that and went on talking to me about whatever we'd been discussing. The lady who introduced us had told him I did the Garfield cartoon show, and he was telling me how much Garfield merchandise he was seeing everywhere. Again, I said, "I shouldn't monopolize you like this. These people have been waiting all afternoon for your autograph…"

And I will never forget this — and so help, me this is verbatim: Buffalo Bob Smith, the King of Doodyville himself, pulled me to one side and he whispered to me, "You don't understand…my job is to keep the line as long as possible."

Ten years ago today, I was in Las Vegas and here's what I was doing.  This show is no longer in that town but it does tour around the country.  The rumored book mentioned about Bob Barker has yet to materialize…

As we all know, The Price is Right has been running on CBS since about ten minutes after Philo Farnsworth invented television. I think they're now keeping it on the air because of some obscure clause in the AFTRA contract that says that at all times, Drew Carey must have two series.

What you may not know is that there's a version that is not televised. Fremantle, the company that owns the venerable prize dispenser, has a "live" Price is Right show that plays around the country, sometimes in more than one city at a time. One current outpost, and it's been there for a while, is at Bally's Hotel in Las Vegas. Audience members can buy tickets (about fifty bucks a head) to watch one of their favorite programs, approximately recreated on stage, and they can win prizes.

At the moment, it's hosted by Todd Newton, who seems to be the emcee of about half the new game shows done these days. The announcer is Randy West, who has announced and/or handled warm-ups on dozens of shows, including Deal or No Deal and the televised Price is Right.

I've followed Randy's career for years. He's a terrific announcer in the tradition of the late Johnny Olson and Rod Roddy…a tradition that sadly is excluded from most game shows these days. Randy and I have some mutual friends and have exchanged the occasional e-mail…so last night, I went over to Bally's, met him in person finally, and was his guest for the show there. It's not something I would have otherwise attended — I can walk from my home to where the real Price is Right is taped and get in free — but I was curious as to how they refashioned the program for the venue, and I wanted to see Randy work.

Boy, he's good. I know about voiceover and warm-up work (here's an article I wrote several years ago about audience warm-ups) and it ain't as easy as it seems, especially when a real pro does it. Randy is a real pro. Todd Newton is very good, too. He keeps it moving but puts contestants at ease and — most important — makes sure they know how to play the games they're up there to play.

Even though Randy arranged for my ticket and I was ineligible for prizes, I still had to stand in line and get the little pricetag nametag to wear on my chest. The line was fascinating. I got to talking with a couple from Wisconsin who never missed The Price is Right on the telly and were tingling at the very thought of seeing it in person. The possibility of being called to "Come on down" and play was too chilling to even contemplate. Also chatted with a family from Michigan and a few others who all admitted that it was a long-nurtured dream to see the TV show in person…and I got to wondering why that seemed so unreachable to them. Granted, all I'd have to do to get to a taping is walk about nine blocks and wait in line a few hours…and of course, since it's right there, I never have. But it was humanly possible for these people to get to Las Vegas and buy tickets. Why did it seem so inconceivable to them that they could go the extra miles to Los Angeles and get tickets to the real thing?

The excitement along the line was quite real and maybe even a bit contagious — this, even though they all knew they weren't about to see The Price is Right the way they really wanted to see it, which was with Bob Barker. It has been said that everyone loves Bob Barker except every single person who ever worked with him. A book is rumored for later this year that will itemize some of the reasons for the latter sentiment. I doubt it will make any difference to these folks. They all love Bob, they cheered him in clips that were shown throughout the proceedings and applauded when Todd or Randy invoked his name, always with great reverence. My sense is that they aren't particularly fond of the new host, Drew Carey, but only because he has committed the unpardonable sin of not being Bob Barker. That seemed to be the one complaint about Todd Newton, as well. Not much he can do about that at this stage of his life.

