Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem favor us with another selection…

Busy this morning with an article that must be written but also with disputing a bogus charge to one of my credit cards. The preliminary charge came through this morning at 5:02 AM and I woke up, saw it and thought, "I've never done business with that company…nor would I."

I called the credit card company and they suggested calling the company. They also told me this wasn't the first time this company has charged my card that amount. I missed a couple of previous transactions long ago that they cannot now be disputed. I have to wait until this charge is "posted" in three days before opening a dispute of this charge.

So I called the company five times. I got voicemail the first four but someone answered on the fifth try. A lady there says they have no record of "Evanier" on their computer and she's passing me on to their Billing Department which won't be in tomorrow and will call me Monday. By then, the charge will be posted and I can call the credit card company again to start the inquiry from their side.

I can think of a dozen different ways to make this process more efficient and reduce fraud but I figure if I could think of 'em, they could think of 'em and there are probably many good reasons why they do it the way they do it.

Okay, back to that article…

Here is me on Alicyn's Wonderland…

How to Order More Free Home COVID Tests From the Government.

• Madison Cawthorn urged parents to raise their male children to be "monsters." I had a daydream just now of Herman and Lily Munster deciding that the best thing they could do was to not raise their male child to be Madison Cawthorn.

The largest face in the above montage belongs to Alicyn Packard, one of the busiest voice actresses working these days.  She's on so many shows that I don't know how she finds the time to produce and host her own…but she does.  It's called Alicyn's Wonderland and on it, she interviews important people in the worlds of animation and videogaming. This week though, she couldn't find anyone important so her guest is me.

You can listen to this podcast on Apple, Spotify and just about everywhere else good podcasts — and even ones with me on them — are available.

Or you can watch the video version of this podcast which debuts on YouTube this evening at 6 PM West Coast Time. I think some sort of "watch party" will be happening online then but it'll be there any time after when you want to tune in.  She's a great host and you'll probably want to check out other episodes that don't have me in them.

Several folks who are fans of Langer's Delicatessen here in Los Angeles are horrified beyond belief that I prefer Langer's corned beef to Langer's pastrami. One wrote, "I can understand that someone might prefer the corned beef at some delis to the pastrami since some pastrami isn't wonderful. I cannot conceive of anyone preferring Langer's corned beef to Langer's pastrami."

To this person, I say, "Okay, you're right. I'm the only person who ever felt that way. Langer's has been offering corned beef and freshly cooking several of them every day since they opened in 1947 — five years before I was born! — just in case decades later, I dropped by — as I do every few years — and ordered a sandwich. I am the only person who'd rather have it than their pastrami."

By the way: My assistant Jane and I had lunch delivered from Langer's yesterday. I'd forgotten how much I don't care for their potato salad but they do have the best potato latkes I've ever had from a deli. I am, of course, using the universal standard for latkes: The best ones that were not made by your mother are the ones that most resemble the ones made by your mother. I suspect that when my mother passed, her soul found its way to Langer's and is now there making the latkes.

The other day here, I embedded a video of Rod Serling talking with some students and said I didn't know where this conversation had taken place or when. A few of you wrote in to theorize that because of Serling's remarks about someone maybe doing a musical on the life of Hitler, the conversation must have taken place prior to the release of Mel Brooks' The Producers, which was in 1967.

Well, Jeff Hetzel (an alumni of Ithaca College) tells me it was filmed at Ithaca College in 1972 when Serling took part in a seminar there. He had a long relationship with the school, occasionally taught there and that is where his archives are located. So, as with many good guesses that turn out to be wrong, pre-1967 was probably wrong.

Lastly for now: I'm working today on some articles that will appear in the souvenir book for this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Barring an unexpected surge in communicable diseases, I plan to be there and to host a mess of panels and present The Bill Finger Award and whatever else it is I do at that convention. My partner Sergio Aragonés does not expect to be there but I'm still planning to host a rousing game of Quick Draw!

