You're in a strange city. You go into a restaurant. You want a glass of Coca-Cola. What's the one word term you use to denote what you want? Well, it depends where you are.

In 1970, George Furth and Stephen Sondheim brought a show named Company to Broadway for a very successful run. It has since been produced hundreds of times across the country and discussed incessantly by theater buffs who argue about it, primarily about the central character, Robert. Robert, aka Bobby-Baby, is unmarried, unable (or perhaps unwilling) to commit to any of three comely lady friends, and badgered to marry by five couples he knows. All five couples have substantive problems in their own relationships and Robert functions as observer to these as he tries to sort out his own life on his 35th birthday.

The notion that Robert is wrestling with homosexuality has been suggested by some and rejected by others. The authors have denied it, but not all that convincingly. In fact, in a 1995 script revision, he and one of the husbands confess to having had separate gay experiences, though not perhaps the kind that classifies one irrevocably as gay. Or maybe they're both lying or maybe the scene is a dream. Furth seems to have decided to expand on that area of confusion about Robert by giving the character (and us) more to be confused about.

It has also been argued that Robert is just a cold fish and/or that his friends' marital squabbles have scared him off. A few heretics have gone so far as to opine that there really is no explanation for Robert's lot in life; that the text, deliberately or not, makes him a cipher for whom there is no rational analysis. Not unrelated is that the play is episodic in nature with a non-chronological throughline and some scenes that are arguably more in Robert's imagination than his reality. The material began life when Furth wrote it as a number of unrelated plays. Some critics have said that, despite interjecting Robert to connect the scenes, it's still a number of unrelated plays.

I have seen Company performed a number of times. That it has many wonderful scenes and songs is obvious, but I'd never decided if I actually liked the show as a whole. There were always things — usually, the same things — that bothered me about it. Still, so much was wonderful that I felt like the bad things had to be the fault of the productions, which were professional but not first-rate. I was therefore ambivalent about seeing the new Reprise! production, currently playing up at U.C.L.A.'s Freud Playhouse. Even though I had subscription tickets, already paid-for, I almost didn't go…but I did, last night, and I guess I'm glad I did…

Because now I know: I really don't like Company.

I like parts of it. This production has some wonderful performances and brilliant moments but I don't think they all add up to a show I enjoy. It's also one I think was probably a lot more relevant and meaningful in 1970 than it is now. The passage of time has also muddled an already-muddy show. The program book for this version says it's set in "now" and there are cell phones and a couple of newly-added current references. But the song lyrics still refer to reading Life magazine to stay up-to-date and "op art" and the feel of many scenes, like the one about the couple trying marijuana for the first time, is extremely 1970. So which is it — then or now? Like Robert's sexuality, the ambiguity could in theory be intriguing or it could be frustrating, and I felt more of the latter than the former.

The cast of the Reprise! version works hard and generally succeeds in their moments. Jean Louisa Kelly as Amy sings "Getting Married Today" about as well as anyone ever could. Deborah Gibson (yes, the former pop star) plays Marta and performs "Another Hundred People" in wonderful voice. Judith Light, playing Joanne, sings "The Ladies Who Lunch" about as well as anyone who is not Elaine Stritch ever will. (People love this song but I've never cared for it, nor do I understand what it's doing in this show, especially so near the end.) Christopher Sieber, who plays Robert, sings the hell out of "Being Alive"…but I'm afraid I still don't get what Bobby has to sing about by then. The other roles are filled by Sharon Lawrence, Scott Waara, Kathryn Blake, John Scherer, Anastasia Barzee, Kevin Chamberlin, Josh Radnor, Richard Kline, Cady Huffman and Amy Pietz. They're all pretty good but the production still gave me whiplash, alternating between good moments and bad.

That greatest of all philosophers, Henny Youngman, used to define ambivalence as watching your mother-in-law drive your new car off a cliff. This is pretty much how I now feel about Company. And why it'll probably be a long time before I subject myself to another production of it.

If you haven't seen the new issue of Wired, you might have missed this article on the rise of Pixar Animation.

Thanks to the many folks who sent me suggestions about what cheapo cartridges work well with Epson printers. If I decide to try them (I may or may not), I'll report on the results here.

Posting here may be light for the next few days. As you might intuit from the time on this post, I'm back in Deadline Hell, trying to get a script finished. Good night, Sweet Internet. See you in the morning.

