Stephen Colbert discusses Joe Lieberman.

The latest on Art Buchwald, the man who continues to defy death. This guy may outlive all of us.

My buddy Aaron Barnhart, who covers television for the Kansas City Star, was also present for the last performance of the live What's My Line? show. He files this account in his blog, complete with pictures.

Michael Kinsley writes about his brain surgery.

Here's another great classic commercial…the Alka-Seltzer "spicy meatball" commercial. Legend has it that it wasn't terribly successful in terms of selling the product but given how much attention it attracted, I'm not sure I believe that. Legend also has it that it was pulled from the air due to protests from Italian anti-defamation groups and I find that somewhat easier to accept. Anyway, it was created by the legendary advertising king, Joe Sedelmaier, who did many well-remembered campaigns.

The lead actor is a gent named Jack Somack, who had a rather fascinating acting career…fascinating because it began late in life. Mr. Somack was a chemical engineer who in 1967, at age 48, decided he'd gotten into the wrong line of work and that he wanted to be an actor. He began studying and auditioning, mingling with wanna-be actors half his age, and he managed to get some stage roles. It was when he landed this commercial in '69 that he first began to make a living as a performer and he remained one, working quite often for the rest of his life.

I don't know who played his wife but the stage manager is the wonderful Ronny Graham, a very funny man who left us way too soon.

Here's the commercial…

William Kristol writes what may be the definitive "neo-con" position paper on the various conflicts in the Middle East. I don't see much that I agree with except maybe on a "wouldn't it be nice if…?" basis but it's worth a read to understand a mindset that is driving much of U.S. foreign policy.

Today marks fifty days since I had Gastric Bypass surgery and there's 57 pounds less of me. That's about as fast as you can lower your weight without amputating an appendage or two.

Reaction from others has been fascinating. There have been people who haven't noticed and others who've stared at me like I was a "What is wrong with this picture?" puzzle. My barber commented that my hair was uncommonly long and shaggy…and then, a minute or so later, he added, "Say, have you lost weight?" A couple of salespeople who used to know me on sight have balked at saying hello, like they aren't sure it's still the same guy. Mostly though, friends are surprised and encouraging, and many are curious about the process. Here are some things I find myself saying over and over…

• I feel great. I have occasional moments of fatigue…though less often than when I was packing 340+ in poundage. For the most part, I have more energy and a greater ease in getting around and doing things. Aches that I had long ago accepted as old age and permanent are now gone.

• I eat very little…less than I ever imagined a human being could ingest and survive. I try to down two protein drinks a day and to have one or two appetizer-sized meals. In a restaurant, I consume about a third of a normal portion, then take the rest home and make two more meals out of the balance. I'm not supposed to do this but I've had days when I got busy and one protein shake was my entire consumption.

• I'm never hungry except, every now and then, in an intellectual sense. I need to explain this. Food is no longer a particular joy for me and some of my once-favorite meals (especially those high in carbs) are simply less pleasing to my post-surgical palate. But I see them and I remember the old pleasure of eating them…and I have to remind myself that that just doesn't work anymore. So do I miss the fun of eating something that tastes really, really good? A little. But losing the weight is well worth losing that gratification. I'm told my taste buds will eventually rebound somewhat but even if they don't, it's a great trade-off.

• I do miss undiluted fruit juice. I'm one of those people who's never cared for coffee, tea or wine. My body doesn't like milk. I won't drink beverages that contain artificial sweeteners. And last February, I gave up carbonated sodas, which you have to do if you have this procedure. So before the surgery, the list of liquids I could imbibe was pretty much down to water and juices. Post-surgery, I'm supposed to avoid anything with high sugar content so that eliminates most of the juices, at least in unexpurgated form. Just to break the monotony of H2O, I drink them heavily watered-down and I've formulated my own lemonade that's high in lemon, low in sugar. It isn't wonderful but it's my big thirst-quencher. If a magic genie gave me the chance to eat or drink anything I used to eat or drink, I'd go for a big glass of real, full-strength, pulp-free orange juice. The weight loss is still a great trade-off but that's what I miss.