That aside, they loved Todd and Randy and also two stunning young ladies who ably filled the shoes and bikinis of Janice, Holly, Dian and other Barker's Beauties. They even accepted the reality of smaller prizes and necessary modifications in their favorite game show. To maximize the number of folks who get to play, each round starts with four players, chosen by a random draw, being called down to Contestants Row to bid on an item. One wins and comes up on stage to play a bigger pricing game. The others get Price is Right t-shirts and get to slink back to their seats, rather than stick around and bid in the next round. Other prizes are given out for no apparent reason…and it seemed like about a seventh of the showroom left with something, even if it was only points for Bally's slot card club.

All the games are exact facsimiles of popular ones from the TV show. The first lady up on stage played The Race Game and won it, first time out. Someone else played Hole-In-One and hit the ball right into the cup. An older man who'd barely seen the TV show did a spectacular wipeout on the Mountain Climber game. Apparently in Iowa, toasters cost $120.

The two most exciting rounds — exciting in that the audience was thrilled just to see these games live and in person — were The Big Wheel and Plinko. The ovation when the Plinko Board was revealed was about the same as when Jerry Lewis was doing his telethon in 1976 and Dean Martin walked out on stage. Maybe a little bigger.

On TV, contestants spin the wheel to determine which of them gets to be in the Showcase Game at the end. Here, it's a standalone game played for money. The audience was ecstatic as one of their own not only earned himself $250 by winning the Big Wheel game but got a bonus hundred for making the wheel stop on One Dollar. Then he got a bonus spin which offered a thousand dollars more if the wheel landed on the One Dollar, $500 if it landed on either of the two adjoining spaces. He won the $500. The gent who got to play Plinko took home $900. They were the two big winners of the night.

The way the Showcase Game works here is that, first of all, there's only one showcase. It consisted of five items, two of which were a trip to Mexico and a new car. Two ladies chosen at random from the audience got to compete and each wrote down their estimate of the total price of the showcase. The one who bid closer to the actual retail price without going over would win just the trip to Mexico…but if she was within $100, she'd win the whole showcase, car included. Randy told me that had happened a day or two earlier but at the performance I attended, both contestants way overbid and limped back to their seats with Price is Right t-shirts.

Despite the disappointing ending, the audience seemed to have a very good time…even those who won zip. Right after, just outside the showroom, Todd, Randy and the two prize models posed for photos with audience members who wanted a memento. One lady who'd won nothing inside was telling Todd that she watches him every day on Whammy!, and that the snapshot with him was better than if she'd won the car. Todd didn't seem to believe her but he told her thanks.

Like I said, this is not something I would have gone to see on my own, especially if it meant purchasing a ticket. (I'm not going to see the afternoon Game Show Spectacular over at the Vegas Hilton, which brings audience members up to play various rounds from defunct TV shows. Bob Eubanks, Chuck Woolery and Jamie Farr rotate as its host.) Still, I was impressed with how well the Price is Right folks replicated and modified that program, and I enjoyed seeing people enjoy it so. If I were running Las Vegas, I think I'd get rid of all those roulette wheels and craps tables, and just put in a lot of Plinko games. That's what the public seems to want.

Here's a flashback to 1/24/01 on this site. I never aspired for one moment to make it my profession but when I was younger, I was quite interested in magic. Mark Wilson's TV show was the primary motivation and the gift I demanded and got one year — the gift that this story is about — was the other.

But this is only a partial encore. After the little divider line below, I have a few new paragraphs to add…

Let's talk about Sneaky Pete's Magic Show, a Remco toy that was among the favored Christmas/Hanukkah (we celebrated everything) gifts of my youth.  I'm guessing I was eight the year I got mine and I loved it, though I can't recall ever using it to put on a show for anyone.  It was just knowing how to do the tricks — knowing I could do them — that mattered, though I was never quite able to master the cups-and-balls.  There was no gimmick to the cups-and-balls, apart from the fact that you actually had one more ball than an onlooker might think.  The cups-and-balls required practice and dexterity and at that age, I was looking for more immediate gratification and easier answers to the mysteries of the world.

