I was sorry I missed The Aristocrats when it was big in the theaters. You can always catch films later on cable or DVD but this one — an 89 minute exploration of what some call the world's dirtiest joke — sounded like it warranted being seen with a big, live audience. So when I heard about a screening to be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers and some cast members…well, that sounded ideal. Which just shows you how wrong I can be.

It occurred last evening at Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood under the aegis of a group called Hollywood's Master Storytellers that stages and videotapes such events — and I suppose we should be grateful that someone does it. But jeez…a theater full of paying customers had to sit through an awful lot of filling and stalling and a "warm-up" guy who proved that you can be unfunny even when you work dirty. At one point, he dragged four audience members up on stage and had a little contest in which they were to each make the sound they make while achieving orgasm. Later, four more audience members came up to tell their versions of the central joke of The Aristocrats. Between these charming moments and various other delays, they managed to get things off to a flying stop and add another hour to what was already a very long evening.

Without it, I might have enjoyed The Aristocrats more than I did…which is not to say I didn't enjoy a lot of it. There is something quite compelling about seeing a wide range of master comedians in free flight, which is the idea behind the film. In it, dozens of comedians tell and/or dissect a legendary joke that, by its basic structure, allows its teller ample room to improvise and embellish. Most versions involve some combination of incest, violence, bestiality, projectile vomiting and wallowing in feces, and it has been suggested that what the comic chooses to include is something of a Rorschach test of his or her sensibilities. (If this is true, Bob Saget should be promptly confined in one of those Hannibal Lecter cells without windows, shoes or visitors.) Interestingly, the whole joke is told, start to finish, fewer times than I'd expected…and the tellings which stand out tend to be the variations: Wendy Liebman telling it backwards, a ventriloquist telling it via his dummy, a magician turning it into patter for a card trick, the Smothers Brothers turning it into a typical Smothers Brothers "Dickie doesn't understand Tommy" argument, etc. Kevin Pollak tells it as a Christopher Walken impression and Martin Mull even manages to turn it into a completely different (and just as hoary) dirty joke.

Matter of fact, the biggest laugh at last night's screening was achieved by a white-faced mime, not because he was particularly brilliant but because by the time we got to his segment, we were sick of the story and delighted to see it parodied. Which is almost the point of The Aristocrats — to inure us to things that would offend our grandparents…and shouldn't. I know people who still think they have to react in outrage to bad taste humor; who haven't learned that it's so liberating to be able to laugh at it or, failing that, being bored. Both are infinitely preferable to getting upset. I have a friend who still turns himself in knots when someone says the "f" word in his presence. It's almost like he's trained himself to feel pain at something that doesn't bother the rest of us one bit. He wouldn't enjoy The Aristocrats. He wouldn't laugh himself sick, as I almost did, to hear Gilbert Gottfried pushing an already outrageous joke ever further across the line. That's my friend's loss.

The panel discussion that followed brought us co-producers Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza, plus four folks who appeared in the film — Jason Alexander, Andy Dick, Bob Saget and Sarah Silverman. The talk was very amusing, though we learned almost nothing about the movie other than that Penn and Paul feel that the cover of the forthcoming DVD stinks beyond all belief. (You can see it and pre-order the DVD from Amazon by clicking here.) And Penn did explain how disappointed he was that both Buddy Hackett and Rodney Dangerfield declined to participate due to failing — and in both cases, terminal — health.

So I guess I'm glad I went. And in a way, I may even be glad they had that awful warm-up guy there. If nothing else, he reminded us that not all dirty jokes are hilarious. Some of them — especially in the hands of amateurs — are just plain boring.

I'm at a disadvantage trying to write about Richard Pryor. Though he appeared on a couple of shows I wrote and though I talked with him a half-dozen times, I never felt I knew the guy. You had the sense that those who did were a very small, elite group. There was always something of the "hurt animal" about him, keeping all at distance, forever looking like he was about to make a break for the door. He seemed especially troubled when someone would tell him, as many did, that he was the funniest man who ever lived. It was like a challenge for him to live up to, and he didn't seem to like being challenged. Or talked to by a lot of the people who wanted to get close to him.

I thought he was funny, though not as funny as many people did. Then again, I only got to see him perform stand-up once in person and it was a bad set. One night at the Comedy Store in the seventies, the next scheduled comic was someone loathsome and my party was moving to leave before he took the stage. A friend who had been on the bill earlier saw us gathering up garments, ran up to me and whispered, "Trust me…you don't want to leave now." He didn't say why but we had to stay and find out why we didn't want to leave now. A few moments later, the emcee said, "We have a surprise for you…" and before he could even say the name, Richard Pryor was squeezing between the tables, making his way to the front. The place exploded.

