I am told that the rumor about the Top Screenwriters who were pledging to force the WGA to accept whatever the hell the DGA gets…that report has been exposed as a hoax. Like I said: Do not believe any story of that sort that doesn't have names attached and some confirmation from those names. And even then, it could be bogus or a bluff.

And to clarify: I think Jay Leno ought to do whatever is humanly possible to comply with WGA strike rules. I'm not 100% certain what that is, what he can do to fulfill his contractual responsibility as a performer on The Tonight Show and not be in violation of his union's rules. But whatever it is, that's what he ought to do. It's a little difficult for any of us to say what that is from afar and, as I was trying to explain, the line of demarcation between Jay writing and Jay ad-libbing can get a bit smokey. It's one of those "glad I don't have to figure that one out" problems.

Lots of e-mails asking me about this situation where the WGA is saying that Jay Leno is not allowed under its rules to do his monologue and he's saying he got permission and they're saying he didn't and NBC is saying he doesn't need permission, yadda yadda yadda. Nikki Finke, your one-stop shopping link for Strike News, has all the back-and-forth. I don't know much about it that isn't there.

I do know that there can be a murky area in which it's hard to distinguish which words a performer speaks on air are "written." A lot of what is uttered on talk shows is arguable and some of the best hosts are quite facile at taking what someone writes and then paraphrasing or turning it into an approximate ad-lib. If a performer knows what he's going to say before he goes out on stage, is he writing for himself? If he actually writes it down, has someone put key words (or even the whole thing) on cue-cards and then he goes out and says roughly what he'd say if it wasn't on the cards…is that writing? Leno can write all he wants for his stand-up act. If he uses some of those jokes on The Tonight Show, is he writing?

Sort of, sometimes…but you can see where this can get messy. If I ever felt sorry for people in his income bracket, I'd feel sorry for the guy now. He's always been an honorable man and that seems to be the consensus of those who've had a lot more contact with him than I have. Because he's a writer-performer and only one of those professions is on strike, he's caught in an awkward position. He ought to do what the WGA says is Kosher but that may be at odds with what he feels he must do to keep his ratings up.

They weren't so wonderful last night. He beat Letterman but not by a wide margin…this, despite the fact that NBC had a powerhouse prime-time line-up with all new shows, whereas CBS had all reruns. Someone's got to be a little worried and it ain't Dave.

Ms. Finke has also posted the rumor that a bunch of "A-List" Screenwriters and possibly top TV Showrunners as well are going to press the WGA to accept whatever deal the DGA makes. I find it hard to believe that someone could become a wealthy writer in this town if they were willing to accept someone else's deal before it was even negotiated. You don't do that if you're writing a movie and the other guy is writing a similar movie. You especially don't do that when the other guy's deal may involve cash points (i.e., ways of figuring how much he gets paid) that don't apply to you.

The DGA has sometimes been very clever about agreeing to some deal that puts money in the pocket of the guy who directs a film or TV show but doesn't yield revenue to anyone else who takes those terms. It would be like if we were both negotiating to write comic books and you said, "I'll take whatever deal Evanier makes." And then I made a deal where the writer works for free but gets a huge cash bonus if he's had Gastric Bypass Surgery in the last two years, is Jewish but has a last name people think is French, and once got punched in the arm by Jack LaLanne. (I was going to add in "…keeps having his luggage lost by Southwest Airlines but that could apply to just about anybody.)

In any case, here's a general rule of thumb: Don't put much stock in any rumor that involved unnamed people. It may turn out to be true but most of them don't.

I'll write more when there's more.

It's on tonight…and I really hope I haven't oversold this thing and that none of you feel any obligation to sit through it. Skidoo is the movie of which Jackie Gleason, its star, once said: "The picture turned out to be the greatest meatball that was ever made!" He did not mean that as a compliment even though he probably loved meatballs.

John M. Miller reminds me that they have a lot of info and downloads of Skidoo over at the Turner Classic Movies website. Here's the link…but if you haven't seen the film, I'd suggest going there after your first viewing. You'll enjoy it ever so much more if you don't know what's coming…and yes, I'm using the word "enjoy" in the broadest sense.

