Anything you write is funny if you stay up late enough.

Good night, Internet. See you in the morning…or maybe the afternoon.

You've all seen artists who set up in touristy places and do caricatures for ten or twenty bucks or whatever they can get. Tom Richmond used to do that before he worked his way up to probably the most prestigious gig a caricaturist can land…drawing TV and movie parodies for Mad. But he still has an interest in the business of street caricature and in this blog post, he notes that some of those folks like to display samples that are actually the work of others. Boy, you can't trust anyone these days, can you?

During the Writers Guild strike, a line made the rounds and I quoted it here…

Just got a message that says that production has shut down on the NBC hit sitcom, The Office. It seems its star, Steve Carell, has been calling in sick with what he claims is a case of "enlarged balls."

Just thought I'd note that in an interview in the current issue of Playboy, Mr. Carell says the quote is spurious. He did make it clear he would not work during the strike but, he says, he did not make the remark attributed to him. Well, he should have.

I haven't mentioned it lately here but the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation's Archive of American Television continues to produce (and post to the web) important oral histories of the TV business.

They've just posted something I wish I had time to watch soon. It's a four hour (four hour!) interview with Don Pardo. Don is best known as the announcer on Saturday Night Live (and before that on the original Jeopardy!) but he's been a professional for over sixty years, doing just about every kind of show on which one can announce. That has to be a fascinating conversation.

Okay, here's how we pay off the national debt. We charge people who appear on television $100 for every time they say "At the end of the day…" and $200 for every time they make reference to throwing someone under a bus.

Based on watching election coverage the other night, we could balance the budget in about nine hours.

Dave Malkoff, a reporter for the local CBS News in Los Angeles, just did a story on the skyscraper that's going up at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. He took some stunning photos from the top of it and they're available for viewing here. Make sure you take a look at the very large 25.6 Megapixel 180º panoramic view of Hollywood.

Before I can begin to explain the picture above, you need to go read this post from February of last year.

All done? Fine. If you actually read it, then you know that as a small tot, I made my TV debut on a local Los Angeles TV show called Bill Stulla's Parlor Party. I remembered how much I disliked it but I was unable to place exactly how old I was at the time…two, three, older? You can ignore all the sterling detective work that I did in that post because most of it was wrong. I appeared on the show on March 1, 1955, one day shy of my third birthday.

And above, we have incontrovertible evidence. I've recently been having my hard-working assistant Tyler scan all the old family photos my mother could find and in one box, I came across my "passport to the Castle of Dreams" for that traumatic day. (On the back of it, in my mother's handwriting, there's a list of relatives and neighbors I'm supposed to say hello to. As I recall, I mentioned not a one of them. By the way, the Castle of Dreams was a really badly-painted scene flat.)

That's about all I have to say about this. Just thought I'd finish the story and share this nifty little relic.

In the previous message, I did not intend to suggest that the e-mails I've been receiving about John McCain's age were coming from Ralph Nader supporters. Nader, by the way, is older than McCain.

If I don't post a lot this week, it's because I'm busy with about nineteen things…mostly scripts that are due but also an enormous headache involving no less than three telephone companies. This means three different firms I must phone (repeatedly!) and wade through clumsy robotic operators who attempt to direct my call. The problem, of course, is that my problem doesn't fit any of the standard categories and departments…so the robots can't figure out where to direct me and, frankly, the occasional humans I reach aren't doing such a great job of it.

Let me see if I can explain this because it's a bit complicated. Both my mother and I, independent of one another, decided to transfer phone service from non-digital companies to the digital (and cheaper) phone service of Time-Warner Cable. Phone numbers did not change…just the companies supplying our service and, of course, what we were paying.

She went from Verizon to Time-Warner. I went from A.T. and T. to Time-Warner. In neither case has the Time-Warner option worked well for us. At her house, it would only work on one phone. The installer finally gave up on trying to get the extension in her bedroom to work and just said, "I can't do it." It seemed like a simple, garden-variety extension such as you find in 98% of the homes in this country but somehow, he couldn't get it connected.

Now, you might wonder why, at that point, we didn't just tell the guy to forget about it and stay with Verizon. Well, you really can't. It takes 6-10 days for a number to be transferred from one company to another. The day the installer arrived at my mother's house was the day Time-Warner got custody of her number. If we'd told him that day to not do the installation, the number would not have stayed with Verizon. It would have taken those 6-10 days to switch it back and then we would have had to get a Verizon installer out to reconnect it…and my mother would have been without a phone for all that time. So we kinda had to stay with Time-Warner, at least for a while, and she had to do without the extension in her bedroom.

