We all have different issues that matter to us — gay rights, immigration, guns, abortion, national security, cole slaw, whatever. I have a friend who really only fixates on one: The price of gasoline. And when it comes to who to support as President of the United States, that's all that matters to this friend. If gas prices are low, the President is doing a great job. That President could accidentally call a nuclear strike on some big U.S. city and this friend would still support him just so long as the accident didn't raise gas prices.

Conversely, if those prices are high, that alone is sufficient grounds to impeach the Prez and drag him from the Oval Office. My friend doesn't even have to — nor can he — explain how any action by any President causes the cost of filling your tank to go up or down. If it happened on that Chief Exec's watch, he gets the credit or blame.

So how are we doing on gas prices these days? Kevin Drum has the stats…and yes, I know you drive by a service station that charges way more but we're talking here about averages.

In case you don't wanna click, Kevin says we're doing pretty good: "Since 2010, the average inflation-adjusted price for a gallon of regular is $3.61. Right now, gasoline is selling for 50 cents less than that."

Bill Cosby says he's planning a tour in 2023 and a representative says he's looking at "Spring/Summer." Since so far, that's all there seems to be to this tour — no dates or performing venues mentioned — I'm guessing it's in the Trial Balloon category. Cosby and whoever might be involved in such a tour want to see what the reaction is to the possibility.

I would assume Mr. Cosby is less interested in money than he is in working to "normalize" his public image. That would require that theaters want him on the premises and that crowds actually queue up to buy tickets. I don't see those two things happening enough for him to be able to say, "See? The public still loves me."

This reminds me of when O.J. Simpson was a free man. I'm not sure where I read this but some pollster — I have no idea which one or how credible that pollster was — had said that XX% of America thought O.J. was an innocent man, unjustly accused of and perhaps framed for a crime he did not commit. I don't remember the number either but I'm thinking it was around 20%. Simpson, the piece said, assumed it was so and that the percentage was large enough to make him a very wealthy man again.

He had plans for a movie, a book, a live TV interview, t-shirts, some sort of "I ❤ O.J." club, etc. He was certain that "his people" would patronize all those projects in sufficient number for him to get back all the dough he'd paid his "Dream Team" of lawyers plus all his other losses plus more.  It reportedly came as a tremendous shock to him that (a) no one wanted to be in business with him and (b) even those who told pollsters they thought he was Not Guilty were Not Interested in his exploitations of his ordeal.  The few that went forward did something like 5% of the business he'd expected and that advisors had told him was a sure thing.

In short, even the people he thought supported him wouldn't support him. It's not hard to imagine Cosby finding out the same thing.

Once upon a time, Southwest was my airline of choice for conveyance if/when I wanted to go someplace on their route map. I haven't flown anywhere for a while and that may be a good thing…

Of the more than 3,000 flights canceled Tuesday across the U.S., about 85% were Southwest's, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Thousands of the airline's passengers were stranded in airports across the nation — not to mention its crew members. In California, hundreds of flights have been delayed or canceled through the end of the week — making up much of the Southwest schedule.

Here's a link to the whole article and there are many more online explaining what went wrong. My great friend, the actress Jewel Shepard, called this one to my attention. You may have to sign up for an account to read it but there's a free option. Here's an excerpt from it…

We are conditioned to get mad at the human face we see before us, the "representative" of the company who personally profits nothing from our purchase. We are conditioned to get mad at the waiter when our food is late (and penalize this "bad service" with a bad tip) when the vast majority of the time it's due to understaffing by a cheapskate boss. We are conditioned to get upset with the enforcer of arbitrary rules at a hotel checkout, despite it not being their rule at all. We are conditioned to be hostile to the very people we should have the most solidarity with.

Earlier on this blog, you'll see me complaining about surveys that ask us to rate the employee with whom we dealt but which leave no opportunity to complain about the company. Adam Johnson, the author of this piece, is right: Bad service is most often a function of a poorly-run company but our only recourse is to dump on the low-level employees. And "Customer Service" is increasingly becoming the name of a department that cannot service you at all. About all you can get from some of them is a rote apology from a stranger who had nothing to do with whatever warrants that apology.