• I have experienced almost no pain from the surgery. I have an occasional twinge in one of my shoulder blades which my personal doctor and the surgeon agree was a physical response to the operation. I thought at first it was a side effect from my new posture but apparently not. When you're on the table and someone's cutting into you, there are these little muscular traumas that can occur in the oddest places and that's where I had mine — in that shoulder blade. They both said it would soon disappear and, sure enough, it's going away. So are the incisions on my stomach, which now look like cat scratches. (One of the entry-points — the smallest one — is called the "liver retractor" incision since all it's for is to insert a laparoscopic tool that moves your liver to one side during surgery. Mine is just about invisible now, which is fine. I have no further plans that involve having my liver retracted.)

• Clothing is a constant concern. I'm giving away dozens of 3X shirts since they now hang like caftans on my carcass. I have a lot of shirts and pants I once grew out of and have now grown back down into…but I keep having to try things on, see what fits and file this or that either in the giveaway pile or on my "maybe in a few more weeks" rack. There's little point in shopping since anything that fits me now probably won't in a month, but I may have to. I'm also trying to decide when to take a couple of now-oversized sports coats in to the tailor to see what he can do with them. There's a shiny one we could maybe fill with helium and sell to the Macy's people.

Lastly: I still don't recommend this surgery to everyone. I've been in e-mail contact with someone who had it the same day I did and who's had a lot of problems, probably because she was in worse shape to start with. She doesn't regret doing it but I can see how someone might. If anything I'm writing here makes you think it might be right for you or a loved one, imagine a big "Your mileage may vary" alert flashing on your computer screen. It is not just a weight reduction…it's a complete change of life and with some folks, it may not be for the better, especially if you don't have excellent medical support. It also may not solve the problems you think it will solve. I'm happy that I think I look and feel more like myself than I have in twenty years. Not everyone's life can stand that kind of reversion, to say nothing of all the other modifications.

Over on BBC Radio 2, there are some documentaries that may be of interest to readers of this site. They're currently running a series called Ain't No Mickey Mouse Music which explores how Mr. Disney and his successors incorporated music into that studio's work. You can listen to Episode Two if you go there right now. And next Tuesday, there's a documentary about Laurel and Hardy that I'm going to try to record. Check out this page for details.

Here's a classic commercial for Parkay Margarine. The man on-screen is Vic Tayback, who is best known for his role on the long-running sitcom, Alice. The voice from the little margarine tub is Michael Bell, who will be among the participants in a Cartoon Voice Panel I'm hosting one week from today (on July 22) at the Comic-Con International in San Diego at 2 PM. Mr. Bell has had an impressive career as an on-camera actor but we don't care about that. We care about his countless voiceover jobs over the years. He was Plastic Man. He was Opus on the Bloom County cartoon special. He was about eight Transformers and four or five G.I. Joes. He was many a Smurf. And as you can hear below, he was a tub of margarine. He'll tell you all about it at the con.

I've written several times on this page (here, for instance) about the local, live re-creation of the old What's My Line? game show. Last evening, the folks behind it did their final show — at least for a while — at the Game Show Congress that's currently in progress at the Hilton out in Burbank. I was there for it and so were quite a few readers of this weblog…and we all had an enormously good time.

Hosting the proceedings — and doing a damn fine job of it, I might add — was J. Keith van Straaten, who kept things rolling along with great, professional expertise. Someone ought to snatch this guy up and give him a televised game show to host because he's really good. Assisting him as prize model, and getting some enormous laughs, was the lovely Teresa Ganzel, Johnny Carson's one-time Matinee Lady.

The four members of the panel were as follows: There was Stuart Shostak, a friend of mine who among his many endeavors does warm-ups for TV tapings. There was Sarah Purcell, who is probably best known for the years when she was a host of Real People on NBC. There was comedian Frank Nicotero, who hosted the game show, Street Smarts. And there was Betsy Palmer.

Ah, yes…Betsy Palmer. The lovely panelist from the original I've Got A Secret. She was beautiful and funny on that show and she's still, at age eighty or thereabouts, both those things. As a game player, she didn't advance the ball very far down field but the audience loved everything she said. A guy behind me was just sitting there, muttering to his companion, "That's Betsy Palmer."

