This is a clip from a 1984 cable show — The Young at Heart Comedians Special, I think it was called. David Brenner was the host and it featured seven veteran comedians (i.e., older gents) doing their acts. Part of the format was that while one guy was on stage performing, the camera would cut to the others backstage, sitting around and talking. In this segment, you'll see backstage chatter from Jackie Vernon, Jackie Gayle, Henny Youngman, Norm Crosby, Shelley Berman and George Gobel, along with Brenner.

Onstage is one of my all-time favorites, Carl Ballantine, aka "The Amazing Ballantine," performer of what was deliberately the most inept and hilarious magic act ever. I wish you could see his whole routine uninterrupted and untruncated but this is all we have to offer.

It is worth noting, by the way, that though the show was done nearly a quarter of a century ago, two of the "young at heart" comics — Norm Crosby and Shelley Berman — are still actively performing, plus Ballantine still works as an actor and is occasionally coerced into hauling out the old act. I got to work with Carl a few times and we occasionally have a meal. He's just as funny off-stage as he is on…which as you'll see in this clip is pretty darned funny.

(An aside to the three people who write to complain every time I link to a clip or article that contains a wee bit of profanity: This one does. Instead of getting outraged, you might consider that this is how much of this country talks and that a lot of good, decent people see nothing wrong with it. Please stop sending me those messages.)

On June 20, 1965, a once-in-a-lifetime concert was televised as a closed-circuit event to raise bucks for Dismas House of St. Louis, a halfway house for ex-convicts. It was a meeting of the fabled "Rat Pack" with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis sharing the stage at the Kiel Opera House in St. Louis, doing pretty much what they did in Vegas, only this time with cameras taking it all in. There isn't much footage of the Rat Pack in Las Vegas…and certainly no complete performances. The St. Louis event is pretty much the best record of those gents in action.

Unfortunately, they were without the services of fellow Rat Packer Joey Bishop, who was out with a bad back. Fortunately, they got a kid named Johnny Carson to take over Joey's role in the proceedings. Our clip today is a few minutes of a musical number and it's notable that Johnny, who was never much of a singer, agreed to try and perform alongside the big boys.

After the '65 telecast, the show was never seen again…not until the nineties when producer Paul Brownstein tracked down a print of it that had been sitting in a closet in St. Louis. Every time I run into Paul, I find myself thanking him for finding and/or preserving some old TV show which would otherwise have been lost. I don't think I've thanked him for this one…so thanks, Paul. Here's a few minutes of the Rat Pack at their rattiest and packiest…

This one runs an hour and I don't expect you to watch it all…but someone posted to YouTube, an entire David Letterman Show from September 12, 1980. This was Dave's morning show, the one he did for NBC that went largely unwatched…and I don't think it's hard to see why. He's the wrong guy for the time slot and he's also a little too smartass. You get the feeling that he doesn't even take his own show seriously so why should you? Plus, he feels all alone out there…no sidekick, no bandleader with whom he has any rapport, etc. Doesn't it feel like half the staff didn't show up for work that day but they made Dave go out and do his show anyway? Add to this the largely non-responsive studio audience and you have a rather cold, impersonal program that probably wouldn't work in any daypart but was certainly all wrong for weekday morns. And just to really finish it off, you had these news breaks that often led to awkward transititions back to comedy and light banter.

A year or two earlier, I'd become a big fan of Mr. Letterman's, seeing him act as emcee (or sometimes just a performer) at The Comedy Store up on Sunset. On that stage, he came off as polished and professional, especially compared to some of the other comics…and of course, it was amusing to see him act like we were all foolish to be there and it was even more ridiculous for a grown man to be doing what he was doing. That was The Comedy Store and it was late and half the audience was drunk, anyway. On NBC's daytime schedule, the same attitude drove viewers to reruns of The Jeffersons or whatever was over on CBS.

(I just checked and I was right: Reruns of The Jeffersons. Dave's show started as 90 minutes on June 23, 1980 and was cut to 60 minutes after about six weeks. It ran as an hour show until October 24 of that year, whereupon its time slot was handed over to two game shows, Las Vegas Gambit and Blockbuster. After that, NBC kept Letterman on the payroll until February 1, 1982 when he took over Tom Snyder's spot after Mr. Carson.)

So this is an interesting bit of history and like I said, I don't expect you to watch the whole thing. It's in seven parts and they should play, one after the other, in the player I've embedded below. You might watch a little of the opening and then leap ahead to the start of Part Four where Dave does a remote segment with some New York street vendors. Take a gander.

I know some people would rather I just linked to light, happy video clips of wacky commercials and silly songs…but there are some things on the web you oughta see. Whether you like 'em or not.

Here are three video reports on "The Surge" from a gentleman named Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, a native of Baghdad who's employed by the Guardian in the U.K. Like all of you, I would love to believe the mantra of "The Surge is working" but an awful lot of evidence suggest that it's only been effective in reducing the humiliation of those in this country who backed the U.S. efforts in Iraq and made grandiose, impossible claims about "winning." It's a way for those who never want to believe their country does the wrong thing (at least when a Republican is in the White House) to stick their fingers in their ears and sing "la la la" loud enough to drown out the reality.

The three parts should play one after the other in the embedded player below. They total about thirteen and a half minutes. If someone would like to suggest an article or video that affords another view of this situation, please do.