I don't have any answer for this and I doubt you have one. I also have no reason to believe that if one company treats me poorly, its competitors will treat me much better. Might as well stick with the devil you know. (Thanks, Jewel!)

You probably already know this but there's a wonderful trove of oral histories about television online. The Archive of American Television has interviewed just about everyone they could get their hands on who was important on any TV show more than a decade or two ago.

Here's close to twenty minutes of excerpts from interviews about my favorite program, The Dick Van Dyke Show. You can believe everything these people said except that Sheldon Leonard got the name of the original pilot wrong. It was Head of the Family…

And speaking of that show, you may know that a life-changing moment in my life was when my parents and I attended the filming of an episode of that series. I wrote about it here.

The episode was called "Your Home Sweet Home is My Home Sweet Home" and it was filmed on Tuesday, February 2, 1965. How do I remember that date? I don't but my pal Vince Waldron recently sent me a copy of the call sheet for that filming. You can view the whole thing by clicking on the image below.

A few notes: Eddie Ryder played the accountant in that episode. I was so engrossed that evening staring at Mary Tyler Moore than I didn't recognize Mr. Ryder as one of the traffic controllers in my fave movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He was on the Van Dyke show several times playing different roles.

And as you can see, the schedule says they would start work the following Thursday on the next episode to be rehearsed and filmed, "Anthony Stone." Years later when I worked on sitcoms, the cast never got a day off after a mid-week day of taping or filming.

Vince Waldron knows just about everything about The Dick Van Dyke Show and he put an awful lot of it in his book, The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book. It is highly recommended by me and it can be ordered for a very reasonable price here.

I also recommend Vince's newly-published reissue of Be My Baby, his collaboration with the late girl group singer Ronnie Spector. It's an amazing look into her life and the music business of the day. You can order a copy of that one here. Vince does nothing that is not recommendable.

My favorite singer, Audra McDonald, offers us "The Stars and the Moon"…

A person who shall remain nameless got me hooked on the game of Wordle for about an hour yesterday. In that hour, I played it about fifty times and discovered four five-letter words which, when I entered them in sequence, usually made the puzzle solvable by the third one, sometimes by the second one and certainly by the fourth. Then once, the first word I entered turned out to be the secret word so I solved the puzzle without solving it and that's when I lost interest and become unhooked.

I had a nice chat last night with my pal Brad Ellis, who among his other credits was a musical director on Glee and, in an on-camera capacity, the unspeaking piano accompanist. He's doing great these days and we have a project we want to work on together. Something to think about for 2023.

Lately, I find myself wondering how much of the Denial of Election Results by Losers is actually believed by those Losers. It's starting to look like a good business model for politicians whose careers might be over because of their loss but who can now keep a certain percentage of their supporters on board and donating money by crying, "I wuz robbed!" All you have to do is tell your voters that you have a mountain of evidence that you won. Of course, then you might have to go to court and either (a) not present it there or (b) present it and watch the judge dismiss it as without merit and talk about sanctions.

December 27 might be a good time to get a head start on your New Year's Resolutions. Then you can break them and be done with them in time for them not to mess up New Year's Eve for you.

Lastly: It may change but right now, the weather forecast is calling for a big rainstorm in Southern California on New Year's Eve which might increase traffic accidents…or maybe save the lives of those who'll be wise enough not to venture out in it. Either way, it's supposed to clear by about 6 AM Sunday morning which might feel kind of magical if that's when the annual Rose Parade started. But whenever January 1 falls on a Sunday, the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl get delayed until Monday. Something to do with not wanting to compete with folks going to church.

I have a bunch of questions about inkers in comics like this one from Joe Frank. Those of you who have no interest in this stuff just skip these posts…

Loved both recent columns about Jack Kirby and his Marvel era inkers. Plenty I didn't know, especially that Steve Ditko would've ever recommended or requested George Roussos. I thought George did him no favors, to put it mildly, on both Dr. Strange and the Hulk. Nor Jack, for seven months, on the Fantastic Four. I am curious about two other inkers of that general time frame.

