I usually don't do these little list games that make the rounds but I occasionally do things I usually don't do. The way this works is that each answer you give has to start with the same letter as your first name. You're not allowed to repeat an answer and if you're "tagged" by someone whose name starts with the same first letter, you can't repeat any of their answers, either. Here's what I came up with…

1. What is your name: Mark
2. A four letter word: Meat
3. A boy's name: Mork
4. A girl's name: Mindy
5. An occupation: Michael Jackson impersonator
6. A color: Mauve
7. Something you wear: Mickey Mouse ears
8. A food: McNuggets
9. Something found in the bathroom: Maid
10. A place: Milky Way
11. A reason for being late: Married
12. Something you shout: "Mommy!"
13. A movie title: Mothra
14. Something you drink: Moxie
15. A musical group: Manhattan Transfer
16. An animal: Moose
17. A street name: Marvin Gardens
18. A type of car: Mercedes Benz
19. A song title: "Mairzy Doats"
20. A verb: Moon

It's times like this you wish you had a friend named Xavier. Just so you could send the challenge to him and hear him scream.

Around every ninth e-mail I receive these days is asking me to join or become "friends" via some online community…Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Grouply, Yaari, etc. Half of these are requests from people whose names I don't recognize…or sometimes, I'm not sure if it's who I think it is. I just got an invite to connect on one network with someone named Dave Schwartz. I know four different people named Dave Schwartz and have no idea which of them, if any, this is. Maybe they can all get together and start an online community where everyone is named Dave Schwartz. I'd certainly join it if my name were Dave Schwartz.

Some of these requests involve me joining a whole new site and this is usually more trouble than it's worth. Last week, an old friend from high school invited me to participate in some social networking site which I think is based in Spain. To become a member and accept the invite, the site requires me to fill out a long, nosey questionnaire that asks many things for which the proper answer would be along the lines of, "None of your business, jerkwad." It also demands that I upload my address book so it can send invites to everyone in it. Those of you who are in my address book will be pleased to know I did not do this.

But I've joined up with most of the others and I'm not sure why. I'm apparently networking all over LinkedIn, which means that I have some new and tenuous connection to strangers who have tenuous connections to people I know or who have tenuous connections to people who know people I know. So far, it hasn't done a thing for me except that I keep getting pinged and poked and nagged about not accepting the invite from someone I never heard of before in my ever-lovin' life.

I'm even getting friend invites from cartoon characters and dead people. Bill Hanna just made me a friend on Facebook, which is the first time I've heard from him since he told me a Yogi Bear script was late in 1983. Even though I attended Mr. Hanna's funeral in 2001, I'm not 100% sure this isn't him. He was kinda sneaky.

Actually, Facebook doesn't look bad and it might even be useful. I have some friends I'd rather consort with there than in person. Alas, the rest just baffle me. Some of them look like attempts to bring order and uniformity to blogging and e-mailing, which of course drains much of the joy. It's like when you were a kid and you were having fun with other kids…and then some older person would come along and try to organize games. Those games weren't as much fun because they weren't yours.

Before I end this, I have to ask: Please don't invite me to connect with you on any service unless I'm already on it because I'm not joining any more of these things. And I will be glad to be your friend even if we don't do it through Facebook or LinkedIn or any of these online institutions. In fact, just assume I'm your friend right now…and no, you cannot borrow money. I don't know you that well and probably never will.

Screen Actors Guild president Alan Rosenberg has sued his own union to attempt to reverse the recent action by their national board in which Executive Director Doug Allen was fired and the negotiating committee was replaced. Rosenberg's application for a temporary restraining order was denied today but he says he will try again.

What seems to be going on here is that Mr. Rosenberg woke up one morning and realized that there might be some aspect of SAG that wasn't divided and dysfunctional, and he filed his lawsuit to try and correct that oversight.

Really. I admire Rosenberg's devotion to his guild and I even think he set out on the current negotiation with all the right goals and values. But things have gone horribly wrong and right now, SAG needs to get out of its current bargaining position while its members still have their underwear, and they need to begin healing and rebuilding and dialing down the anger. This is a time for the guy in charge (still) to be uniting his union, not filing lawsuits against it.

Quite a few folks wrote to remind me that in its second season, Branded took an odd twist, undermining its own premise. Jason McCord was suddenly functioning as a special secret-secret government agent, investigating for and reporting to President Ulysses S. Grant. The opening with him getting kicked out of the army stayed the same but once you got into the episodes, things were different. How did I not recall that? Because I stopped watching the show when they made that switchover. Apparently, a lot of people did.

Several folks also told me that that DVD set contains trimmed (for syndication) prints and not especially good ones. So be wary.