There was also the disappointment of the sawing-a-lady-in-half trick promised on the box and in the commercials.  The set came with a little plastic harem girl, a rack on which you'd place her, and a special sword.  The figure was made with some kind of internal wheel that allowed the sword to actually pass through the stomach seam without damaging the doll.  It was surely the greatest feat of engineering managed by the Remco folks (the other tricks were pretty basic ones) but it was the least satisfying to me.  It didn't relate to the way I saw Mark Wilson sawing women in half on his TV show, The Magic Land of Allakazam, didn't show me how he bisected his wife/assistant, Nani Darnell.  She didn't have one of those little wheels inside her.

Believe it or not, that's just about my most painful Christmas memory.  I had it pretty good.  I wish the same for you.

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Okay, that was the divider line. Here's the new, 2017 add-on…

I'm not sure what year it was but when my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas/Hanukkah that year, I told them I wanted a Sneaky Pete Magic Set. A day or two later, my father went to a store and bought one and I think my mother gift-wrapped it one night after I went to bed. Then they hid it under their bed because there was still a week to go before whatever day they'd give it to me. We usually did not have presents on Hanukkah. I'd put on a yarmulke and light a candle on the menorah each night but that was about the extent of it. Presents were unwrapped the morning of December 25.

I knew (or course) they were getting me the gift I wanted. That was the kind of parents I had. I also knew every square inch of our house and thus all possible hiding places. It did not take me a whole lotta time to find the hidden gift and through the wrapping paper, I could make out enough of the box design to know it was what I craved. But it was December 18 or so. I was in agony, waiting for my opportunity to get my little hands on my big gift.

I was probably about seven or so at the time and I was a good-enough, smart-enough kid that my folks would occasionally leave me home alone while they went to the market or ran errands. The next second they did, I raced to where the present was. I had another toy in a box that was about the same size and shape as the Sneaky Pete Magic Set so with great care and a roll of Scotch Tape, I made a swap. I eased the magic set out of its wrapper and inserted the other toy and taped things up. Then I returned the gift to its hiding place, took the Sneaky Pete set to my room and had the time of my life with it.

I kept it hidden when they were around most of the time but whenever they left the house, I was in my room, mastering some (not all) of it. Or if they seemed busy in the living room, I might slide it out of its new hiding place, master a card trick or two, then put it back. I was a pretty honest kid most of the time but it somehow didn't feel wrong to engage in sneakiness and trickery about a Sneaky Pete Magic Set full of tricks.

There was one point of frustration, though. Once you learn a magic trick, you have to — simply have to — perform it for someone and fool them. It drove me a little nuts that I would have to wait until Christmas Day to do that.

The afternoon of December 24, my folks went somewhere and I seized on the opportunity to swap the toys back. I told my new Magic Set, "I'll see you tomorrow morning" and put it back into the package my mother had wrapped, which by now was among the presents under the Christmas tree in our living room. The next morn when I unwrapped it, I made a point of faking delightful surprise and also of tearing up the wrapping pretty good lest my mother examine it closely and notice the re-taping.

I needn't have bothered. She knew.

I don't know how she knew but she knew. Maybe when she took the gift out from under the bed to place it 'neath the tree, she noticed the surgery. Maybe I gave it away with the amount of time I spent in my room then with the door closed. Maybe it was my rotten acting when I opened the present or maybe it was because, ten minutes after I'd supposedly gotten my hands on it for the first time, I was performing tricks from it for them.

However she figured it out, she figured it out. I forget what my main gift was the following year but when she wrapped it, she put it immediately under the tree, told me what it was and asked that I not open it until Christmas morning.

As I'm sure I must have said at least a few times on this blog, I never could fool my mother. But we got along great because I don't think she could fool me, either. At least, I don't think she ever did. I'm pretty sure that wonderful man she called her husband was my father — so sure that I even grew up to look like him.