Then a few days later, another problem was noticed. My mother has a personal alarm system — one of those little buttons that the elderly sometimes wear to summon help in an emergency. I call it her "I've fallen and I can't get up" button but it isn't from that company. (If you need to get one of those devices for someone, by the way, shop around. There are plenty of better, cheaper systems.)

The machine is supposed to interface with her phone system and it did when she had Verizon. Time-Warner assured us it would work fine with their lines and that turned out not to be so. So all of a sudden, my mother had this emergency distress alarm that wasn't connected to anything. Fat lot of good that would do her. I made the necessary calls to switch her back to Verizon and this involved more calls and explanations and being put on hold and/or routed about than you could imagine. I still can't get Time-Warner over there to rip out their lines but the Verizon service has been reconnected and everything works like it did before.

In the meantime, we were lucky that I'd already arranged to get her one of these. You may remember a little while ago that I asked here if someone could recommend a good emergency-type cell phone for seniors. Many of you suggested the Jitterbug and now she has one, thank you. Seems to work just as advertised…and I'm getting to be so glad and delightfully surprised when anything does.

My problem is a little easier to explain. As soon as my phone was shifted over to Time-Warner, it became incapable of calling her. I can call my mother on my cell phone. I can call her on another phone line I have that is still with A.T. and T. But I can't call her now on my main phone, which is Time-Warner digital. From my end, it just rings and rings and rings as if she's just not answering. On her end, it does not ring at all, and I have to assume this will be the case with others I phone. I mean, it can't be that by some fluke of electronics, my phone can only reach people who did not give birth to me.

Can this problem be fixed soon? I'm starting to think not. Time-Warner's technicians say they should be able to figure it out but they need me to get her phone company, Verizon, to run all sorts of tests and to supply all sorts of data. Verizon is saying, in effect, "Our lines work fine. The problem is on Time-Warner's end so don't bother us." Looks like a stalemate. I'm going to give them a few more days to solve it but I'm not optimistic. Again, it's going to take a while and be messy to switch back from Time-Warner digital to A.T. and T. (or someone else) non-digital.

Among the frustrating things is that digital phone service is cheaper and once they get the bugs out of it, I'm sure it'll be what everyone has. It just isn't working now for either me or my mother and the transfer process is clumsy and time-consuming. So consider this a cautionary note: If you're seeing those ads about unlimited local and long distance for under thirty bucks a month and saying "That's for me," well, it may not be as ideal as it sounds. Or as simple to undo if it doesn't work as advertised.

The Tony nominations are out and there are some surprises, not so much in what was nominated but in what wasn't. The folks behind Young Frankenstein are probably open-mouthed with amazement. The show got but three — one for scenic design, two for supporting actors. No nod for Best Musical or Best Score or Best Book or the leads…all those categories where the previous Mel Brooks musical swept. I didn't see most of the other contenders and it's quite possible they were all superior…but it also sounds like someone in the Broadway community felt Young Frankenstein deserved a public spanking instead of the possible box office assist.

Still, its three nominations were three more than the new revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof got…and The Little Mermaid didn't fare so well, either. The stage version of the Disney cartoon received only two — one for Best Score and one for lighting. I guess that means no number on the Tony telecast, just as there probably won't be one from Young Frankenstein.

November, which I saw and liked a lot, got a single nomination — for Laurie Metcalf's fine performance. That probably means it will close when Nathan Lane departs in July.

I'm pleased that Xanadu, which I saw and liked a lot, is up for Best Musical, as is its star Kerri Butler for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical…and a little surprised that its fine supporting cast, especially Jackie Hoffman, was overlooked.

All in all, it's an odd list…and one that will probably make for an especially low-rated Tony Awards broadcast. I don't see a single category in which many people will have any sort of rooting interest or where, as sometimes happens, a certain "win" will represent some sort of important statement. The most interesting announcement was that a special Lifetime Achievement Tony will be presented to Stephen Sondheim, which will probably allow them to do some big, star-studded medley of important Sondheim numbers.

And I think that's all I have to say about the nominations. Just that it's an odd list.