The folks over at TV Party — a fine site which you should visit often — have posted video clips of a 1985 interview with the great Jack Kirby. As you'll see, Jack had a tendency to wander in his thoughts when he was being interviewed. You'd ask him about A and he'd reply about B, all the time confusing it with C. Brilliant minds sometimes work that way, and Jack had one of those, along with the skill to put some of what it imagined down on paper. For those of you who never got to meet Jack or hear him speak, this should give you some idea of what he was like…though in private, when he was making less of an effort to be entertaining, he was somewhat more coherent and deeper.

Tom Shales discusses the man in charge of the Federal Communications Commission. [Washington Post, registration perhaps required] The only thing I'd quibble with in this piece is that I'm more bothered by Michael Powell's love of media mergers — the kind that annihilate small, privately-owned stations — than by his slapping fines on broadcasters who air material he considers objectionable. Shales did mention both abuses of power but the fines are one-time incidents and those errant policies can be easily reversed. Undoing the mergers will be a lot more difficult.

Here's Congressman Ron Paul on Federal spending. I don't agree with everything this man believes but I agree with everything in this speech.

Michael Kinsley says that the current mess in Iraq has become a war that many people think is wrong but don't wish to stop. [Washington Post, registration probably required]

I'm a big fan of the shows of Cirque du Soleil, that wonderful mesh of astonishing acrobatics, great costuming, haunting music, expert choreography and incomprehensible storylines. So naturally, I had to go see, as I did last night, the new show by Normand Latourelle, one of the founders of Cirque du Soleil. Cavalia is more or less the same thing, only with horses — 37, to be exact, appearing with a merry band of riders who put them through their paces. There are also acrobats who do impossible physical feats, often with the horses galloping past them, and the whole thing is presently housed out by the Santa Monica Pier in a white, 26,264-square-foot circus big top.

Before I get to the show itself, I want to kvetch about the seats. They're plastic bleachers, the kind where the whole row shakes if the guy nine chairs down from you crosses his legs. Which he probably can't do because anyone taller than Herve Villechaize is going to be darned uncomfy. I'm 6'3" and after we were seated but before the show started, I was seriously considering not staying for it. Two hours in that vise and my legs would have had worse circulation than anything I ever wrote for Eclipse Comics. My friend Carolyn, who often takes better care of me than I do of myself, went and talked to a nice gent who relocated our party of four to the front row, which was somewhat better. Still, I had to wonder how someone taller than me could possibly cope with having his kneecaps resting on his ears.

So much for the seats. Now, did I like the show? No, I did not like the show…though in fairness, a lot of those present (including at least half of my party) liked it very much. I thought the acrobatics, though splendidly executed, were rather pedestrian; nothing I hadn't seen before, including Cirque shows where they were the prelude to more spectacular stuff. The costumes and music failed to thrill me. In fact, there was something about the music that seemed to suck about half the energy out of the tent.

Mostly though, it was the horses…and I like horses. Never rode one, and it's been years since I touched one…but I certainly appreciate the special human-horse "bond" that Cavalia celebrates. What I think I stopped appreciating about ten minutes into the show was Trained Animal acts. The horses trot in precision. They bow. They leap over small hurdles. They dance and walk sideways in lockstep and do all the things they've been trained to do. And as they were doing all those things last evening, I suddenly decided I didn't like Animal Acts just as displays of what an animal can be trained to do. The acts I like create some context and perhaps a little story and personality. The mere fact that a horse can be made to replicate certain actions every night, with matinees on the weekend, is of no more interest than the fact that an alarm clock can be set to go off at a desired time.

I guess I was expecting more of Cavalia. There were some nice moments here and there, and the horses sure were pretty. But at $80-90 a ticket, I won't be going back. Especially to sit in those seats.

When they make a movie of the life of George W. Bush, who should play him? There's only one person.

Got my Podhoretzes confused. I just corrected the previous item to note that I was linking to a piece by John Podhoretz and not his father, Norman Podhoretz. Some days, you can't tell your Podhoretzes without a scorecard. Thanks to Harry Podhoretz McCracken for catching my Podhoretz error.

I never thought I'd be linking to an article by John Podhoretz but a lot of things are topsy-turvy these days. Like a surprising, encouraging number of Conservative voices the last day or so, Mr. Podhoretz is condemning the recent Republican rule change that will allow Tom DeLay to remain as their leader even if, as expected, he is indicted. I do not completely concur with this piece. Podhoretz's main concern seems to be not that the change is wrong but that it's bad politics, and his view that DeLay is the victim of a zealous partisan prosecutor sounds more like spin than fact. Nevertheless, I thought the piece was worth a link.

