Here's Sergio Aragonés and some other guy talking about the new Gods Against Groo mini-series, the second issue of which is now on sale…

We were talking here recently about the recording by Brewer & Shipley called "One Toke Over the Line" and how, amazingly, Lawrence Welk had a clean-cut, well-scrubbed couple sing it on one of his shows. No one — not the orchestra, not the other performers, not the crew, not anyone on the production staff — said, "Uh, Mr. Welk…you do know that this is not a song about Jesus, right? It's a song about marijuana."

Or maybe someone did and he didn't care. Or didn't think his audience would. Or something.

Apropos of all this, my longtime pal Joe Brancatelli sent me this note…

So this would have been 1988, the weekend my wife (who flew in from Honolulu) and me (I flew in from New York) met in San Francisco and decided to get married.

We're walking down Richmond Avenue and come across a little music club with a sign in the window: Tonight Only! Maria Muldaur and Brewer and Shipley. How could you not, right?

Brewer and Shipley is the opening act. it's years since "One Toke was a hit." Of course, and they felt compelled to explain to the audience who they were. "We were on The Ed Sullivan Show, you know," Brewer explained. "He booked us as a gospel act. We even met him backstage and he encouraged us to play our Jesus song, said he was looking forward to hearing it."

"We were puzzled," Shipley chimed in. "And nervous because we didn't want to upset him. So we found someone backstage and asked what Ed might be talking about."

You know, the guy said. Play your big hit about Jesus.

Again. We were confused.

"Then," Brewer adds, "we figured it out. We were booked as a religious act because Ed only knew the first line of our song: 'One Toke over the line, Sweet Jesus, one toke over the line…'"

The crowd roared.

You know, my first thought upon reading Joe's e-mail was along the lines of "I'm not sure I buy this." I mean, I'm sure he's accurately reporting what was said from the stage by Mr. Brewer but it's hard to believe that even if Ed thought that, he had a pretty efficient staff and network censors. It's hard to believe that someone on the crew or in the orchestra or from the network or in Ed's employ, didn't say, "Uh, Mr. Sullivan, you do know what a 'toke' is, don't you?"

That was my first thought but my second was this: You wouldn't think that could happen on The Lawrence Welk Show either but we have video proof that it did. So I'm withdrawing my skepticism on this.

In case you haven't heard: CBS will not be replacing James Corden on The Late Late Show…

…we hear that a reboot of @midnight, a series that ran for 600 episodes on Comedy Central from 2013-17, has been chosen for the 12:30 a.m. time slot currently occupied by The Late Late Show.

I have no idea if this is a wise decision. That'll probably depend on who they get to host it…and reportedly, it will not be Chris Hardwick, who I thought was about 95% of the reason to watch the original @midnight. My guess is that CBS is thinking they can get the same numbers with a much cheaper show…and if they get the right host, they might be right.

Sorry I haven't been around as much as usual but things have been busy here, plus I've been fixing this 'n' that on the new software…which, I know, looks an awful lot like the old software. Since this site has been around for a while, a lot of our old video links don't link to anything anymore. But right after the changeover to the new codes, about 400 of them that should have worked didn't and I've now fixed that. Any video links now that don't work never will. A few more other bugs will soon be exterminated as well.

I have written a lot on this blog about my neighbor back when I was growing up, Betty Lynn. Folks know her best as Thelma Lou on The Andy Griffith Show but she was on a lot of other programs, sometimes as a guest and sometimes as a recurring character. The fine folks at MeTV have whipped up a little quiz about her TV appearances not as Thelma Lou and I thank Eduardo Duran for letting me know about it.

Didn't watch The State of the Union live and I only caught a few snippets online. I'm just not in the mood for "Everything my party does or wants to do is right, everything your party does or wants to do is wrong." And too often when I hear those kind of people, my main thought is: "You don't really believe what you're saying. You just think it will get you cheers and donations from your base."

Lastly for now: A number of friends of mine in the comic book business are wrestling with this question: What do you do when someone gets hold of your address and without asking first, ships you one or many comics you worked on, asking that you sign them and send them back? They may or may not include return postage and packing material. The options seem to be (1) sign them and send them back or (2) consider them a gift for you to do with as you please. From now on, I'm opting for (2) and what I'll do with them will probably be philanthropic. Anyone have a problem with that?

I have a weakness for flash mobs — like this one…

This one's about my mother but it's more about her cats. WARNING: A lot of this story is about cats dying and at the end, my mother. But they all died of natural causes — each cat after living what would be considered a long life for a cat; my mother, once she was in her nineties. For a woman who smoked a pack or two of cigarettes every day since she was a teenager, that's a helluva long existence.

If reading about all this death will not bother you, proceed. If it will, click here to be directed to a website that will check and see if your computer is on.