Hey, here's a great way to spend eight and a half minutes. Our pal Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew Films has assembled a little video history of Superman's early animated appearances and parodies. You'll especially enjoy Super (Little) Lulu. Here's the link.

Republican Senator Judd Gregg is up for a position in the Obama cabinet. About eight seconds after this was first mentioned, the blogosphere erupted with a realization: The governor of New Hampshire, the state Gregg represents, is a Democrat and would be expected to appoint a Democrat to fill the rest of Gregg's term. Assuming Al Franken prevails in the Minnesota recount (which is looking more and more likely), replacing Gregg with a Democrat would give the Dems a 60 seat majority in the Senate and the power to block filibusters.

So Senator Gregg is now saying, "I have made it clear to the Senate Leadership on both sides of the aisle and to the governor that I would not leave the Senate if I felt my departure would cause a change in the makeup of the Senate. The Senate Leadership, both Democratic and Republican, and the Governor understand this concern and I appreciate their consideration of this position." He's also said how eager he is to work with the Obama administration and to help craft a new financial policy.

Which means his position works out roughly as follows: "I think I can help devise an economic policy that will help America but I won't take the job unless the governor replaces me with someone who'll probably oppose it."

Back in this post last December, we discussed the ominous fate of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, a Los Angeles landmark that promotes the art of puppetry and hosts an endless stream of kids' birthday parties. Back then, the place was in financial trouble and it looked like it might go out o' business, which would be a shame. So we're proud to note that an unknown benefactor has come to the rescue and things are looking much better. If you're in or around Los Angeles and you have a kid who's going to have a birthday some day, consider booking a party there. You'll enjoy it as much as any child.

Roger Ebert writes about the laughingstock that is his (now) ex-governor Rod Blagojevich and asks, "What other name guarantees a chuckle from the audience even before the joke?" I think Michael Jackson's might qualify but I get his point. Still, I found Blagojevich rather fascinating this past week as he steadfastly refused to stick to any script that others might have expected of him. There's something nice about a politician whose actions are so illogical that they leave the news guys speechless.

What's kind of interesting is that I don't think most people who are laughing at this guy (or cheering his ouster) could tell you exactly what he did wrong. At most, they might say, "He tried to sell Obama's Senate seat" but they couldn't tell you who he tried to sell it to, and some seem to forget completely that it was never purchased. There are actually a lot of misdeeds that have been alleged against Blagojevich, some in connection with that unrealized transaction, and more are expected whenever the indictment is finally returned. But do people really understand that? Some of them seem to think he was impeached and removed from office for having an out-of-date haircut. Or should have been.

The aging (built in 1957, expanded a lot in the sixties) Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas has been on life support for some time. For a decade or more now, we've been hearing almost annual reports that it's being sold, it's being torn down, it's being replaced by one or more new "mega-resorts" on that prime acreage, etc. But nothing ever happens to the place. It just goes on and on…and of course, not much is being spent on upgrading its facilities. The last time I stayed there was at least fifteen years ago and it was falling apart then. The plan may be not to implode it but to just wait until a stiff breeze blows the place down.

Something is changing, though. The hotel just got a new president and he promptly announced the closure of the long-running show there, the Folies Bergere. It opened on Christmas Day of 1959 and will close March 28. That will leave Jubilee! at Bally's as the last of its kind…the big production show in the classic Vegas tradition.

Most shows in Vegas are suffering these days. A few years back, there was a period when ticket prices were being increased on what felt like a daily basis. A number of hotels found that they could hike the fees up and sell just as many seats as before…so they hiked up fees. They probably hiked them too much and now they have to spread around discount coupons and it isn't the same. Something like the Folies probably suffers from sheer permanence. People who saw it ten or twenty years ago know it hasn't changed much so they might as well see something else. People who haven't seen it figure they can see it anytime so they might as well go to something that won't be there next trip or the trip after or the trip after.

Well, now it's going away. I saw the show a few times — once from the wings — because I had a friend who was headlining in it for a time. The ladies were cute. The boys danced well. The costumes were great. The music was pre-recorded. I think canned accompaniment hurts this kind of show more than producers think. Yes, it still sounds great…but it creates a feeling that the show's on auto-pilot, like one of those robotic Disneyland shows where the folks on stage have to time their performances to the music track and not to the audience response.

Las Vegas is facing a lot of cost-cutting. In the fiscal year ending June 30 of last year, profits for Nevada casinos fell 69%. That ain't so good and it's only gotten worse since then. At the same time, new and bigger hotels are opening, which further puts the pressure on places like the Tropicana. In dumping the Folies, they're probably looking to get out of financing whatever's in their showroom and to get some other show to come in a four-wall basis (as discussed here). The idea is to transfer the monetary risk to someone else and just play landlord.

