Here's a good interview with Fred Willard. I've been following this man since his Ace Trucking Company days and he's always been one of the funniest, cleverest folks on stage or screen. In a more perfect world, he'd be making the kind of money various former Saturday Night Live cast members make in movies but he probably does okay. An awful lot of producers rush to hire him because he's always dinero in the bank. Thanks to Tim Dunleavy for the link.

Hidden imagery in Woody Woodpecker cartoons? Okay…

The clip I posted earlier reminded me: You can't go see Zero Mostel perform live anywhere. He kind of ended that possibility when he died in 1977. But a more-than-reasonable facsimile is around, currently playing in Toronto through April 16. It's my buddy Jim Brochu in his one-man show, Zero Hour.

In it, Jim somehow (don't ask me how) turns himself into the Conquering Zero for 90-or-so minutes of discussing his life, his career, art, the curious institution we call Show Business, the world…all sorts of fascinating topics as viewed by a fascinating man. If you do a bit of Googling, you'll see that I'm hardly the only one to dispense raves for this play…and I wish he'd do it closer to me so I could see it again and again. If you're anywhere near Toronto this week, it's playing at the Harold Green Theatre and you can find out more and order tickets here. In May, he's doing it in Pittsfield, MA, which is also not close enough for me to attend. But if it's convenient to you, go. It's one of those evenings you won't soon forget…and in a good way.

I originally wrote that Sidney Lumet had been beaten out for a Best Director Oscar the year of Dog Day Afternoon by Stanley Kubrick. Then, only moments after posting and seconds before a torrent of e-mails came tumbling in, I realized my error and fixed it. He was beaten out by Milos Forman that year.

I said he was nominated five times as Best Director. I got that number from several online obits like the one in Hollywood Reporter. The truth is he was nominated four times for his directorial work: Twelve Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network and The Verdict. The confusion is because he was a five-time Oscar nominee but only four of those were for directing. He was also nominated for a shared screenplay credit on the 1981 Prince of the City…and he also won an Honorary Academy Award in 2005 that most obits aren't mentioning and which some say was last year, which it wasn't.

And this isn't something I need to correct here but the Hollywood Reporter obit also says he was married three times. His Wikipedia listing and his IMDB bio list four.

Lastly, here's one fun fact that I noticed when I researched the above. He directed seventeen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Katharine Hepburn, Rod Steiger, Al Pacino, Ingrid Bergman, Albert Finney, Chris Sarandon, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Beatrice Straight, William Holden, Ned Beatty, Peter Firth, Richard Burton, Paul Newman, James Mason, Jane Fonda and River Phoenix. Four of them won for those Lumet-supervised performances. A pretty impressive record.

Speaker of the House John Boehner says failing to raise the debt limit "…would be a financial disaster, not only for us, but for the worldwide economy." Senator Lindsey Graham (also a prominent Republican) says it would lead to "financial collapse and calamity throughout the world."

So I guess we won't see any Republicans saying, in effect, "If we don't get everything we want — including more tax cuts for the wealthy, more cutbacks on a woman's right to choose and the elimination of social programs we've always hated — we won't vote to raise the debt limit."

Thank goodness they'll all put the general welfare of the worldwide economy ahead of stuff like that.

John Thompson spent eighteen years in prison for a murder he did not commit. The prosecutors had plenty of proof he didn't do it but they hid it because, I guess, convicting someone is better than not convicting the guy who actually did it. Once exonerated, Thompson sued them for misconduct and won, only to have his win overturned 5-4 by the U.S. Supreme Court with Clarence Thomas (apparently) leading the five. Read his story in his own words and tell me if that's how Justice is supposed to work.

Rummaging through my D drive just now, I found this photo which I took in a hospital emergency room about a year ago. I snapped it with my camera phone so it isn't the best quality but it says, "Patient's [sic] are not to be left on a stretcher in the hallway unattended!!!" Note that this is not a professionally-made sign but something that someone in management at this hospital obviously felt was needed so they printed it out on a computer and taped it up. There were several copies up and down that corridor.

