They're losing the narrative thread. Top of Hour 9, Tom Bergeron engages in banter with two Muppet-style puppets, then the latter perform their version of "Bohemian Rhapsody." It's a nice act but I went back and forth on the TiVo and couldn't find any mention of who the puppets were or where they appear or anything of the sort.

They're followed by Barry Manilow singing "I Write the Songs" with voiceover intro by Jerry and cutaways to him waving one of those glowing wands that Manilow audiences wave. It's a clip from a previous telethon but you have to figure that out. Then, fifteen minutes into Hour 9, Ed McMahon announces they're live from Las Vegas…and there's Jerry. Is he back from his nap? No, this is what I saw earlier, when I was up in the middle of the night. They're rerunning material from earlier in the telethon. Interestingly, I don't see any shots of the tote board and I think they've edited out the moments when Jerry and Ed go to check how much they've collected so far.

Shortly after the top of Hour 10, Jerry mysteriously disappears and we're back with Tom Bergeron, Kelly Monaco and Bob Zany…and I guess it's live because we're again seeing the tote board, which is up over 15 million. Still, it must be a snooze for the live audience in Vegas. Half the acts being shown are pre-tapes and between them, there are long stretches of pitches for MDA that are also pre-taped. Bergeron finally brings on Teri Ralston, a wonderful Broadway performer who was in the original production of Company. She offers up a nice preview of a new Broadway-bound show she's doing, Hats. Good performance, terrible time slot.

She's followed (after some plugs) by the ladies of "Fantasy," a show at the Luxor. Usually, I think they have their tops off when they do this number.

If you're going to record any part of this show next year, try to snag the wee small hours of the morning. It's an odd lineup of acts, mostly from Vegas, some of them quite good. I'm watching the performers who drew that coveted 4 AM time slot. Their intro was a bit fuzzy but I think it's the show from the big room at the Sahara in Las Vegas, which is called "The Platters, Beary Hobb's Drifters and Cornell Gunter's Coasters." I'm guessing lawyers worked that out because none of these folks were in the original Drifters or Coasters, and maybe one sang at one time with the Platters. By any name, it's a band of very talented black singers who get the crowd up and dancing to hits of the fifties…

…or at least, the crowd that's there. The audience is pretty enthusiastic — what there is of one. The performers sing "Shout" and try to get everyone up and dancing…but there's only so much you can do with empty seats.

Tom Bergeron is showing us scenes from Las Vegas, explaining how many streets are named for the great entertainers who've played the town. One throughfare was recently named (or maybe renamed) Jerry Lewis Way and the nice thing, he notes, is that it intersects with Dean Martin Boulevard. There's gotta be a joke there: Yeah, and then they split off and don't come together for the next thirty-five years. By the way, Dean Martin Boulevard is the only street in the world where you can get arrested for not driving drunk.

More reruns from earlier in the evening when Jerry was there live. I have to go do stuff so I may not get back to the Love Network for a while. I hope it doesn't read like I'm putting the telethon down because I'm really enjoying it, especially with fast-forwarding. I'll write more about it later.

Kevin Drum, one of my favorite political bloggers, brings us this chart of how median incomes have dropped across the U.S. in the last six years. It's a wonderful answer for those Bush backers who wonder why, with the economy doing "so well," more Americans don't give the administration credit for a great recovery. Maybe it's because it isn't reaching most of them.

I dunno why the Democrats don't build the second tier of their '06 campaign around this issue. The first tier, of course, would be Iraq and whatever other countries we're about to invade. But I can sure imagine a commercial that flashes photos of those execs (especially at oil companies) who are taking home a million bucks a day. Precede it with a quick soundbite of Bush saying how great the economy's doing, then show the execs as a voiceover intones, "It is…but only for Bush's billionaire cronies." Then tick off the list of states from that chart: Down 11.3 in North Carolina, down 12 in Michigan, down 10.4 in Oregon, etc.

It used to be the economy, stupid. Now, it's the war, stupid…and by the way, the economy, too. I'm going back to watching the telethon.