First, Wally Wood. If he was inking others, towards the end of his roughly one year Marvel run, why not Jack on the Fantastic Four or Thor? I know he did the Daredevil figures in F.F. #39 and the cover to Journey Into Mystery #122. He inked a number of Jack's covers and they were beautiful. Really standouts. Because they worked together so well on Challengers of the Unknown and Sky Masters, why not a reunion or a regular gig? Did Stan think Wally was of greater benefit over Don Heck (the Iron Man story in Tales of Suspense #71 and a three issue Avengers run in #20-22)?

Secondly, Frank Giacoia did wonderful work over Jack: F.F. #39, Journey Into Mystery #115 and many episodes of the Captain America strip. Why not enlist him? I've heard he was easily distracted. Was that it? I look at the Cap art and it was tremendous. Joe Sinnott was my favorite but Frank often came very close.

A lot of the questions as to why didn't this inker ink that comic have to do with two factors: Money and schedules. Frank Giacoia was working for several publishers at the time, most of which paid better than Marvel. He was trying to keep all his accounts happy and sometimes he had to say no to someone and sometimes, that someone was Stan Lee.

If he had promised to always make time for Fantastic Four, I'll bet he could have been the regular inker from #39 on…but he couldn't. It's the same reason that sometimes your plumber has to say, "Sorry, I can't fix your leaky faucet today. How about next Monday?" And you have to get someone else. If Marvel had paid better then, Frank might have been more willing to say no to the editors at DC or Western or wherever.

Also: Readers forget that all the comics that came out in the same month weren't always drawn the same month. At times, Kirby was way ahead on his books. He might be penciling the issue of Fantastic Four that would come out in November at the same time someone was drawing the issue of Sgt. Fury that would come out in August.

So maybe Wally Wood has just finished an issue of Daredevil. He turns it in and they have some time before he needs to start on the next one. And maybe Stan is too busy with other matters to discuss what's going to be in that next issue…but Wally wants to go home with some work so he can earn money. There's no issue of Fantastic Four ready to be inked but there is an issue of The Avengers sitting there that Dick Ayers is too busy to get to.

That's how an awful lot of these decisions were made. Wood was not assigned to draw Daredevil in the first place because Stan thought, of all the books Marvel was putting out, that was the best place for Wally. Wood was assigned to the comic because it needed a new artist the day he came by to look for work.

Here's an actual example. Around this time, Stan very much wanted to have Joe Sinnott start inking Fantastic Four but Joe, as I mentioned in another post, was working for Archie and Treasure Chest and Dell. When Marvel raised their rates a bit, he agreed to ink some things for them and one day, he called up and said, "Hi! I'll be ready to take on some work from you on Wednesday if you have anything."

But there was no issue of Fantastic Four waiting for an inker at that moment. Colletta was inking what would turn out to be his last issue, #43. Kirby hadn't drawn #44 yet or maybe it hadn't been dialogued and lettered yet. So that's why Sinnott inked X-Men #13 and the Captain America story in Tales of Suspense #71 before they had an F.F. for him to ink.

You can't always coordinate these assignments the way you want. If you look at the first issue of The Avengers that Wally Wood inked (#20) and at that Iron Man story you mentioned and at the Human Torch story Wood inked in Strange Tales #134, you may be able to discern something they all have in common…

In each case, Wood's name in the credits was lettered in by Wood himself. That's his lettering in there, not that of the man who lettered the rest of the credits. That means that when the story was lettered — the last step in the assembly line before it goes to an inker — they either didn't know who'd be inking it or they put someone else's name in there and Wood had to change it. Again, it was a matter of "This artist needs work right now and that story needs an inker."

It wasn't always that way. Stan (and Sol Brodsky who had some say in who inked what during this period) did have preferences but sometimes they couldn't assign their first choice or someone suddenly needed work.