Years ago, I was going to write a book called something like Fascinating Movies, and my definition was not that they were necessarily good or bad. It would have contained some of each…a concept which seemed to baffle a company that thought they wanted to publish it but couldn't grasp that I wouldn't just be writing about movies that were fun to watch because they were such utter disasters. I think some films just transcend being thought of as good or bad. The sheer fact that they were made and that they exist is far more significant than whether you can have a good time watching them or why you might enjoy the ones in the Hindenburg category. In some upcoming post, I'll try to list some of the ones I'd cover if I were writing that book today. In the meantime, here's our last posting of the banner for perhaps the most transcendent of them all…

Someone from Southwest Airlines woke me up at 8 AM this morning to tell me they were still looking for my suitcase. She hung up before I could tell her that I'd found my suitcase last night. In fact, I have a copy here of their final report that says I'd found my suitcase. They will probably lose others while they're busy searching for mine.

In a Vegas hotel room and yes, I have my suitcase. It came in on the next plane with no explanation. So did about a half-dozen pieces of luggage for others who were on my flight. A nice gentleman at the Southwest Your-Baggage-Is-Lost-And-We-Don't-Know-Where-The-Hell-It-Is Department apologized profusely and gave each of us a voucher for $50 off on future air travel. Unfortunately, you have to use it on Southwest.

This was a sudden trip…my first to the town in something like six years. I used to come here twice a month on average but things change. The town has changed, too…old hotels gone, new ones in their places. I've changed, too. Since my gastric bypass surgery, going to the buffets will not be cost-effective. The only things that haven't changed are that people drink, people smoke, people gamble and Southwest loses your luggage.

There will be more Vegas Blogging to come. And other things.

I used to write for a comedian who told me one of the "perks" of appearing on talk shows. It was that every time he had some medium-to-small annoyance in his life, he could look on the bright side of it by thinking, "Good panel." That meant it could be material for his next appearance with Johnny, Merv, Mike or whoever. Little by little, I have come to feel that way about blogging.

I, unlike my suitcase, am in Las Vegas — at the airport, in fact. Where my suitcase is, God may know but Southwest Airlines hasn't the foggiest. I got there on time, checked in an hour before takeoff, even watched the security folks scan my bag and put it on the little conveyor belt…

…and that was the last anyone's seen of it. It might be on the next flight in from LAX, which is what I'm waiting here to see. Or it might still be on the plane I just got off, which has already continued on to Texas. Other, more horrible possibilities have also occurred to me.

Years ago, when I was coming to this town quite often, I gave up flying Southwest because this kept happening. I thought something might have changed but I guess not.

I have about twenty minutes before the next flight arrives. So what can I do in the meantime? I can blog about it.

I posted these about half an hour ago but the "technical difficulties" of which I write made them somehow go away.

Last night's ratings: Leno had a 5.3/12, Letterman had a 4.3/10 and Nightline had a 3.0/6. More viewers tuned in than usual but that's about the spread that those shows had before the strike. I suspect a lot of people are surprised that Jay did as well as he did and that Dave ain't all that happy this morning. He might become happy in the weeks to come if he can book better guests than Jay and/or if Leno's monologue segment collapses on him. Jay is under a lot of pressure to generate that thing every night and it won't be easier with all the talk that's building about how even writing for himself is a violation of WGA strike rules. I'm not certain if it is, or if it's an issue the Guild wants to press at the moment.

Tonight, I'm betting the numbers look a lot like they did, pre-strike. There's a lot less curiosity tune-in, people wondering "What will he do?" But this could change over the weeks. I still think the strike will be over sooner than the dire forecasts are predicting but we certainly have a number of weeks ahead of us and NBC ain't gonna break and make an interim contract any time soon.

In other news: Conan had a 2.5/8, Ferguson had a 1.9/6 and Kimmel had a 1.4/4. Those are more or less pre-strike numbers, though Kimmel's is a bit lower than the norm.

But none of these are the numbers you care about. You want to know the final tally in our Utterly Unscientific Poll in which thousands of you voted. Here are those numbers and I'll leave you to decide for yourself what they indicate. Me, I'm leaning towards, "Not much…but isn't it fun to vote like this?"