Now, if you're still with me: Some people love dogs. Some people love cats. In my house when I was growing up, we loved cats…one in particular. We had a wonderful one we called Baby and she was everything you could want in a pet. She was affectionate. She loved to lie on my father's stomach when he sat in his easy chair in the living room. She loved to crawl under the covers with me when I was asleep in my bed.

And no mouse ever dared venture onto our property when Baby was on patrol. She was unrivaled when it came to catching and killing rodents. The only thing Baby ever did that my mother didn't like was to occasionally snag a lizard or a bird. At some point, I think Baby actually sensed that the woman who fed her didn't like those kills and she thereafter confined her hunting to mice. Here is a photo of Baby…

Actually, Baby did one other thing we didn't like. She died. She lived a pretty long life for a cat but eventually, she left us. It was very sad in our house when that happened and my parents resisted the idea of getting another cat…not right away, at least.

A few years later, I moved out of the house and into my own apartment. To deal with the new sense of emptiness they felt in their home, my folks decided it was time for another cat. So one day, I drove my mother to a cat orphanage she knew about.

It was a big house — two big houses, side-by-side, actually — filled with cats. There must have been 150+ in each house and if you were allergic, you would have dropped dead inside of three minutes in either building. Even if you weren't, the aroma from several dozen litter boxes might do you in.

Some of the cats, sensing a chance to be adopted, came up to us and rubbed up against our legs. A few of them even performed. I'm not sure if it was on this visit there or a later one but there was one adorable little feline who rushed to us, hopping on its hind legs and clapping its front paws together. You could almost hear it chanting, "Please take me home with you! Please take me home with you!" We wanted to but the lady who ran the cat orphanage said that cat was not available for adoption and she wouldn't say why.

That first visit, my mother was overwhelmed by the choices. She said, "I wish I could take them all home" before the smell in the place reminded her that might not be a good idea. She finally selected a lovely tan pussycat who seemed very affectionate. My mother signed the adoption papers by which she promised to treat the cat well, never let it out of the house and to bring it back to the orphanage if things didn't work out. The superintendent lady said, "Too many people, if they don't get along with the cat, just open the door and kick it out to become a stray."

I made a cash donation to the orphanage and we took Aurora — that's what my mother named her — back to my parents' house and released her from the cat-carrier…

…whereupon Aurora instantly turned into a snarling, hissing, spitting monster. She hated her new home and she wouldn't let anyone within three feet of her. I have no photos of her because I couldn't get close enough to take one…and she also wasn't around that long. After a few days of hoping Aurora would get acclimated, my mother decided to give up. She called me and said, "That cat just howls all night as if she's in pain. Can you come over and somehow trap her and take her back?"

It wasn't easy but I did it. I put on a heavy jacket and gloves and chased her around the house for a half-hour. Finally, I grabbed her up and she screamed and tried to claw me into confetti. Somehow, I managed to stuff Aurora back into the cat-carrier and drive her back where she came from. We released her back into the house there and she instantly reverted to a friendly, affectionate and docile creature. She gave out with a happy purr and a "meow" that almost sounded like: "Thanks but don't do that again!"

The superintendent of the orphanage told me, "That's pretty much what happened when someone before you took her home. I think we're going to have to just keep her here the rest of her life."

A few weeks later, we gave it another try. I drove my mother back to the orphanage and she picked out another cat. This one really wanted to live with my parents so all was happy until it died a few years later. Back we went to the cat orphanage where my mother picked out another one which she named Black. For obvious reasons…

Black was a good cat and I think she served my parents well for four or five years. I may be a bit off on my cat chronology here but I think there was one more before I took my mother back to the cat orphanage for what turned out to be the last time. She took a long time considering each potential pet in the two houses — perhaps as many as 300 of 'em — before she'd narrowed it down to two. One was almost identical to Black.

"I can't decide between them," my mother said. I reminded her, "There's no law that says you can't have two cats." She smiled at me and said, "I was hoping you'd say that." A half-hour later, we were unboxing two pussycats. My mother named the smaller one "Kleiner," which is a name that in some languages means "smaller." Kleiner, whose name soon turned into "Kleina," was as friendly and affectionate as Baby had been. The black one got the name "Black II." Here's a photo of the two of them…

I took that photo the day we brought them home and it was almost the last time I saw Black II. She was never as openly hostile as Aurora but not long after she moved in, Black II developed a strong fear of men. She would roam the house freely and even let my mother pet her but only if there was no male in the building. If there was, she sprinted for my parents' bedroom and hid under their bed.

Since my father was retired and home almost all the time, Black II was under that bed almost all the time. During sleeping hours, she'd sneak out to eat and use the litter box. Most of the time, she was under the bed and probably directly under him. He almost never saw her…

…and the only other time I did was a few years later when my mother called and said she hadn't seen Black II for a day or so and there was a foul smell in the bedroom. I had to go over, extract the body and take it away as my mother sat in the living room, not wanting to see any of this.