As for Thor, people keep asking me why Stan kept Colletta on as its inker for so long. They don't seem to want to accept the obvious answer: Stan liked the way Thor looked when Colletta inked it. That was a creative decision, not one necessitated by scheduling concerns.

It may have helped that Colletta got a slightly lower page rate, thereby freeing up some bucks in the budget that could be spent on better-paid inkers like Sinnott, Wood or Giacoia. But Colletta inked Thor for many years for the same reason Carmine Infantino hired him to ink all of Jack's work for DC in 1970. The guy in charge thought Colletta was the best choice for the job. It involved him being cheaper but it also involved him being super-reliable and, as I keep telling people, they liked the way the art looked after Colletta inked it.

The fact that you might not doesn't mean that they didn't, just as Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby liked the way their work looked when George Roussos inked it.

David Letterman's Netflix series recently featured an interview Dave did with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Netflix is making it available for free viewing…

Oh, why can't Christmas last twelve days like in the song? I don't want lords a-leaping or geese a-laying. I don't even want more presents. I just want more of the good spirits and friendliness of the past few days.

Today, I'm allowing myself to look a bit at the news sections of the 'net. If you're unclear on what "The Hunter Biden Laptop Scandal" thing is all about, this article seems like a good, balanced explainer.

Red State Governors are again busing migrant workers to places where those migrants may not wish to go. This sounds like a very cruel, heartless thing to do and according to Kevin Drum, that's the whole point of it. Some voters want politicians to treat these people like animals.

William Saletan breaks down what Donald Trump was doing on January 6…you know, instead of calling in the National Guard to stop the destruction and violence.

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Leaving that kind of politics: I have a number of e-mails asking me if I think the Writers Guild is going to go on strike when the current contract is up on May 1 of 2023. My answer is that, first of all, there's always a chance the Guild will strike if the Producers offer a terrible deal. They've done it before and we'll do it again if they do. You can't say if someone is going to accept an offer if you have no idea what that offer will be.

But generally, I haven't paid enough attention to this matter to have an opinion worth offering here. I used to be very much involved in WGA matters and now I'm not. This article summarized the situation in the middle of last November and I see no reason to think things have changed…or will until we get much closer to the first of May. Fingers crossed, the Guild won't get an offer that will be unacceptable.

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Lastly for now: I continue to be amazed at how readers of this site can sometimes come up with information that I thought was impossible. Recently in this article, I posted a photo of me at some single-digit age posing, none too comfortably, with a Department Store Santa. In various posts here, I mentioned that I had no idea which department store it was, though I mentioned that my family most often shopped at Robinson's, Bullock's or The May Company. I thought it was a question that could never be answered.

And then I got an e-mail from Jon Francis, who lives in Redondo Beach. He writes, "The picture with Santa Claus shown on the 21st was taken at Bullock's. I have a picture of me with the same Santa, still in the original folder. Santa is making the same finger up gesture." Wow. Thanks, Jon.

It's the last night of Hanukkah. Let's spend it in Santa Monica with the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus. This may be my favorite rendition of Tom Lehrer's song…and if you're sad it's over, just go to YouTube and do a search. You'll be amazed how many people have made videos of this tune.  Now that it's public domain, expect a lot more…

This is a rerun of a piece I published here on Christmas Day of 2010 but I have made a few changes in it. It's about a gift exchange with a TV producer for whom I once worked and when I first posted it, I disguised his name with a pseudonym. He was still alive then and while I thought he would have a sense of humor about me telling the tale online, I wasn't sure. Even before he passed away, I decided I was worrying needlessly and when I asked a close friend of his about it, the friend said, "Oh, Alan would laugh about that now." So I went back this time and inserted the real name…

There could still be a late arrival but it looks like this is going to be the first Christmas in quite some time when no one sent me alcohol. All my friends know I don't drink that stuff…not even beer or wine. Somehow, each year, one or more friends forget and I wind up with a bottle or three that has to be given away. Once in a while, the recipients of this regifting are very impressed with the rarity and price of some wine or liqueur and very glad that I don't appreciate or want it.