We're having a little trouble here at the old weblog with some postings appearing twice or even three times. I am not repeating myself. I am not repeating myself. It will be fixed. It will be fixed.

As a loyal WGA member, I wish I could report that Jay Leno's first broadcast without his writers was a total disaster. I thought his segment with Mike Huckabee was pretty lame but then politicians on talk shows usually bother me. The venue is not conducive to asking them hard questions and it's annoying to see these guys (all these guys) given the chance to present themselves as good-natured, witty chaps and not have to answer for the slimier things they've said or done.

But I thought what came before that — Jay's monologue and an unscripted Q-and-A with the audience — was entertaining enough. Leno has always been a much better ad-libber than his critics think he is and he has a great rapport with the people out front. His monologue was pretty standard Leno so I can believe he wrote it himself. I'm not as sure though that it wasn't a violation of WGA rules.

I was a lot less impressed with Conan O'Brien's show…and I say that as someone who usually likes Conan. The absence of real comedy material was felt on Leno's show but it was really felt on O'Brien's. Maybe he'll fall into a rhythm but it just seemed like he wasn't sure what he was there to do…play off the absence of written material or move past it. He and Bob Saget didn't seem to have much to say to one another after they got past the strike talk.

Letterman was Letterman. I like the guy but I don't always like his show, especially when it feels like I've seen it before. I was surprised at how totally he fell back into the old ennui and even Robin Williams couldn't do much the change the energy level. (The problem with Williams as a guest on any talk show is that he does what he does and the host could go out for a sandwich while he does it.) I really wish Dave could get back to that time when you tuned him in wondering, "What's he going to do tonight?" Maybe I set myself up for disappointment by thinking he'd seize on this opportunity to do something he hadn't done a hundred times before.

Craig Ferguson is being TiVoed at this very moment but I probably won't watch him until tomorrow.

All in all, nothing really changed much so I'm inclined to think the ratings won't, at least after a day or two. If Letterman can get substantially better guests now that Jay's being picketed and he isn't, that might give The Late Show an advantage. But pretty much everything I think has made a majority of viewers pick Jay over Dave is still intact. I'll be surprised if the numbers show much switchover.

Skidoo, a movie of mind-boggling inanity, is on Turner Classic Movies this weekend. Let's clarify when.

When I made the below banner, I gave the date as January 4, which is Friday. The truth is that its official airtime is 11 PM on Friday night on the West Coast, 2 AM on Saturday morning on the East Coast. So it's technically January 5 in some time zones.

So…is Mike Huckabee trying to appear uncommonly clueless? This is in this morning's New York Times (not the Wall Street Journal)…

Former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas today professed his support for the striking television writers union just a few hours before he was expected to board a plane to for a taping of the Jay Leno show where he will face a vocal picket line of striking writers.

Mr. Leno's program is returning to the air for the first time since a long hiatus for the strike. Speaking to reporters, Mr. Huckabee said he was unaware that he would be crossing picket lines and believed that he the program had reached a special agreement with the union.

Although crossing picket lines might not be unusual for most Republican candidates, Mr. Huckabee has waged an unusual populist campaign on economic issues, stressing his empathy with the anxieties of working people. On Wednesday, he said he identified with the striking television workers as an author himself and believed they deserved a share of the proceeds from the sale of their work.

…and then it goes on from there (link) to list some of his other recent inconsistencies.

So what's the deal here? I could maybe, possibly buy that Huckabee didn't know the show hadn't reached (or even tried for) a special arrangement with the Writers Guild. I mean, that suggests a pretty shoddy grasp of current events but it's possible. But do we think no one on the guy's staff knew? Go Google "Leno AND strike" and see how many hits you get that impart that little nugget of information. I mean, it isn't a secret. Don't you think that when Huckabee made the decision to leave Iowa, where the all-important caucuses are tomorrow, and fly to Burbank to do a TV show, someone said, "Uh, governor, you know you'll be crossing a picket line, right?"