Sad to say, the entrance was the best part. Richard Pryor was not Richard Pryor that evening. He mumbled, he rambled, he started one story then changed his mind and launched into another. Finally, he realized what we all knew by then — that he was in no shape to perform just then. He did a quick old bit, got a big laugh and fled for the rear. If you'd paid to see Richard Pryor that night, you'd have been bitterly disappointed but as a surprise bonus, I guess it was okay.

At least you could tell people you'd seen Pryor perform live…though I wish I could add that I saw him at his best. I caught the stand-up films and played the albums and went to most of the movies and I laughed…but always from a distance. Some comedians transcend their pains and use them as material. Pryor did not always manage that for me and when I think of the man, I think more of the troubles than the comedy…and I felt that way even before he contracted multiple sclerosis and we all had to watch his sad, unrelenting deterioration.

So tonight, I'm thinking about that evening at the Comedy Store and of another time I met him in an office up on Sunset and then we walked down the boulevard together to Tower Records and talked a bit. I'm also thinking about being on the set of The Tonight Show when he made his first public appearance after his 1980 accident (I wrote about it here). And I'm thinking about Pryor's Place, a 1984 kids' show that he did for CBS Saturday morning. I was one of the writers and it was an odd experience: We could get anyone in show business to appear on the show except Richard Pryor. Guest stars fought to appear with him but about halfway through the production of the 13 episodes, Richard became more interested in a film project called Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling. He had wanted to do a childrens' show because he felt he had some wisdom and experience to impart to kids…but after a couple of tapings, the movie was suddenly his important statement, and our producer had to press him hard to finish out the commitment. The first script done when he was persuaded to come back and do the last few episodes was one of mine and there was a joke in it Pryor didn't want to do.

Now, it's not at all unusual for a performer to refuse to do a line because he thinks it isn't funny, especially in my scripts. In this case though, Pryor didn't want to do the line because he thought it was funny. I stood in his dressing room, feeling just as awkward as I always did around him, as he told the director, "I'm doing this show because I want to speak to kids. I don't care if I make them laugh. That just takes away from what I have to say to them." The director made all the arguments you'd expect him to make and then Pryor cut the conversation short.

"I don't have to prove to anyone I can be funny," he said. No, he sure didn't. If ever anyone didn't have to prove that, it was Richard Pryor, perhaps the most acclaimed comedian ever by folks in the same line of work. I can't think of anyone who ever endured as much pain and still managed to laugh at it and to make audiences laugh along with him. I just wish there had been less pain to laugh about.

On December 13, MGM Home Video is bringing out what they're billing as a "Deluxe Edition" of The Producers…and I guess that from now on, when I refer to that movie, I have to specify which version. This is the original Zero Mostel version and here's an Amazon link to order it if you don't already have it.

I'm puzzled about something. On the old DVD of this movie, there was a photo of a sexy woman who did not appear anywhere in the film. The movie did have a very sexy woman in it — Lee Meredith — but for some reason, someone stuck a picture of some strange lady on the DVD case. I wondered about it here.

Even odder is what's on the cover of this new DVD: Gene Wilder is holding a woman's leg. Why is Gene Wilder holding a woman's leg? And he isn't even really holding it. It seems to be levitating between his hands. What is the meaning of this? How does this in any way relate to the film or convey the idea that this is a classic, much-loved comedy film? Anyone got an explanation for this? I'm waiting.

That's right, it's time to play the game that's fast putting Wheel of Fortune and The Price is Right out of business…There's No Such Website! And here's how we play it: We give you descriptions of five websites and links to all five of them. Four of these websites actually exist on the Internet and if you click on the link, you'll visit them. One of these websites is a filthy lie concocted by our trained staff of filthy liars. Your job is to spot the lie. So now…for the battery-powered cheese straightener, the two-week vacation in Dom DeLuise's pants, the thong bikini fashioned from Ben Franklin's old kite string, a performance by the All-Dachsund Drill Team, the submarine sandwich made out of an actual submarine, and the entire nation of Chad, spot the phony website! The clock is ticking…