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Okay, there's one more divider line and now I'll close with this: I wrote above about the Cut-the-Lady-In-Half trick that came in the magic set. Here's a video of it. And don't you just love that they put in the little head and feet pieces that prevent the lady from running away? Someone should bring this thing on Penn & Teller: Fool Us and see if they can figure out how it works…

I posted this here back on January 10, 2004. A few days ago, I got into a discussion with someone who thinks they're going to receive a writing credit on an upcoming movie for which they made a few story suggestions. They did not ever sit down at a computer or even a typewriter and write anything resembling an actual script but they feel they have input into what happens in the film and what the actors say…or naturally, it's logical that they get a writing credit.

I asked them how many other people they thought had "input" into the story. They said, "Oh, maybe a dozen of us or so." I decided it was time to rerun this piece. Everything in it still applies except my reticence to get involved in this matter with the Writers Guild. That reticence is now even much greater…

According to this article in The New York Times (which you may have to register to read), the end credits for The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King run 9 minutes and 33 seconds. They don't say how many names that involves but the previous Lord of the Rings movie (with apparently a shorter crawl) had 559 names.

This doesn't matter to a lot of people since they aren't going to sit through them, anyway. Theaters may even like it since it helps clear the place out and lets the crew get an early start at sweeping up the Raisinets boxes. But it raises a big issue for uncredited writers.

As you probably know, a lot of movies, especially action flicks and comedies, employ more writers than are listed on the screen. The first Flintstones movie allegedly had more than 30. A lot of folks who get hired to write movies now just automatically presume that someone, or perhaps many someones will follow them.

The Writers Guild of America has the sole power to determine the screen credits on a movie. (Quick aside: In my travels through the entertainment biz, I occasionally encounter someone who's involved in a potential movie in some capacity and though not a screenwriter, says they've been promised a writing credit or will demand one. They're not going to actually write in the accepted sense but they're going to make suggestions and they think they can negotiate a writing credit. If I have the energy, I explain to them that except on a non-Guild film, the studio cannot guarantee them a writing credit. The WGA can always arbitrate and award the credit to the person or persons they decide actually wrote the film. And while that arbitration process is flawed in some ways, it never awards screen credit to anyone who didn't actually produce a script.)

Back when the WGA won jurisdiction over screen credits, it became customary for them to attempt to limit them to two names or in extreme cases, three. The thinking was that (a) more names than that devalued the role of all screenwriters on a film and (b) keeping it down to two or three names might induce studios to keep it down to two or three writers, minimizing how often our work was rewritten by others. Obviously, the latter hasn't worked as intended and some writers are happy about this. They figure more writers being hired to rewrite means more writers being hired, period. But let's turn our attention to that first reason.

That it was more dignified for writers not to be part of a huge list was the thinking back when movie credits were 20 or 30 names. There was usually one credit for Make-Up and it went to the head of the department, not to the 25 folks who actually did the make-up. The head of the Special Effects division got the one credit for Special Effects, regardless of how many guys actually did the work. So it didn't seem that ignoble for someone to write a large chunk of a movie and not get his or her name on it. Most of the people who worked on the movie didn't get their names on it.

Today, most of them do…all 40 Make-Up people, all 348 guys who made the Special Effects happen, the caterer, the insurance broker, the insurance broker's secretary, the security guards, the guys who drove the Craft Services truck to the set, the people who loaded the crullers onto the Craft Services truck…

…but not the guy who wrote 20% of the movie. His name is nowhere to be seen.

Several times, I've been asked to serve on WGA committees that will explore how the credits guidelines might be revised. I would sooner put some vital body part in a drill press. Even opening the floor to discussion gets some writers so angry that flecks of foam begin appearing on their computer monitors and they accuse those who want to change things of being traitors and idiots and sell-outs and…you know, all those things Ann Coulter calls Democrats. I don't need that in my life. Still, I can't help but wonder aloud if now that credits credit almost everyone, it isn't far more ignoble to say that writing a large chunk of a movie still doesn't deserve even cursory recognition. Aren't we now saying that writing 20% of the movie is less important than doing 2% of the wardrobe handling?

The more I think about it, the more I think the whole concept of what screen credits mean has changed, and that it's nuts for the WGA to cling to the perspective of 1946. But I don't expect it to be changed. Not without some serious bloodshed within the Guild.