The hardest-working, least-rewarded folks in Las Vegas are the cocktail waitresses who serve drinks to gamblers. One of them has put together a fun website about her craft and experiences. Go visit the Cocktail Doll…and don't forget to tip.

Who says there's no justice in this world?

Here's the L.A. Times obit on Jack Bradbury and here's the N.Y. Times on Gill Fox.

A joyous seventieth birthday to my friend of 30+ years, Harlan Ellison. Since he disdains the Internet, he'll probably never know I posted this but maybe the sentiment will mysteriously transfer to that Gutenberg-era "typewriter" contraption he uses. (Then again, he writes some pretty spectacular things on that kind of machine…)

Regarding the five-second delay on a show like the Tony Awards, Bob Foster writes to ask…

Question regarding the 5-second delay: What if someone says or does something that lasts longer than five seconds? If they cuss and throw finger gestures for 15 seconds, what do we see on the screen to cover that time? How does that work?

The way it usually works is that they can cut the audio or the audio and the video. If someone were to say the dreaded "f" word, the Censor-Person would presumably say, "Kill the audio" and they'd take out the sound until such time as it seemed prudent to restore it. They probably can't bleep a specific word on the fly so the sound would just disappear for a period.

If someone exposed themselves or otherwise did something where the visual was deemed offensive, they would probably cut the picture, maybe going to a title card. There's always one ready just in case of technical mishaps. Then they could restore the video after the director had switched to something else..an audience shot, perhaps. It's theoretically possible that a fast-fingered tech director could quickly blur/pixelate part of the screen but they probably wouldn't take the chance. If they were close to the time for a commercial, they would probably just switch to it.

One thing to remember is that with a live show, there's always the chance of a large or small crisis. Cues are missed, microphones go out, etc. The director always has to have contingency plans for the unexpected. They have to ask questions like, "Well, what would we do if someone in the audience just ran up on stage and started delivering a commercial? What if there's a power failure in the theater? What if there's a fire?" The possibility of some actress flashing skin is just another of these possible problems and not even the most dire.

CBS has announced they're going to put the Tony Awards on a five-second delay this year, presumably to avoid broadcasting something akin to the Super Bowl breast flash. This is a trend that will not last long.

Here's the problem with it: It puts some poor Standards and Practices person in a very awkward position. If someone flashes a forbidden body part or says the "f" word, okay, that's an easy call. But there are plenty of arguable things that can and will happen on live broadcasts. On last year's Tony broadcast, for instance, two men kissed on the lips. If you're the person in the booth with the power to bleep or cut away from that, do you do it? And remember…you only have five seconds to decide. What if someone says, "friggin'?" or does a joke about the president being shot? What if someone utters a remark that many would think was racist? What if someone makes, like Jackie Mason once did on Ed Sullivan's show, a quick, hard-to-see gesture that might possibly have been The Finger? What if someone says something that might have been a naughty word but you're not sure? On taped/filmed shows on which I've worked, I've seen the censor-person replay a tape several times, listening hard, to decide if a certain word had been uttered. I've seen them call others, including their bosses, to discuss a given joke or cleavage. On a live show, one does not have that luxury.

A network's Broadcast Standards department is not, as some people think, there to police what the network thinks is objectionable material. It's there so the network can say, "Hey, we're doing everything we can to be responsible." Right now, in light of Ms. Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction," they demonstrate this with the five-second delay…but this also puts the Standards folks in the hot seat to instantly say that something is or is not acceptable. On a non-delayed live broadcast, at least they can say, "Hey, we would have cut it if we could have."

One of these days soon, the five-second delay will bite them on the ass and it can happen one of two ways. One is that someone makes a quick call not to launder something that is said or shown (or perhaps just misses it) and there are howls of outrage. The other is that the person with their finger on the button pushes it over something that, given more than five seconds to reflect, they might have opted to leave in. Let's imagine that at some award ceremony, some winner gets up and says something like Michael Moore said at the Oscars but in coarser language. The network decides to bleep and that causes an outcry that someone has been censored; that their Free Speech rights have been violated by a nervous network lawyer with an itchy trigger finger. Or maybe it's just a matter of taste and the person who is bleeped feels that what they said or did was not as bad as what America will assume, from the bleep, they said or did. (That's what caused Jack Paar to walk off The Tonight Show. NBC cut an innocuous joke about a Water Closet and people thought Paar had told something truly vulgar.)