• Spamradio – Broadcasting 24/7, reading aloud the great junk mail messages we all receive for real estate deals, Nigerian banking scams, genital enlargement and low-interest home loans.
• Elmyr Danzig's Gallery of Lunch – Whenever photographer Elmyr Danzig spots someone carrying a lunchbox or bag lunch on the streets of Pittsburgh, he gets them to let him snap a photo of what they'll soon be eating. Some amazing bags of Fritos in there.
• Dehydrated Water – It's a great new product…compact, lightweight, easy to store, and perfect to take wherever you go. It's free of toxins, chemicals, lead, minerals, and almost every other dangerous substance you can think of.
• Monobrow – Glorifying the joys of having only one eyebrow.
• The Page That Turns You Into a Cabbage – It's hard to believe but there's actually a page on the Internet that can turn you into a cabbage. Or if you don't want to be a cabbage, a Brussels Sprout.

One of my favorite bits of animation on the web is a thing done for Consumers Union. It's the Progenitorovox spot all about how so many Americans are over-medicated and over-charged. If you haven't seen it, here's the link.

And I'm pleased to see the same folks are at it again, this time with a spot on credit cards called "It's Always Christmas Time (For Visa)!" You can view this one on this page. It's a very good attention-getter about a very bad problem in this country.

I recently discovered Sudoku puzzles, which is one reason I'm so far behind on answering e-mail. There are many places on the web that make them available but this website has more than you'll ever need.

Fred Kaplan discusses various proposals for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

If your neighbors are annoying you by decorating their homes for Christmas…well, just be glad you don't live across the street from this guy.

As ballyhooed here, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a show last week on which Stan Freberg was interviewed…and he even performed a bit, too. For the next few days, you can hear it on this page. Do not dawdle.

Seems like it's bad luck for me to say I won't be posting for a while. Whenever I do it, I have to rush back here to post an obit for some veteran comic book creator…

Comic historian Jim Amash informs me of the death, about three weeks ago, of Bill Fraccio, whose work was all over Charlton and Dell Comics in the sixties. Almost all of it was done in tandem with his friend, Tony Tallarico. They were teamed so often that it's sometimes difficult to identify which stories were pencilled by Fraccio and which ones were solo work by Tallarico. I think (but cannot swear) that Fraccio drew the above covers but he may have only done the interiors. Tallarico was the senior partner in the combo. Most of the time, editors gave him the work and he called in Fraccio to help.

Fans know them best for their stints drawing Charlton's short-lived super-hero line of Blue Beetle and Son of Vulcan around 1965 and an odd batch of monster super-heroes — like the Super Frankenstein seen above — shortly after. In the late sixties, they collaborated on dozens of stories for Warren's Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella that were credited to "Tony Williamson" and later to "Tony Willamsune." (Reportedly, artist Al Williamson — who had recently quit working for Warren — objected to the company making it look like "Williamson" was still working for them.)

I never met Mr. Fraccio but Jim Amash says he was a very jolly man and that he loved to draw.

There may not be many postings here for the next day or two as I attend to some pressing matters. But I will return to you soon…and with the announcement of a new website I set up a few days ago. (If you've been paying attention, you may know its address already. I'll post it here before the week is out.)

After our spate of postings about comic book characters on stamps, many folks wrote to remind me that we could have Groo stamps or Crypt Keeper stamps or even Jack Kirby stamps. All we have to do is use a service like Photo Stamps, which can put any picture on a sticker that the U.S. post office will accept as postage. But you know what's wrong for me with this and all those lovely commemorative stamps? It's that since the invention of e-mail, I send very few letters to anyone I care about. I'd say that of the last fifty times I stuck a stamp on a letter, fewer than five were letters. The rest were bills…and between electronic bill paying and the ones my Business Manager handles, I don't even send out many of them. I don't send out Christmas Cards, either. Ultimately, jazzy stamps may be fun to collect but I don't need them for any other purpose.

Which reminds me: Thanks to Joe Dante, director of some of my favorite movies for sending me a DVD of his recent episode of the Showtime Masters of Horror series. My TiVo hiccuped and missed the first airing. Quite a few folks have told me it's wonderful, so I look forward to watching it after I get through this busy period. Joe says he reads this site every day…so this is an easier way to thank him than to write a letter. And besides, I'm out of stamps.

I did catch a little of TV Land's latest clip show, which is a five-part series counting down what they call The 100 Most Unexpected TV Moments. Here's the whole list and like all of these shows, one can quibble a lot with the selections. But it does make for a hundred interesting clips and that's reason enough to watch. (Also online are extended versions of some of the interviews with the featured players.)