As most of you know, I am often found at comic conventions moderating panels and interviewing the great and near-great. At the Comic-Con International in San Diego, back in 2000, writer-historian Ron Goulart and I did a tag-team interview of Harry Lampert and Marty Nodell. Harry, who passed away last week, was the artist on the first Flash story and Marty, who is happily still with us, filled much the same post on the first Green Lantern story. The panel ran around 75 minutes and was videotaped for posterity by a devoted preserver of comic history, Mike Catron. In Harry's memory, Mike has edited a 30 minute version of this panel that emphasizes the Lampert conversation, and has made it available online in QuickTime movie format. Here is where you can view it.

If you're a fan of the TV show Taxi and/or Andy Kaufman, you might want to catch/record the Saturday Night Live rerun airing late Saturday night/early Sunday morning on NBC. They're scheduled to air the full, 90-minute version of the show that originally ran on May 15, 1982, hosted by Danny DeVito. At the time, Taxi had been cancelled by ABC and not yet picked up, as it soon was, by NBC. So the monologue is DeVito complaining about the abrupt termination, and bringing on some of the cast members for a "final bow," then there's a filmed segment in which he extracts revenge by blowing up the ABC building. One wonders if NBC had decided at that point to take on Taxi and this was a way of hyping the show's merits…or if they hadn't yet decided and this episode inspired that decision. Perhaps neither occurred.

Also on this episode, faux wrestler Andy Kaufman showed footage of his famous match against real wrestler Jerry Lawler, and apologized to real wrestlers everywhere for mocking their profession. I think this may have been Kaufman's last live appearance on SNL. The following season, he was "voted off" the series forever. NBC is skipping around those years in picking their reruns so perhaps they'll run the two episodes where that happened. Next week, they're supposed to run the 5/14/83 show hosted by Ed Koch.

Two additional points on Mr. Berman: Turns out, his out-of-print CD — the one recorded in 1995 — is back in print, after all. At least, they seem to have it over at www.laugh.com, which features a terrific selection of great comedy albums, including many that were originally on vinyl. They also have CD versions of Shelley's first three albums, including Inside Shelley Berman, for a few bucks less than Amazon charges. I don't get a commission if you order from there but they're so good, I'll suggest you buy 'em there, just to encourage you to buy 'em.

(Actually, they're not all good. Inside Shelley Berman is great. Outside Shelley Berman is very, very good. The Edge of Shelley Berman is much weaker, and I believe Shelley has said that it was done as a contractual commitment and that he never cared for it. Live Again!, which is the one I heard recorded, is terrific. Maybe someday soon, they'll put out his other ones, including A Personal Appearance and The Sex Life of the Primate, both of which were wonderful.)

Also: Someone wrote to ask if there was any reason I didn't mention that I directed Shelley Berman when he did a voice on Garfield and Friends. No reason, other than that it was such a minor moment in his career that I didn't think it warranted mention. He was very funny and very professional, and he seemed a little embarrassed when I tried to tell him how much his work had always meant to me. One of the great parts of doing that show was that I got to hire a number of folks who were in that category, like Stan Freberg, Jonathan Winters, Imogene Coca and Paul Winchell. I'm sure Shelley Berman doesn't even remember that hour or so we spent in a recording studio but I sure won't ever forget it.

Just back from a lovely luncheon in honor of the great comedian, Shelley Berman. Well, I need to clarify that: The lunch part was awful: A choice of turkey left over from the first Thanksgiving or fish caught during the Nixon administration. But the event itself — a function of the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters — was joyous enough to make up for it. The dais included comedians (Mort Sahl, Richard Lewis and Gary Owens), comedy writers (Arnie Kogen, John Rappaport, Hal Kanter, Rocky and Irma Kalish), a nightclub proprietor (Budd Friedman), a former mayor of Los Angeles (Richard Riordan) and Dr. James Ragan, the head of the entertainment department at U.S.C., where Mr. Berman teaches.