In the eighties, the rerouting of such gifts was easier. My mother worked each holiday season at Jurgensen's, a gourmet-type grocery and liquor store in Beverly Hills. Until they promoted her to a job that anyone else could have done, she was the head gift-wrapper…and let me brag: My mother in her prime was the best gift-wrapper you ever saw. They were exquisite.

If you were fortunate enough to get a gift wrapped by my mother, you might well not open it because what was inside could not possibly be as beautiful as the exterior. I sent out some expensive gifts back then and it only dawned on me later that I could have gotten away with giving bags of garbage if I'd had my mother wrap them. No one would ever have found out.

Anyway, when I was working on Welcome Back, Kotter, my mother and I invented the Instant Gift Redirect. Our Executive Producer Jimmie Komack used Jurgensen's that year to send wine to everyone he knew. My mother spotted my address on a list and called me up and said, "I have a bottle of Chateau Lafite Something [I forget the name] here for you from Jimmie Komack. What do you want me to do with it?"

"Send it to my agent," I told her and I gave her the address and told her what to write on the card. The next day, she called up to say, "I have a bottle of wine here for you from your agent. What do you want me to do with it?" I told her to send it to Jimmie Komack.

We did this for years…as long as she worked for Jurgensen's. Sometimes, it wasn't as neatly symmetrical as that but it spared me having a lot of bottles around I didn't want. Often of course, I received wine that didn't come from Jurgensen's but we had a solution for that, too. I'd take those bottles over to my parents' house when I visited and my mother would sneak them into Jurgensen's and send them out for me via Jurgensen's delivery methods.

After we did this for a while, she felt guilty so she told the manager and offered to have the costs deducted from her paycheck. The manager laughed, decided it was a great idea and he began bringing in unwanted bottles that had been delivered to his home and having them sent out to others.

My favorite moment in all this came when I was working for Alan Landsburg, a very important TV producer and, by his own admission, a wine snob. The one time he allowed me into his home, I was subjected to a ritual that was apparently required of all visitors — a tour of his wine cellar. It was huge and temperature-controlled and filled with bottles that he fingered like rare Ming Dynasty artifacts.

Though I tried to explain to him that I did not know one wine from another, he would cradle one and say, as if it was the most impressive thing one could possibly say, "This is a 1947 Bordeaux from the hinterlands of [Somewhere-or-Other] and it was bottled on a Thursday by the infamous Maria." Then he'd wait for me to adopt a jealous expression and indicate that I realized what an awesome thing that was to own.

I learned to just go "Wowww" a lot. I also learned that he took his wine seriously. Didn't even snicker when I asked, "Hey, you got any Manischewitz around this dump?" and followed it up by inquiring, "What's a good year for Ripple?"

So, getting back to Jurgensen's: That same year, my mother called and said, "I have a bottle here for you from Alan Landsburg. Where do you want me to send it?" I thought for a second and told her, "Send it to Alan Landsburg." I thought it would make a nice Christmas present…give Alan back his own wine.

It saved me shopping for something. It saved me getting it delivered and paying for it and it also saved me having to figure out to do with that bottle of wine. But the best moment came when we went back to work after the holidays. Alan came by my desk to thank me for the wine. Then he leaned in carefully and said, "Listen, next time you send out wine to people as a gift, check with me and I'll suggest a few. It's important to make a good impression in this town and you don't want people to think you're the kind of guy who'd give out that kind of wine."

I just love this little video. It was designed by R.O. Blechman as a station break for CBS back in 1966 and every year, I get e-mails asking me to post it again. You can read all about Mr. Blechman here but first, watch this…

It's the next-to-last night of this. Here's Michael Feinstein. Join him in the second chorus if you're so inclined…

Cartoonist Joshua Held created this video several years ago using The Drifters' recording of "White Christmas." I feature it here every year and before I do, I get e-mails from people asking me when I'm going to post it. The answer is "Now." Someone recently remastered it in 3-D — with Mr. Held's blessing, I hope — but I prefer the original 2-D…

I'm taking Christmas Eve Day off and maybe Christmas Day as well but there will be new content here which I prepared ahead of time. And here's a replay from 2012 which I last posted here in 2015. It's the story of my family's last Christmas tree…

So here I was in this family where my father was Jewish and my mother was not. But she learned. Of course, all she really learned was how to cook a few Jewish staples like brisket and latkes but that was enough. More than enough.  Remind me to tell you in one of these what it was that caused both families to drop their opposition to my parents' mixed marriage. (Hint: It was the birth of me…or actually, the impending birth of me.)