Question: Should someone who needs this kind of reminder be working in a hospital? I mean, if you're on the staff and you're shuffling patients around, which I understand is necessary, shouldn't you know not to leave them unattended in the hallway? This must have been a problem there.

Also, if you're in some sort of management position at a hospital, shouldn't you know you don't need an apostrophe there?

In any case, the signs weren't working. I didn't want to invade anyone's privacy by snapping a pic in that direction but about twenty feet away from where I took this, there were two gurneys with unattended patients on them. One of them — an older black woman — was there an awful long time and every ten or fifteen minutes, someone would walk by and tell her, "Your room will be ready any minute now." She'd been there at least two hours when I left. For all I know, she's still there.

I had a sad moment a week or two ago walking in Beverly Hills. I passed an actress I once worked with on a TV show. It was back in the eighties and I don't recall her working much since then.

She was just under 40 then and could have passed for 25. Stunning woman…and I recall her always looking very healthy. She wasn't my type but I could sure admire the view. If she had been my type, we still wouldn't have ever gotten close as she had a long line of suitors. It included movie stars, top athletes and, for a long time, a man who ran one of the biggest movie studios.

One time he came to the set to visit her while we were taping. At the lunch break, they snuck off to her dressing room for a little sexual activity…and what she forgot is that she still had on her wireless microphone and the engineers in the sound booth could hear every bit of it. The director came by, realized what they were listening to and made them turn the mike off…after he'd heard a minute or two. Those who'd heard it were the envy of every man who worked on the show…because every one of us thought she was beautiful. Even one unabashedly gay guy on the staff admitted to having fantasized about her on occasion. That's how lovely she was.

But that was then, this is now. On Canon Drive last week, I passed a woman and thought, "Hey, that lady looks a little like…" Then I realized it wasn't a look-alike. It was her, a quarter-century later. The twenty-five years had not been kind to her but she'd apparently pitched in and help them ravage her appearance.

I'm not sure if it was Botox or surgery or just what it was but she'd had something done — and whatever it was, she should have sued the folks that did it. Her face was puffy, like bees had stung it, but also lopsided and phony. She looked just the opposite of healthy.

We looked at each other but I didn't say hello. I'm not sure she would have remembered my name and we didn't even have much to say to each other on that show we worked on. Later though, trying to get the visual out of my mind, I had a sudden thought. That expression as she briefly looked my way…it could well have said, "I know that person from somewhere." I'd sure hate to think she thought I was thinking, "Boy, she looks hideous now. I'd better not talk to her because I won't know what to say." But that's pretty much what I was thinking.

I was also thinking about the downside of making your living and having your fame and fortune based on your appearance, as she basically had. It doesn't last. Most eye candy spoils with age. Maybe I'm assuming too much here but it's easy to imagine what happened. At some point, men stopped staring the same way they once had and producers stopped calling. A diminishing number of fans were requesting autographed photos…and the ones she did sign were of a person she no longer was. To try and salvage some of her old attention, she went to a doctor she should not have visited and/or had a procedure or two she should not have had.

And now her career is really over.

There's no joke here and no philosophical punchline beyond the obvious. You see a lot of people these days who've done stuff they shouldn't do. I had a friend — an older comedy writer, but not that old. He was working steadily but he kept reading these articles about ageism in our business; how there are no jobs once you're gray or involuntarily bald. That's true to a great extent…though I think a greater disadvantage for some is when you come across as a guy who's still writing for Milton Berle.

Anyway, this writer was working. Producers did want to hire him but he kept reading those articles and becoming panicky that if he didn't want the current gig to be his last, he had to convince everyone he was younger than he really was. So he went in and had a face lift and he died on the operating table. He was 59 years old, which I can't help but note is how old I am now.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to look younger and healthier and there are certainly things doctor-type people can do that are helpful and not risky. There are also the ones that are risky and it's a shame when society or the business or one's own insecurities drives one to take those risks. Whatever that actress I saw in Beverly Hills did, I'll bet she'd look better if she hadn't had it done. She might even have a shot at working again and having people say, "Hey, she looks pretty good for her age."