Actually, I seem to be Norm Crosby Blogging right now as I catch up with my TiVoed recording of the telethon. Jerry seems to have gone away halfway through Hour 4 and Norm is hosting. The corporate donors can't be that thrilled to be making their appearances to donate million dollar checks to Crosby instead of to Jerry…and in the middle of the night, no less. I'm guessing it's a trade-off deal: "Okay, I'll do 3 AM with Norm but you have to give me prime-time with Jerry for my next two checks."

If anyone ever sets up a Wikipedia page to define "tough room," they could link to a clip of Bob Zany's performance.

The local telethon segment is hosting a stunt they do each year that always struck me as a tacky context for fund-raising. Over the last few weeks, we are told, criminally big-hearted folks were arrested by MDA deputies and locked up in hoosegows throughout Southern California. They were given cell phones — I think that's supposed to be a pun — to call out and raise bail to earn their release. They fought the law but MDA was the winner. That's right: It's the MDA Telethon Executive Lock-Up and we see mug shots (most behind bars and in prison garb) of business folks who agreed to be prisoners until they could get their associates to donate some undetermined amount of cash to the cause. The background music for the mug shots is "I Fought the Law and the Law Won." I can sure understand why people want to raise money for MDA; just not why someone thought it would be cute to cast them in the role of crooks trying to save their own skins.

Speech after speech urges us to feel compassion and concern for people — children, especially — afflicted with Muscular Dystrophy…and I do. But there are some TelePrompter readings that also make me concerned for the health of Ed McMahon and, on the local segments in Los Angeles, Casey Kasem.

Six and a half hours in and much of the hosting job passes, without fanfare, over to Bob Zany and Tom Bergeron. They're announcing the telethon has topped the eleven million dollar mark. I'm not sure if my donation, made online at the MDA website, will be counted in there.

I think we need a new telethon to find a cure for Louie Anderson's tie.

Louie's performance, along with Bob Zany's, redirects my compassion to comedians who have to work a cold audience that's heavily distracted and sitting way too far from the microphones. Given the house, he does pretty well but it's sharper material than the laughs we're hearing at home would indicate. A writer friend of mine, the late Gary Belkin, used to point to comedians on TV and say, "Lost eyes," meaning that they were getting no sense of audience response and didn't know where to look, who to play to. We could send out a search party for Louie's eyes…that is, assuming they weren't distracted by the tie.

When Bob Zany (who's lost a ton of weight) comes over to thank Louie, it looks like the after-and-before in one of those Leptopril commercials.

I'm TiVoing rapidly through the charity pitches and watching the acts. There are some pretty good ones even if the live audience doesn't seem to know it. There's nothing deader than a Las Vegas audience that didn't pay to get in. I'll report back later.

And I just peeked at what's going on…and what's going on is that they're rerunning earlier hours of the telethon. Is this something new? It's been a few years since I tried to watch the whole thing and back then, they did twenty hours to fill a twenty hour telethon even though it meant others sitting in the host chair while Jerry got his beauty sleep. Is this how they do it now? They do some hours and then they rerun them? Even though the tote board is far, far behind reality?

Okay, good night again. This time, for real.

When you get up in the morning, phone your friend of 35+ years, cartoonist Scott Shaw! Discuss the comic book story the two of you have agreed to do together for an upcoming special anthology and for God's sake, wish the guy a happy birthday! In fact, maybe you can post something cute on your site saying it's Happy Scott Shaw Day…that is, if you can figure out where the exclamation point goes in that phrase. And while you're at it, plug his website, Oddball Comics, and tell people it's full of the zaniest, wackiest comic book covers ever and that they'll have a great time if they click on over and read some of his Oddball Comics Commentaries.

I can't believe I actually got out of bed to post the above. Good night again.

Okay, Mark is confused again. It's the top of Hour 4 where I am and Jerry's getting emotional. He's paying tribute to a woman who used to work for him…Lil Mattis. He describes her as "one of the best lyricists that I had ever heard in our business." It's not clear if she passed away or just left his employ, though his manner would suggest the former. To honor her, he sings "Even Now," a song made famous by Barry Manilow. At the end, he shouts, "Lil Mattis…she wrote that!"

Did she? Really?