Okay, I'm outta here. Back at full power in a day or so. And if I owe you e-mail — and I probably do — please forgive me.

This was taken on my back step about twenty minutes ago. Cute little fellow, isn't he? And he's not, as someone wrote me the last time I posted one of these, "the ugliest giant rat in the world." There's something kind of adorable about the possums that come to claim sloppy seconds on the local cats' dinners. The possums move slowly and quietly, and they flee in fear at the slightest noise. I feel sorry for one when I see it eat the last remaining nugget of food and begin looking around, wondering if there could possibly be any more. But of course, there's no way I can go out and pour more Friskies into the dish for it. The second I clicked the latch on the door, the possum would sprint for the next zip code. So instead I watch it waddle off sadly, obviously feeling sorry for itself.

At least, I think they come here for the food. Maybe they just come to get their pictures on the website.

As mentioned here the other day, BBC Radio 4 is running a half-hour show tomorrow on our favorite satirist, Stan Freberg. Here are the details and as you'll see, it says it runs from 18:30 to 19:00. According to my Anglo conversions, that's 10:30 AM Pacific Time 'til 11:00. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Many BBC radio programmes are archived for a week or so on their website after broadcast but this may not be among them. So if you want to hear or record it, you'll either have to tune in live or find someone else who recorded it. I'm set up to do so — assuming I have the time right — but this is not always foolproof, and I'm just the fool to prove it.

The DVD of the recent Fantastic Four movie is due out soon — tomorrow, I think. Some of you may have heard that it includes a documentary on the life and times of Jack Kirby, with interviews of all sorts of his folks, myself included. Well, it doesn't. Not the version coming out this week. The film company decided to hold it for a "deluxe" DVD edition that will include other special features and come out next Spring or thereabouts. This is all part of the ongoing sinister plot to get you to buy all your movies twice. So if the documentary matters to you — I haven't seen it, by the way — you might want to wait.

The Johnny Carson website, which sells DVDs of his old shows, has some neat free stuff available for the downloading. You can listen to "podcasts" (a fancy term for MP3 files) of some old Carson monologues on this page. And you can watch video clips of Carnac the Magnificent on this page. Make sure you if you go to the latter, you at least watch the infamous "Sis Boom Bah" clip — a joke reportedly written by the late Pat McCormick. There are also some neat video clips on this page.

The one thing I don't like about the site is that it has some of its history askew. A page called The History of the Tonight Show includes the following paragraph…

"Tonight!" was originally hosted by Steve Allen in 1954. Allens regular side-kick was Ernie Kovacs. Kovacs became known as "the first commercial tonight show tv television artist." Ernie Kovacs alternated hosting the show with Steve Allen. However, it was Steve Allen who established many of the standards of late night television, introducing the desk and couch and an emphasis on conversations with guests.

There's a lot of stuff wrong with the above paragraph. Steve Allen first hosted Tonight as a local show in New York beginning in July of 1953. The show went on the NBC network on September 27, 1954. (You can view an excerpt from that first broadcast on this page.) Ernie Kovacs was not his regular sidekick. Allen had a lot of regular performers on the show, including announcer Gene Rayburn who might be called his regular sidekick, but Kovacs only appeared with Allen a handful of times. In late 1956, Allen cut back and Ernie Kovacs began hosting the Monday and Tuesday night editions much as Johnny turned Monday nights over to Joan Rivers and then to Jay Leno. Neither of them were Johnny's "sidekick."

I have no idea by what criteria Ernie Kovacs would be called "the first commercial tonight show tv artist." And while Allen did do conversation with guests, that was not a big feature of his Tonight show, which included a lot of stunts, games, sketches and musical performances. If anyone, it was Jack Paar who established the emphasis on conversation.

Also, Carol Wayne was not the original "Matinee Lady." Many actresses — including some big stars who were otherwise guesting on the show — played Art Fern's bimbo assistant before Ms. Wayne got the steady job.

But other than that, it's a great website and I recommend their DVDs. I also really like the guest search feature on the site even if it isn't complete. If you do some browsing, you may note what I mentioned here a few weeks ago, which is that Johnny had a knack for sensing when some guest had run out of things to say or otherwise been on too many times. If you search for a lot of recurring Carson guests, you'll see how many a star would appear every month or two for a few years and then, all of a sudden, not be invited back for a long time. Look up Jaye P. Morgan or Stan Kann and watch it all come to a halt.