By this point, my father had passed away. Black II and Kleina — and later, just Kleina — were good company for my mother. Both cats lived good lives and Kleina was around for quite a while. When my mother was hospitalized, as she often was during her last twenty years on this planet, she was more concerned about the feeding of the cat(s) than she was about her own welfare. I would go over to tend to that and to litterbox cleaning…or sometimes, her neighbor Betty Lynn would attend to such matters.

Eventually, Kleina passed away. When I asked my mother when she wanted to go back to the cat orphanage, she said (sadly) that she didn't. She was having enough trouble taking care of herself by then and she was afraid she wouldn't do right by a cat. She asked, "What if when I opened the door, it got out? I wouldn't be able to chase her. What if I was hospitalized for a long time? You or Betty would have to come over every day." So she never had another cat.

But I did, sort of. As some of you may remember, I used to feed stray cats in my backyard and for years, always had between one and five out there plus occasional guests for dinner. One regular tenant was an extremely affectionate older feline we called The Stranger Cat. He eventually never left my yard except when my lovely friend Carolyn would let him inside. He'd sleep on a towel in my kitchen while she prepared a meal for us. He truly was a cat who loved being petted and held.

During my mother's catless years, I had to take her to Kaiser Hospital every week or two for some sort of checkup or in-patient treatment. When we were ready to leave Kaiser, I'd say to her, "Would you like to stop off and visit The Stranger Cat?" Sometimes, she was too tired and just wanted to be taken straight home. But sometimes, she'd smile almost impishly and say, "Maybe just for a short visit."

My mother was at that point usually in a wheelchair. She could walk around her house because she knew it so well and it was such a small house but when she went out, she used a wheelchair. There was no way she could get up either the front or back steps of my house or even into the backyard so I'd just pull into the garage and she'd wait in my car while I went and got The Stranger Cat.

He was always there and he seemed to enjoy what transpired as much as she did. I'd carry him over to the open passenger door of my car, place him on my mother's lap and she'd pet him and rub his face and just love the feel of his fur and the soothing, contented purr he sometimes gave off. This would go on for five or ten minutes before she'd hand him back to me and say, "You'd better take me home now." I'd return The Stranger Cat to my yard and drive my mother home.

On that drive to her house, she'd be about as happy as I saw her the last few years of her life. She was very depressed about her deteriorating health and while her doctors prescribed cheer-up medication, nothing made her feel as good as a few minutes of petting The Stranger Cat.

The Stranger Cat died peacefully at an unknown but very old age in May of 2012. I didn't tell my mother and when she asked how he was, I'd lie and say, "Great except that he really misses you." By that point, her medical problems were more acute. When I drove her home from Kaiser that last year, it was always after a long stay, usually including a week or more in a nursing home elsewhere. So she never asked about swinging by my place to pet The Stranger Cat. If she had, I don't know what I would have done.

She died the following October. All through her last few years, as she kept being hospitalized and as it became harder and harder to see or hear or get around, she kept telling me that she wished Assisted Suicide was an option; that she wanted it to be over. When it was, I was glad she was out of physical pain and that she went before she became totally blind, which was probably only a few months away. And I was also glad that she never found out about The Stranger Cat.

Sorry I missed posting yesterday. I'm trying to get work done…both the professional kind and the remodel-my-blog kind. I have a couple of long articles that I wrote some time back and have been saving for times when I was just too busy to write anything new here…or at least anything much longer than this message. I will post one of them before the day is out.

I'm not providing much entertainment here this weekend but maybe this will. Here's a rather long Lewis Black special from 2009, much of which is still timely. Caution: Contains language.

And I'm paying so little attention to the news that by the time I wrote about it, a fighter jet from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia had already shot down the alleged Chinese Spy Balloon. Personally, I think we should have let it float around until Thanksgiving and left a space for it in the Macy's Parade.

Still trying to trim that "To Do" list down to a manageable length. I'm not looking at the news much but what I see is a lot of people panicking over that "Chinese spy balloon" that seems to be drifting over parts of the U.S. — and there are reports that there's more than one and also that these have been there before but the government just kind of hushed that news up because the balloons were harmless and there was a fear people would react like…

…well, like a lot of them seem to be reacting right now. I don't have the energy to read all the articles so maybe someone has a solid take on what these balloons might be spying for and what it is we really don't want them to see that isn't visible on Google Maps.

Meanwhile: The second issue of Gods Against Groo is on sale now. Two more to go and then the next Groo mini-series will follow a few months after this one is completed. One of the things on that "To Do" list of mine is doing whatever it is I do on that series, which I shall do as soon as I figure out what it is I do on these comics.