I mean absolutely no disrespect to Ms. Mattis but the official songwriter credits for "Even Now," as listed on the sheet music and in the BMI Database, say it was written by Marty Panzer and Barry Manilow. Ms. Mattis was a member of ASCAP and a search of their listing for Lillian Mattis lists only eight songs, including a couple of Jerry Lewis movies and TV shows, along with the lyrics to the title song of the Jack Lemmon movie, How to Murder Your Wife. "Even Now" is not listed among her credits.

So what's the deal here? Did Jerry just pay tribute to Lil Mattis by singing a tune she had nothing to do with and giving her credit for it? Or did he just reveal that she ghost wrote that song and others took credit for it? [UPDATE, years later: Mystery solved.]

Changing subjects slightly: It's hard not to notice that Jerry Lewis has two modes for introducing performers. When he's introducing a pal, he's smiling and loose and urging everyone to go see them and obviously not paying a lot of attention to what's on the TelePrompter. But then along comes an act that's just an act to him, if that. He introduces The Village People with an unenthusiastic reading of the prepared text with no personal Lewis recommendation or plug…and then at the end of a performance pre-taped elsewhere, he doesn't thank them, doesn't say anything at all about them. It's off to the tote board.

Then again, the guys in the once-outrageous costumes who just sang "Macho Man" and "Y.M.C.A." are The Village People in the same sense that Steve Martin is Inspector Clouseau. I'm guessing one original member…two at most.

Okay, here comes Lance Burton. I'm going to watch one of the best magicians in the world, then go to bed. TiVo's getting it all down and I'll resume Jerry watching/blogging tomorrow. Nighty-night.

Did you ever wonder what the toys are doing when no one is watching? Yeah, me neither. But if you're my age or thereabouts (I'm 54 physically, 6 emotionally), you might recall this commercial. Or have had your very own Popeye jack-in-the-box.

(Quick aside: This is my second link to a new video site called Veoh. They offer a program which you can download to your computer and then it will download videos to your hard drive for you. There are some slightly suspicious things about this downloading software. On my system, it kept loading itself into memory and running in the background even when I didn't want it there, so I deleted it. I don't know if it's unsafe or if it was just some anomaly with my computer. Until such time as folks who know more about this kind of thing than I do weigh in, you might want to proceed with caution regarding the Veoh software…but the watching of online videos should be safe.)

Jerry keeps saying it's his fortieth MDA telethon but the website says it's the 41st. My pal Earl Kress phoned to explain why Lewis said it was his 56th telethon. It started as a local event in New York and later went national. So it's his 56th (or so) telethon but his 40th national telecast, give or take a couple. Before Earl called, I was further confused as Jer welcomed some firefighters by saying, "These guys have been with me on the telethon for 52 years." These were New York City firefighters so they started with him on the local broadcasts.

I don't know why I care about this, either.

Jerry just introduced the next musical act…Gary Lewis and the Playboys. How'd they arrange that booking?

I'm a few hours behind the rest of the world but thanks to TiVo, I'm watching the Jerry Lewis Telethon. Jerry looks good but Ed McMahon is a far cry from the guy who used to sit next to Carson and go "Hi-yo!" He starts the festivities by introducing the mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman as "the mayor of Los Angeles."

I'm a bit confused, too. Jerry begins by announcing this is his 56th telethon and that it's "officially" the fortieth MDA telethon. I'm not sure what that means but the MDA website says "The 2006 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon is the 41st annual Labor Day show."

I'll report back if I notice anything else interesting.

The Batman TV show (the one starring Adam West) went out of production in early 1968. In 1972 or 1974 (accounts vary), Burt Ward got back into the Robin suit and Yvonne Craig redonned her Batgirl tights to film this ad for…well, you'll see what it's an ad for when you watch it. That's Batman producer William Dozier — who narrated the original show — reprising his role, too.

But that is not (repeat: not) Mr. West playing Batman. At the time, he had decided those days were behind him and that he would never again wear the costume or do the Batusi, the better to establish that he could play other parts. So the guy in the bat suit is Dick Gautier, who may be best known to you for playing Hymie the Robot on Get Smart, Robin Hood on When Things Were Rotten and about eight thousand other appearances. Dick, with whom I've had the pleasure of working a few times, is one of the funniest human beings on this planet and also, as you can see on his website, a gifted cartoonist. I always thought that if they'd made a TV series of Will Eisner's The Spirit when Gautier was younger and if James Garner wasn't available — or maybe even if he was — Dick would be the guy.