Something's going to bust but in the meantime, it's not a bad time to visit Las Vegas. If you click around on the web, you can usually find a decent room for under $50 a night midweek, and not that much more on weekends unless there's a big convention in town. Most of the buffets and low-end restaurants are dropping prices. That's something that hasn't happened in a long time. You can eat quite well there for under $25 a day…and there are things to do for free if you don't have the money to gamble. Just walking around the newer hotels opened by Steve Wynn can be quite entertainining, even if you can't afford to eat in one. Or see most shows.

You see, at the same time, the high-end eateries are charging more and the top shows are keeping prices high. Tickets for Bette Midler run from $86 to $227. Elton John goes from $100 to $250. Cher can be seen for a low of $95 to a high of $250. Barry Manilow runs $95 to $225. Contrast that to the ticket prices for the Folies Bergere, which ran $35 to $45. They're not only closing the oldest show in Vegas but one of the cheapest.

So what's happening is that that you have this ever-widening gap between Rich and Poor, those who can afford the top and those who scrape along the bottom. It's kind of like a microcosm of what's happening in the United States, except with sequins.

I'm getting a lot of e-mail about Bill Hicks…and I don't really have any interest in debating how funny he was. Obviously, he made a lot of people laugh and if you can do that, you're funny. You don't have to be funny to everyone to be funny.

Several folks wrote to express a sentiment that is well represented by this paragraph in an e-mail from Andy Rose…

What respect I did have for Hicks (as an okay comedian) was lost after the Letterman incident…not because of what he said on the show, but because of his obnoxious behavior afterward. He seemed to think that being on TV was some sort of birthright. How dare the country be shielded from his speaking truth to power about what a buffoon Billy Ray Cyrus is! At any rate, I just wish Hicks fans could accept that some people don't find him funny, rather than assuming that detractors are intolerant or "just not ready for him."

Yeah, I think that kind of speaks to some of what leaves me cool to Hicks. There's a certain arrogance, if not in his performances then in much of the hype that surrounded them, and the performances I've seen have not lived up to that hype. On the other hand, I never got to see the guy in a club and I would never have appreciated all that Sam Kinison had to offer if I hadn't seen him in person. If you only knew Sam from the short bits he did on SNL or talk shows, you'd wonder what all the fuss was about. So I'm willing to give Bill Hicks the benefit of that doubt.

I could even make the case that Mr. Letterman is beating himself up too much for his decision to cut the routine. It was a mistake, but it probably seems like a bigger one than it was because of the comedian's untimely death. And it's not like Dave had anything to do with that. On the whole, Letterman was probably more supportive of the career of Bill Hicks than just about anyone else. An awful lot of the clubs that booked Bill Hicks and an awful lot of the people who paid to see him were because of his many appearances on Dave's show.

In his defense, Letterman might have pointed out that his show was new to CBS at the time. There was a lot of tension about the ratings and a lot of mistakes were being made. That wouldn't make it wise to cut the segment but Mr. Hicks might have viewed it in that context and not treated it as an all-out assault on Free Speech and Truth. Another comedian in that situation would probably have tried to use it to his advantage, having his agent pressure the Letterman people to "make it up to his client" with more and better bookings.

Two other things. A couple folks wrote to ask if I thought Letterman's decision to run the segment and apologize was due to rumors that Ron Howard will soon make a movie about Bill Hicks with Russell Crowe in the lead. Perhaps. Even if the incident with Dave isn't included in the film, it's likely to be mentioned in the press coverage, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to deal with a lingering issue before then. As for the movie…I never like to prejudge a movie — especially one that hasn't even been made yet — so I'll just say that I hope that if they make it, it does more for the memory of Bill Hicks than that Jim Carrey pic did for Andy Kaufman.

Lastly: Jeri Rainer wrote to ask, "After they cut [Hicks] from that episode of Dave's show, what did they replace it with to make up the time?" Answer: They edited in a stand-up routine by Bill Scheft, a writer and performer who works with Letterman, usually handling the audience warm-up. A few weeks earlier, before he debuted on CBS, Dave taped a couple of "test" shows, not to be aired but just to get the bugs out. On one of these, Scheft performed so they had that material available.

But it probably wasn't just a matter of tossing out the tape of Hicks and cutting in the Scheft spot. Hicks was announced in the opening. Dave probably mentioned him in the monologue and maybe in other teasers throughout the show…and then there was the matter of Dave's intro. They must have gotten Dave back into the outfit he wore during that taping and recorded a new intro, and maybe some other bits. I seem to recall that the show's announcer, who was then Bill Wendell, was either unavailable or unwilling to return to the studio to tape a new voiceover for the intro so Dave himself did it. It was a lot of work to remove Hicks's performance…so at least that night, someone (probably Letterman) must have felt strongly that it would have caused problems to leave it in. Which makes the decision to apologize and air it all the more meaningful.