A couple things need to be said about Shelley Berman. One is that he's one of the most important figures in the history of stand-up (or in his case, sit-down) comedy. Along with Sahl, Lenny Bruce and just a few others, he was part of the revolution in the late fifties. Before then, it was all about jokes and one-liners and "My mother-in-law is so fat…" The lines were largely interchangeable between comics and you didn't think or care if the guy even had a fat mother-in-law. Once Shelley, Mort and Lenny took over, the comedy was the distinctive viewpoint of the guy with the microphone and, more significantly, it was in his rhythm: No more set-up / joke / set-up / joke…

Berman pioneered in two main areas, one being what some call "observational" comedy. He pointed out little things that annoyed him, which turned out to largely be little things that annoyed us all…or should have annoyed us if we thought about them for two seconds. Every comedian after him who started a sentence with "Did you ever notice –?" should have had to pay royalties to Shelley. The other area in which he led the way was in doing little scenes, usually phone conversations heard from his side. He was such a good actor that he didn't need a partner to play off. He made you "hear" the person at the other end of the phone call.

Both of these areas were well represented on his 1958 album, Inside Shelley Berman, which was probably the second record ever made by recording a comedian's act live in performance. (One of Mort Sahl's had been done the previous year by the same company, Verve Records.) I think Inside… is one of the five best comedy albums ever made, worth the price alone just for the bit where a guy tries to phone a department store and inform them that a woman is dangling from an upper-story window ledge.

It also includes "The Morning After the Night Before," a scene Berman had developed in improvisational comedy workshops in Chicago. I doubt there's a person who got into stand-up comedy before 1980 who wasn't inspired by this LP. (You can order an import CD from Amazon by clicking here.)

And one other thing I should say about Shelley Berman: He's still funny. Not everyone who was then is now…but Berman is still performing and still very funny. I had the honor of being in the audience when he recorded his most recent album, Live Again!, which is sadly not in print at the moment. The place was full of top comedians and, as the saying goes, it was a great night for envy.

So was the event this afternoon, as Shelley was serenaded with the odd mix of roast insults and genuine tributes that seem to define an "honor" these days. He seemed to be laughing himself silly at some of the jokes at his expense, but it may be that he's a good enough actor to fake enjoyment. However, he also seemed genuinely touched by the presence on the dais of Mort Sahl, some genuine words of love from Richard Lewis, a good assessment of his importance to comedy by both, and affection from many other friends, to say nothing of the audience. I hope he really was moved by it all because everyone there sure meant it.

Yeah, another damned obit. Cy Coleman wrote the scores for a stunning number of good Broadway shows, including Wildcat, Little Me, Sweet Charity, Seesaw, I Love My Wife, Barnum, On the Twentieth Century, City of Angels and The Will Rogers Follies. Those were all hits but I even like some of his relative flops; like, I didn't enjoy The Life as a whole but there were about a half-dozen first-rate songs in there, well worth playing over and over on the CD player in my car. He also composed the scores for some fine movies and the tunes for some wonderful standalone songs, including "Witchcraft" and the familiar Playboy theme. Here's a full obit. I just wanted to mention how much I admired so much of his work.

If you'd like to see a very elaborate website full of some fun stuff, the new Disney-controlled Muppet website is quite amazing…but don't go there unless you have a good, fast Internet connection. And try to track down and play the game where Bunsen and Beaker challenge you to discover their new coffee recipe.

Hey, remember I mentioned that the magnificent voice of Norman Rose could be heard on a National Lampoon record called "Deteriorata"? Well, reader Dan Hayes informs me that it is possible to hear it online, right this very minute. For those of you too young or drugged-out to recall, this is a parody of "Desiderata," a record that enjoyed a brief, inexplicable success around 1971. It consisted of the ancient poem being read by one-time late night talk show host Les Crane, backed by haunting music. The NatLamp parody was written by Tony Hendra, who's probably best known as the manager in This is Spinal Tap and the music was by Christopher Guest, who's probably best known as one of the stars of This is Spinal Tap. I think but do not guarantee that the female back-up vocals were done primarily by Melissa Manchester.

Anyway, none of those folks is as important at the moment as the main voice, which was Norman Rose in all his glory. Wouldn't you like to sound like that? Could anyone possibly say no to you about anything if you sounded like that? Run a guy for president who has that voice and all the Diebold machines in the world couldn't deny him the White House. Here's the link to a Flash animation version of "Deteriorata."

By the way: Frank Buxton, who knows everything about show business, informs me that Mr. Rose's presence in the movie of The Front was especially significant. Rose, he says, was among the many actors blacklisted in the fifties, as depicted in said film. I knew a lot of the performers in The Front, like Zero Mostel and Herschel Bernardi, had been blacklisted. Didn't know that about Norman Rose.