The clip runs one minute. The person who prepped it for uploading to the Internet has an odd way of spelling the word "commercial" but there's nothing I can do about that so don't complain to me.

A certain segment of the population is always talking about "supporting our troops" and I'm often baffled by what they mean by that. At times, it seems to mean not suggesting their leaders are fallible or that the war is not being fought properly or even not challenging incumbents.

I would think that "supporting our troops" meant — at an absolute minimum — making certain that they have the best possible equipment…to, you know, kinda minimize as much as possible the chance of them being killed. I would also think it would involve paying them a good wage and guaranteeing them the best possible medical care, both during and after their military service.

I would also think it would include doing something about predatory lenders. As recounted in this article, a lot of soldiers are simultaneously trying to serve while struggling with personal debt…and there are people out there who are exploiting this dire situation. It also, of course, suggests that while we might honor the soldiers' service and pray for their speedy and safe return, we sure ain't paying them enough.

One of the reasons this is a problem for our soldiers is that last year, in what many claimed was a bill bought and paid for by the credit card industry, our federal lawmakers made it much more difficult to declare personal bankruptcy. There was an amendment offered to that bill by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin to exempt our servicemen and servicewomen from that vulnerability, at least while they were fighting overseas. The amendment was soundly defeated. Someone ought to ask the senators who voted that way if they think "supporting our troops" includes forcing many of them into the hands of loan sharks.

Frank Rich reminds us that once upon a time, Donald Rumsfeld's view of Iraq was that we should ally with (and, yes, appease) Saddam Hussein.

In 1929, MGM began shooting a big, expensive color musical starring Lawrence Tibbett, a performer of grand, operatic presence. The film was entitled The Rogue Song and it was well into production when the studio's ranking genius, Irving Thalberg, decided it was in dire need of corrective surgery. Lionel Barrymore was directing and doing a fine job of proving that a great actor could also be a leaden, uninspired director. The movie lacked many things but what it really lacked was comedy. At the same time, the marketing folks were fretting its commercial appeal, especially overseas where Tibbet was largely unknown. Thalberg decided that both problems could be solved with two additions to the cast — one named Laurel and the other named Hardy.

Not long before, MGM had borrowed Laurel and Hardy from their native habitat — the Hal Roach Studios — to appear in an all-star feature, The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Their presence in that had enlivened the proceedings and been singled out by critics. In light of that, a deal was brokered whereby Roach would again loan their services to Metro…and this time, Hal Roach himself would come along to direct and consult. New scenes were scripted to add the additional characters to the continuity and others were deleted to make room. In one interview years later, Laurel said that Tibbett had actually completed his scenes and returned home to New York when he was summoned to return to Hollywood for additional shooting.

The Rogue Song was released in early 1930 to decent reviews (Tibbett got an Oscar nomination for Best Actor) and a decent box office response, especially overseas. It was not a smash hit but the consensus seems to be that it did a lot better with Laurel and Hardy than it would have without. In some cities, they were billed as its stars even though their total footage count did not warrant that.

How was the film? I dunno. I haven't seen it and neither has anyone else for more than half a century. It is a lost film.

A few pieces of it have turned up here and its sound track exists there but there are no complete prints. Laurel and Hardy fans have fantasized about locating one, not because they expect a masterpiece but because, well, it's a lost film…one of the few gaps in the Stan and Ollie library. Also, apart from one public service short they made in the forties, it was their only appearance before a movie camera loaded with color film. It's hard to remember this since some of their movies have been colorized…but they were all in black-and-white. All except for Tree in a Test Tube (the public service film) and The Rogue Song.

Our clip today is of a bit less than three minutes of The Rogue Song. This may whet your appetite to wish the rest would someday be located or it may make you say "eh" and decide that nothing wonderful has been lost. There isn't much of Laurel and Hardy in these three minutes and one suspects their scenes were shot some time after the surrounding footage. But as we say here at news from me, a little Laurel and Hardy is better than no Laurel and Hardy.