The first contestant was one of the models from the current version of The Price is Right. The panel had to guess (and they didn't) that her "other" job is that she runs a chain of tanning salons. The second contestant was a woman who'd appeared on the original What's My Line? with her then-occupation of Girdle Tester. The third contestant was a gent who played the musical saw…which he did for us after the panel failed to guess his line of work. And then came the Mystery Guest…

It was Shirley Jones, star of The Partridge Family, The Music Man, Elmer Gantry and so many other movies and TV shows. The audience, of course, loved her. They especially loved when the blindfolded Betsy Palmer, having established that the Mystery Guest had done a lot of things over the years, blurted out, "Gee, you're old." The panel failed to guess who it was (Stuart Shostak looked like he wanted to commit Hara-Kiri for having dishonored his expertise in the area of vintage TV) and after they unmasked, J. Keith conducted a great interview with Ms. Jones and her hubby, Marty Ingels.

I wish you could have seen it, especially if you're the kind of person who thinks game shows are dumb or can't be wildly entertaining. It was all real and spontaneous in a way that no current "reality show" ever is. In fact, if you never got to see J. Keith's What's My Line? Live, you missed out on a wonderful bit of theater. I hope they do more someday.

As we mentioned back here, a Hollywood landmark building — the current home of the Old Spaghetti Factory — is soon to be demolished and replaced by a combination of condos and retail outlets. It's not the only one. According to this article, similar fates await the CBS Sunset-Gower TV studio, the Hollywood Palladium and the structure that was once the Earl Carroll Theater and is currently the Hollywood home of Nickelodeon.

I love old Hollywood and old buildings but I sometimes find it hard to work up a great sense of loss about such structures. Or at least, I don't have enough to think that my tax dollars should go to keep them intact and/or that the present owners should be pressured to forgo what they think is the most profitable use of their property. That CBS complex has a grand and glorious history…and that's pretty much why it's obsolete. It was built to house radio programs of the kind Jack Benny once did and was later retooled for the needs of early television. For years, the local CBS affiliate did its local shows and news from there but there are no more local shows and they finally decided it wasn't even practical for news any longer and that operation moved out. Part of me would like the place to remain there in perpetuity so that when I drive by with outta-town friends, I can point and say, "See? That's where they did The Burns and Allen Show." But I don't think that's reason enough.

The Nickelodeon Theater is probably even less practical. Just in my lifetime, that building has been a half dozen things, passed from owner to owner like a Christmas fruit cake. I remember when the one-time Earl Carroll Theater was all painted up in psychedelic decor and renamed the Aquarius to house the Los Angeles company of the rock musical, Hair. (The current Nickelodeon decor is even more garish.) It was remodelled back to a more sedate theater after that for musicals like Ain't Misbehavin'. Chevy Chase did his short-lived talk show there and it was the place where anyone who had to produce an awards telecast on a low budget would go.

Or if they were really tight on bucks, they'd go across the street to the Palladium. It opened on September 23, 1940 with a performance by Frank Sinatra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra…and last time I was in there, it didn't look like it had been cleaned since then. No, that's a cheap joke. But it's fair to say that the day is long past when the Palladium would host events like The Emmy Awards or top-name rock concerts. I think it mostly subsists these days as a location for movie shoots, and if/when it goes away, I won't miss it a whole lot.

There are old buildings and parts of Hollywood that ought to be saved for reasons of heritage and history. But of the four venues named in the above article as soon to be razed, the one I think I'll miss the most is the Old Spaghetti Factory. At least, it's the only one that I might have had a reason to go into…though now that I've pretty much given up pasta, even that's not likely.

Army Archerd remembers Red Buttons. A very nice piece of writing.

From the 1943 movie, Stage Door Canteen, we have six minutes with Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd…with a cameo appearance at the end by Gracie Fields.

Only a few more days 'til many of us head for San Diego and the Comic-Con International. The weather forecast calls for daytime highs around 80° and nighttime lows around 72°. Pack accordingly.

Hey, remember I said that Red Buttons was brilliant performing at Stan Freberg's anniversary party? Well, I think that's the same party Harry Shearer is talking about in this piece.