This matters to me for the obvious reason that it's my union on strike here. But I also agree with those who say we don't demand/expect enough from our elected officials, especially our President, in terms of experience and smarts and just knowing what's going on around them. An awful lot of voters seem to think that if the candidate seems like a nice guy — someone you could have a beer with — or someone who'd go to your church and go often, that's enough. He can surround himself with people who know all the stuff he doesn't. I got an e-mail last night from a friend making the case for Barack Obama that way. Yeah, he may be a little inexperienced but that doesn't matter…

Gee, if experience doesn't matter when you run for President, where does it matter? I've worked for comic book editors who wouldn't let me write a story for them if I didn't have sufficient credits.

I have never bought the "I didn't know" defense from any President. Didn't buy it when Ronald Reagan said it about trading arms for hostages. Didn't buy it when Bill Clinton said he didn't know about all those fund-raising violations. It's theoretically possible they didn't know but they should have. Either way, it's not an appealing trait for someone who can do so much damage if he makes the wrong decision.

It sounds to me like Huckabee is trying to have it both ways. The other day, he showed that attack ad on Romney to reporters but said he woudn't run it. So he got its message out but tried to claim some moral high ground for not disseminating it. Today, he's going to cross a union's picket line to get some teevee time but claim it was because he didn't know there would be a picket line from a union he says he supports. It's like Tom Snyder used to say: "It isn't what they do sometimes…it's how dumb they apparently think we are."

Ah, now we know the reason I couldn't find that Garfield article in the New York Times article. Because the piece was actually in the Wall Street Journal. Here it is — from June 1, 1993…

Cartoon cat Garfield is not only lazy and a glutton; it seems he has also been trying to cheat on his Nielsen ratings.

During the past three years, CBS has repeated seven times an episode of the Saturday morning animated program "Garfield and Friends," in which the cat opens the show saying, "Hi everyone, and a special welcome to Nielsen families."

The several-second greeting seems innocuous enough, particularly to Nielsen-naive kiddies who probably don't understand the reference to the ratings service, Nielsen Media Research. Innocuous or not, however, it's strictly forbidden as far as Nielsen is concerned, because of the potential it has to distort the television ratings.

In theory, the gimmick makes it more likely that viewers will remember to punch in with the Nielsen "peoplemeter" or to record their viewing of the cartoon in Nielsen's paper diaries.

CBS says it didn't know about the greeting. The felonious feline got away with the trick until Saturday, May 22, when a sharp-eyed viewer from rival NBC (presumably an adult) noticed the message and immediately protested to Nielsen, which then told CBS to desist.

A spokesman for Nielsen said there is no way to gauge whether the gimmick affected the ratings of the 9 a.m. program, which is top-rated among the two-to-11-year-old set. The show goes into its sixth season in the fall.

The ratings company won't take any action against CBS other than sending a letter to all of its clients notifying them of the situation. But a spokesman says, "Maybe we ought to string them up by their paws."

Lee Mendelson, "Garfield" executive producer, calls the greeting "an innocent joke," and says it never would have been included had the producers, United Media/Mendelson Productions and Film Roman & Claws Inc., known it was a problem.

Mr. Mendelson says he's mystified by the brouhaha. "Of all the problems in the world, I wouldn't put this at the top of the list," he says.

I'm pretty sure the article got the quote wrong. Garfield said, "…all you lovely Nielsen families." It also erred on the name of Jim Davis's company, which is Paws, Inc. And I do recall being told that Nielsen had agreed to drop that week's ratings out when they averaged the season, thereby voiding that week…which didn't affect the numbers at all. But the reporter was right on one thing I forgot: NBC didn't complain until the seventh time this episode had been run.

No one got the least bit mad at me, by the way. The reaction at CBS was bewilderment because even though it may technically be against some obscure Nielsen rule, that kind of joke does pop up from time to time on shows and no one ever complains. We had a not-dissimilar line in another episode and no one noticed or objected.

Thanks to the many readers of this site who took the time to go look for the piece and forward me copies. The first five were Vern Morrison, Bill Stiteler, Roger Green, Eric Newsom and someone whose handle is Proquest.