A lot of people say they want to know what's going on in Iraq. I'm not convinced some of them do. I think a lot of people (the loud ones, mainly) want to know just enough to support their pre-existing view of the Bush administration. That which does not must be ignored or written off as propaganda or bad/biased reporting.

There are times I think the best way to know what's going on — assuming you really do — is to ignore all the pundits. Ignore the guys on the left who tell you what you should think. Ignore the folks on the right who tell you what you should think. Even — gasp, choke — ignore me. Just look at official documents and give them whatever weight common logic tells you they're worth.

A few days ago, the Department of Defense issued a 63-page report on how things are going in Iraq. I think it's reasonable to assume that the Pentagon is not going to make things sound worse than they are over there. If anything, they will err on the side of spinning events to make things look rosier.

Here is a link to an Adobe PDF of the report. I just went through the whole thing — and while I won't claim I understood every nuance and detail, large chunks of it are perfectly clear…and most of them are not encouraging. Civilian deaths are increasing and spreading over a wider area. Increasingly, citizens are giving their support to insurgent and militia groups that are providing security where the national police forces have failed, and homelessness and displacement have taken a sharp rise. Economic conditions are bad and confidence is low. And this is not some critic of the Bush administration saying all this. This is the Pentagon.

But like I said: Don't listen to me. Read it for yourself. And don't ignore the good news that's in there, either.

The things I do for you people. The other day, I bought a roll of "five flavor" Lifesavers candy…the first roll I've bought in (I'm guessing) 46 years. They were a nickel the last time I purchased one. Now, they're 69 cents and the rolls are just as hard to open as they were then, and I think the Lifesavers themselves are slightly smaller.

Orange does, indeed, seem to be back and the other four flavors are pineapple, raspberry, cherry and watermelon. This is not to suggest they all taste like the corresponding fruits. As one reader of this site, Rob Staeger, wrote me when we were discussing Hostess Orange Cupcakes, "When I was in college, my friends and I realized that they didn't taste like oranges at all. We came to the only logical conclusion: They tasted like the color orange, not the fruit." (The above photo does not seem to be of the current flavor line-up.)

So how do Orange Lifesavers taste these days? I'm afraid I'm not the one to ask. Ever since my Gastric Bypass Surgery, my sweet tooth has gone sour. One of the unexpected changes in my body is that I've lost about 80% of my taste for sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup, especially the latter. Things taste sweet but it's a joyless sweet. Recently, just as an experiment, I tried a few of my favorite cookies and I'm sure they still taste the same to most folks…but it was just a mild pleasure to me, barely worth the effort.

This does not displease me. Losing the fun of sugar is not a bad trade-off for dropping all that poundage. In fact, I'm not sure that a lack of fondness for sugar isn't a very good thing in itself. It's certainly not something I would have imagined I could ever have…but I gave up Pepsi-Cola and other sugary, bubbly soft drinks back in February with surprising ease. In fact, I'll tell you when I did it. It was those four days when I was hospitalized for Cellulitis. I drank no soda in the hospital and didn't miss it. I already knew I'd probably be having the Gastric Bypass Surgery before the year was out, and that it required the abandonment of carbonated beverages and caffeine. So I decided to see if I could keep the soda abstinence going and I haven't popped a pop-top on a pop since.

Which really amazes me. Once upon a time, I went through a six-pack per day and got severe headaches when I tried to withdraw. I didn't think I could give up Pepsi any more than I could give up exhaling. Guess I don't know me as well as I thought I did.

Since the surgery, I can and do eat sugar but it has to be in moderation. If I ingest too much, I am liable to endure an attack they call "dumping." Symptoms include such fun things as bloating, nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, weakness, sweating, and rapid heartbeat. I have never experienced this but I have read articles (like this one) from people who have and it sounds like one of those experiences you don't need to ever experience.

But I wasn't afraid to try a Lifesaver. One Lifesaver only contains 10 calories and 2 grams of sugar and I guess it momentarily reminded me of being a kid and getting my bi-annual (birthday and Christmas) gift of Lifesavers from Uncle Nate. 46 years from now, I'll have to try another one. Hope they still have the orange then.