My pal Arnie Kogen — oft-mentioned on this blog — explains what it was like to write on The Dean Martin Show…

My "To Do" list is approaching the length of the lists of George Santos Lies that some news sites are keeping. I am spending today trying to whittle my list down to size so don't expect a lot of posts here today…or over this weekend, probably. And I'm not slighting you or this blog. Some of what I'm doing involves furthering the migration of this site to its new software.

Oh! I wanted to mention this. Back on Wednesday, I posted links to three video segments from the 9/26/1974 Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The folks who oversea Mr. Carson's archives have now posted the video of that complete episode which also includes a little more with the guests plus Johnny's monologue, a bit at the desk with Ed and a sketch featuring The Ace Trucking Company (including Fred Willard). If you want to see the whole thing, here it is.

I'll be back with more stuff when I'm back with more stuff. Ciao.

Here's a backstage web video done for Stephen Colbert's show: Eight minutes of Nathan Lane reminiscing about a few of the 25 starring roles he's played on Broadway. I saw him in Guys and Dolls, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (twice!), The Producers and November. Those are the ones I actually saw on or around Broadway and I saw a few others on video. I've liked every show I've seen him in except November and I even liked him in that show. I just didn't like the show. Wish I'd seen the others…

Mike W. asks…

I'm looking for someone to agent my writing. Tell me a true story that ends with the phrase, "And that's when I knew I shouldn't sign with that agent!"

With your kind permission, I'm going to change it to "And that's when we knew we shouldn't sign with that agent." The "we" is myself and my partner at the time, Dennis Palumbo. We had accomplished something that few beginning writers were able to do. We had gotten a script assignment for a prime-time series from Norman Lear's company and we did it without having an agent. True, it was The Nancy Walker Show, which was canceled sometime during the middle commercial of the debut episode. And also true was that none of what we wrote got in front of a camera.

But at the time we got the job, it was a big thing. And suddenly, every agent in town wanted to meet with us and pitch us on hiring him or her to represent us. So in one amazing week, Dennis and I went to see nine or ten agents. The first five or six all did their best selling job, telling us how they'd get us jobs galore and fulfill our every dream about Show Business. That's, after all, what agents do: They sell. You wouldn't want an agent who wasn't a skilled salesperson.

So we go see the sixth or seventh one, already a bit weary of telling our life stories and explaining where we saw our careers going. This one agent greets us warmly, sits us down, offers us refreshments and then begins his "pitch" with, I swear to you, the following words…

"Now, I'm not good at getting you work…"

Honest. He said that. He said that to two beginning writers he was hoping would become his clients. Dennis and I looked at each other like we were Abbott and Costello in one of those monster-meeting movies of theirs meeting the monsters. It was like a guy who wants to be your dentist telling you, "Now, I have no idea how to fill a cavity…" or a pilot welcoming you on his plane by saying, "Now, I don't have the slightest clue how to fly this thing…" We were both waiting for the "but" and what would follow.

Which is when the agent guy added, "But when you do get a job, no one will get you more money."

He went on, getting increasingly animated as he said, "I will kill for you. I negotiate like John Wayne storming the beach in war movie, only I take no prisoners. I will leave them bleeding…bleeding and begging for mercy! I will hurt them for you and hurt them bad and get you every fuckin' cent there is to be gotten. I have never left even a nickel on the table…"

That was when one of us — I think Dennis — said, "Boy, you're some tipper." But the agent didn't hear it and went on for five minutes more saying things like, "Did you ever see one of those movies where the hero slaughters two dozen opponents and steps triumphantly over their bodies, all lying there in a pool of blood? That's me after I negotiate with those Business Affairs guys!"

I guess there are some writers who want that. We sure didn't, especially when we were starting out. Not that this ever happened to me at least, but you don't want to walk into your first creative meeting once the deal is set and have the producer say, "After what we went through to get you, you'd better be fucking brilliant!" If it ever happens to me, I'll probably say, "If I give back some of the money, could the goal just be for me to write a good script?"

Dennis and I made polite conversation for a few minutes with the bloodthirsty agent and we said we'd think it over and get back to him. We thought it over for three seconds in the hallway outside his office and then never got back to him.

But that moment when he said, "I'm not good at getting you work"…that's when we knew we shouldn't sign with that agent. Is that kind of what you wanted, Mike?

Things got a little outta hand on The Tonight Show for 9/26/1974 and I'm not sure how much of this was planned. On a talk show today if these kinds of things happened, they would all be planned and the host would never not know what was going to happen.

Here are three segments — one each with Dom DeLuise, Burt Reynolds and Art Carney. You may see why I think Mr. Carney was one of the five best comedians of his generation. But watch the clips in sequence…