In our home, we celebrated Hanukkah. I always thought that since I was half-Jewish, I should only light four candles. We also celebrated Christmas and got a big tree. The acquisition of the tree — going to the lot, picking one out, haggling with the salesguy — was a big part of the holidays. My mother, being the least Jewish of the three of us, was more or less in charge of the tree. All my father contributed was to pay for the tree and drive it and us home.

My mother was a purist: No artificial colors on the tree. No flocking. Just a plain, simple green one. We'd position it in one corner of the living room in front of the fireplace that never had a fire in it, and we'd decorate. She and I.

We had two kinds of decorations. My Uncle Aaron was in the window display business. He sold low-cost, pre-fab ones that were made in Hong Kong or elsewhere in the Orient. He'd design them and sell them to stores that needed something simple and cheap to pop into the front window. He also sometimes bid on and would win contracts to supply street decorations to cities.

Uncle Aaron had crates of Christmas ornaments. They cost him almost nothing and he'd give us boxes and boxes of them. We gave a lot of them to neighbors and sometimes, my friend Rick and I would invent a game that involved smashing a box of sixteen. I eventually outgrew thinking it was fun to break things but I enjoyed it at the time.

The hard part of decorating our tree each year was in not cluttering it with too many decorations…because we sure had too many. I'd usually put the balls in place, step back to look at my handiwork, then remove about half of them.

We also had to leave room for my mother's decorations. She had a small box of ornaments from her childhood, including a lovely star to place atop the tree. I don't think they were valuable in a monetary sense but they were priceless to her. I'd put on Uncle Aaron's ornaments and it didn't matter if I broke one or two or twenty. Like I said, we had crates. But my mother's half-dozen ornaments were handled by her and placed on the tree with great care. Then when Christmas was over and it was time for the tree to go away, the first step would be for her to carefully remove her decorations and pack them away for another year.

We did this until I was twelve. In 1964, Uncle Aaron died and we decided not to have a tree that year. It would have been festooned with his ornaments and would just have reminded us that he wasn't around. We didn't have one in '65 or '66 and a few months prior to Christmas of '68, we gave the garage-full of Uncle Aaron's ornaments — I almost just typed "Uncle Aaron's balls" — to a local charity that came and carried them away. My mother made certain that her memento ornaments were not included and I saved the lights and one box of Uncle Aaron's just in case Rick and I ever wanted to play one of our ornament-smashing games again.

As we approached Christmas of that year, my mother admitted she was a little depressed. '68 was a rough year in this country and it had finally "sunk in" for her that we were never going to have a Christmas tree again. When she'd suggested giving away the ornaments in the garage, she hadn't realized the emotional impact of that decision.

So I went out and got her a tree.

Not a big tree. A small tree. It was the symbolism that counted, not the actual tree. And besides, I didn't drive back then so I had to carry it home from the lot up on Pico Boulevard. I selected one that was under three feet, took it home when my parents were out and decorated it with the ornaments I'd saved to smash with Rick and the lights I'd kept. My mother was very happy to come home and find it…and to add her childhood ornaments to the display.

They'd been out buying the ingredients for our Christmas dinner. I think it was pot roast and latkes that year and the meal was a big hit.

So was the tree. Enough time had passed that it didn't bother Aunt Dot (Uncle Aaron's widow) to see a display that contained a reminder of him. It was, in fact, rather pleasant. And we never had another tree again. It didn't seem necessary and I didn't think we could top the short one. Maybe one of these days, I will…and I'll add in my mother's ornaments. That's assuming I can find them.