The point is that the network wants to avoid protests and the charge that they're irresponsible. It's safer for them to not have the delay so they aren't on the spot to decide what is and what is not acceptable. Once the tumult over the Super Bowl scandal dies out, they'll get rid of the five-second delays because they don't want to make those calls and then have to defend them. Or the delays could go away sooner if there's a brouhaha because someone made or didn't make the right instant decision.

I've been playing with a new toy…the Epson Photo R200 printer. This is not something you want to use for printing out your day-to-day text files or work. Its main functions are to produce (almost) photo-quality prints on glossy photo paper and to print on DVDs and CD Rom discs. I bought it primarily for the latter function, as we are now hearing that labelling your discs with sticky labels or even Sharpie-style markers is not a good idea. These methods will not damage the discs soon but if you're archiving things for posterity, there's a chance of long-range deterioration. If you're going to write on your discs, you should use water-based markers. They're not dark but they put out a legible line. If you're going to get fancy, buy the white, printable blank discs and print on them with a device like the R200.

They're real good for that, though you have to print them one at a time with a special insert shelf that carries the disc into the printer. I recently tried several programs that enable you to design your own labels before settling on SureThing CD Labeller as the best one. The Epson comes with its own design program which is even better, and when the machine prints on a white disc, the result is very impressive. The way it turns JPG photos stored onto your computer into glossy prints is also pretty good, given how inexpensive the printer is. It goes for a little under a hundred bucks at most discount houses and it seems like quite a bargain…

Okay, here comes the "but"…

But here's where they get you: The cartridges. It takes six Epson color cartridges and they ain't cheap. Staples carries them for $18.35 for the black one and $13.25 each for the other five. So buying all six there will run you $84.60. The machine comes with your first six so it's $99 for the machine and six cartridges, then it's $85 for another six cartridges. You get the idea that Epson is selling these contraptions at a loss and figuring they'll make it back on the ink?

There are slightly cheaper alternatives. OfficeMax wants $17.99 for the black one and $12.99 for each of the others so a full set is $82.94. A bit better is Office Depot which is currently getting $16.94 for black and $11.97 for the other five, for a total of $76.79.

Or you can go off-brand. Those prices are all for Epson cartridges. Other companies make compatible cartridges that run around $50 for the set of six. This sounds like a bargain but according to this article from the Consumer Reports people, off-brand cartridges run out faster and the images are more likely to fade. So unless someone tells me they've had an experience to the contrary, I'm going to stick with the Epson variety. Cartridge price aside, it's a great machine and mine is going to get a lot of traffic.

Rick Mohr writes to ask me about a new weblog that claims to be by Andy Kaufman…

I know you are always posting about celebrities and artists who have passed away, and I enjoy your insights on their careers, but what do you think about this one? Do you think it is really Andy?

I think it's amazing (and probably a tribute to Mr. Kaufman's expertise at hoaxing) that his mortality is still the subject of discussion. Yeah, right: At the peak of his creative energy and earning power, a guy is really going to give it all up and drop out of sight for twenty years and cause enormous grief to his friends and family…and for what would be, at best, a pretty feeble joke. Put it this way: If Andy had decided to fake his death, he would have been enormously visible just before he "died." Then he would have come back within a few months…and also in a spectacular manner, not popping up with a weblog.

I mean, the way the "hoax" could have worked was that Andy died and then his friend Bob Zmuda, who took over as Tony Clifton, would have gone on appearing in that guise. I never thought Clifton was much of a joke but to the extent there was one, it was that people thought it was Andy Kaufman under the bad makeup, long after it had become Zmuda. So I can imagine Andy "dying," Zmuda continuing to perform as Clifton and it becoming common knowledge that it was Zmuda. Then, at some point, Kaufman takes over the role again and people continue to think it's Zmuda…until at one point, Tony Clifton is on Saturday Night Live (let's say) and he gets so abusive that someone breaks character and yells, "Okay, we've all had enough of this! We all know it's Bob Zmuda playing Andy Kaufman's character." And "Clifton" starts screaming that he'd not Bob Zmuda…until he finally rips off the makeup and he's revealed as Kaufman.

That would have been a helluva joke but they never set up anything like that…and even if they had, it isn't worth twenty of someone's best years. Six months, tops. Maybe it's time to finally let the guy rest in peace.

The other day here, I reported on the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters' luncheon in honor of Mickey Rooney. As I mentioned, Mr. Rooney gave a very nice speech but it included an anecdote of questionable veracity. As recounted, he was a busy kid actor when he happened to wander into an office at the movie studio and met a man named Walt Disney. Mr. Disney was about to launch a new cartoon character, Mortimer Mouse. In Mr. Rooney's telling, Walt decided to rename the character with the name of his youthful visitor. Cute story…but as Wade Sampson notes in this article, the tale doesn't stand up to much fact-checking. The dates are wrong, the details are amiss, the chronology does not match other, more credible accounts.

On the other hand, we who research show biz history often have to deal with quotes or reported quotes like this because human beings sometimes humor people or say things they don't precisely mean, especially in casual conversations. If you plow through books and old magazines that mention Jimmy Durante, you'll find at least a dozen newspapermen, authors, cartoonists or fellow performers who claim they came up with his nickname, 'The Schnozzola." And almost every one has a probably-true quote from Jimmy saying, "Yep…that's the guy who gave me that name."

Well, why not? Jimmy probably figured it didn't hurt and it made those people happy. Dean Martin did the same thing when someone claimed — as many did — to have been the person who introduced him to Jerry Lewis. He didn't remember who really had, so he figured it was easier to just give everyone the credit.

Maybe Mickey did walk in one day in 1928 when Walt was fiddling with drawings of the character he had already decided to name Mickey Mouse. Rooney's name then was Joe Yule Jr. but he was starring in the Mickey McGuire comedies and folks around the studio probably called him Mickey. Walt could easily have said, "I'm naming my new character after you," just to bring a smile to a young face. I mean, he wasn't talking to a reporter for posterity. He was talking to an eight year old boy…and the eight year old boy just happened to go on to be a major star and to remember the conversation. The details of the story as Rooney tells it are almost certainly askew but it wouldn't surprise me if there's some scrap of truth in this one…not that Walt named The Mouse after him but that he told Rooney he did.

Last year, we had a flurry of items (starting with this one) about a move to preserve the old Hanna-Barbera studio at 3400 Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood on the cusp of Burbank. Today, we have a report that the facilities will endure. Here's most of the story…

City Council members approved a plan Tuesday that would save the historic Hanna-Barbera buildings in the Cahuenga Pass but would allow development on part of the property to proceed. Joe Barbera, who sold the property years ago, had pleaded with officials to save the building where cartoons such as "Tom and Jerry" and "Yogi Bear" were developed.

It's probably nitpicking but let's note that "Tom and Jerry" started in 1939, "Yogi Bear" started in 1959, and the property in question was built in 1963. Still, it's probably good that the studio will be saved…and apparently not with our tax dollars.

Ben Varkentine (who has his own fun weblog here) writes to ask about my statement that I won't be going to see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11…

I wonder if you could expand on this in the blog when you have a minute. I think I share your ambivalence about Moore, but I plan to see the film, and was wondering what if anything made up your mind.

Well, I don't get to a lot of movies at all these days. When time is short, as it always seems to be, I figure I can always see the movie later on DVD or cable…and then I don't even get around to that. But to the extent I do have time to go to a movie, I'm sure I'll be able to find something I'd prefer.

I like some of the things Moore has done and not others. His two TV shows, TV Nation and The Awful Truth, almost seemed to alternate brilliant material with things that made me cringe…and not in a good way. I think he's kind of like the Rush Limbaugh of the left in that around 50% of what he says/does is honest insight and 50% is dishonest theater. It gets attention, it prods others into action, sells tickets (or in Rush's case, gets ratings) and it maybe reinforces a lot of dubious beliefs…but ultimately, it just drives our national debate further into mud-wrestling. I guess what ruins it for me with both of them is that in each case — and this applies to others, as well — you have a real smart man who's good at entertaining, good at socking home his points…but he won't stop where the supportable facts leave off. It may not bother others but I don't want to get hooked by the good parts and then embarrassed by the excesses. I keep feeling let down by the guy, and I'd rather not risk more of that intermittment disappointment.

That's just my choice at the moment. If you see it and tell me there are wonderful moments in it, I won't be surprised. But if I see those wonderful moments and feel the same way, I'll feel I have to defend them when, as is inevitable with someone as polarizing as Moore, his enemies argue that every single syllable is a deliberate lie. And Moore just makes it too hard to defend the good parts of his work…