My occasional employers since 1978, Sid and Marty Krofft will be surrounded this Saturday at the Orinda Theater in Orinda, California.  That's Sid on the left and Marty on the right, and they'll be surrounded by fans of the many TV shows they produced including H.R. Pufnstuf, Lidsville, Donnie & Marie, The Bugaloos, Pink Lady, The Brady Bunch Variety Show, The Krofft Supershow, Pryor's Place, Land of the Lost and so many more.

The event there is called Krofft Kon and it will also feature actors who appeared on some of those shows including Butch Patrick (from Lidsville), Wesley Eure and Kathy Coleman (from Land of the Lost), Johnny Whitaker (from Sigmund and the Sea Monsters) and Sharon Baird (from all of those plus others). I will not be there except in spirit. If you're anywhere near Orinda and want to go, here's a link that'll sell you a ticket.

Readers of this site know that I am not shy about telling the awful truth about some of the folks I've worked with. Well, Sid and Marty were always very good to me and I was proud to be a part, albeit small, of The World of Sid and Marty Krofft. They deserve this celebration and many more.

At first glance, I thought this e-mail was from Rob Petrie but it turns out it's from Rob Peters…

Your recent discussion about the quote "I hate writing, but I love having written" reminds me of something my old high school art teacher said many years ago. I have no idea if this was original to her or not, but she said that she was able to group her students into two groups: "Process Artists" and "Product Artists."

"Process Artists" were those that created art for the pleasure of the process of creating regardless of the end result. "Product Artists" labored over every line with a focus on the end product rather than the journey to get there. I assume that Dorothy Parker, Frank Norris, or whomever said that quote was in the "Product" camp. And based on what you've said, I assume you're squarely in the "Process" camp.

Aah, I don't think I buy those two categories at all.  I think the reasons any given writer writes or artist draws or composer composes are many and varied and I don't think most of us really understand them for ourselves, let alone to itemize what motivates others.  I'm sure a big reason for most people would be summarized as "Well, I have to do something to make a living and I think this would be a lot more enjoyable than any of the alternatives."

And in my case, I never had a lot of alternatives because I never thought I was any good at other things.  Or as I often put it when asked why I became a writer, "I just thought I was a lot less competent at everything else."

I also think most creative people become creative people because they just feel like becoming creative people.

The distinctions made by your old high school art teacher don't strike me as mutually exclusive.  You can get pleasure in creating via a process that includes a focus on the end product.  It's like going on some vacations: You enjoy getting there and you enjoy being there.  And you may not even think of them as separate activities.

Or to paraphrase the quote we've been discussing here: I enjoy writing and I enjoy having written.  And then I enjoy writing the next thing and when it's done, I'll enjoy that I finished it and start on something else.

We've been discussing here why writers write and my pal Dan Castellaneta suggested I link to this video. It's 33 minutes of Rod Serling sitting around — year and location unknown — talking about writing with a group of students. I'm sometimes leery of getting too philosophical about the act of writing because such discussions often become just another excuse for not writing but I don't think this is that.

I have sometimes interacted with writers who were almost paralyzed by the belief that every single sentence that came out of their typewriters — even if those typewriters were computers or work in longhand — had to somehow transform the world. There's a little of that in this video but there are also enough pragmatic, useful points to make it worth any writer's time.

An older writer I knew used to dismiss Serling as being regarded as an important writer just because he got to host his show, not because of his scripts. But even if he got it for the wrong reason, Serling deserved his reputation. He was a smart man who wrote some very good things that have aced the ol' Test of Time. What he had to say is well worth hearing and maybe more than once…

• I've decided that every time anything happens in the world that bothers me, especially if it's injurious to my political beliefs, I'm going to simply insist it was a False Flag operation and it didn't really happen.

A couple of items before I hunker down to finish a script…

My longtime (of at least 54 years) friend Bruce Reznick was the first of several to write and tell me that the alleged Dorothy Parker quote — "I hate writing, I love having written" — was first fabricated by novelist Frank Norris prior to 1915. Well, okay. I don't know that it matters much who said it just as long as that person was a working writer. It means something else if it's spoken by someone not pursuing a career in that profession.

I really liked the TV series called The Kids in the Hall when it was first produced from 1988 to 1995. I liked reruns of it that could sometimes be found after that. And I really like the new series that the same guys have just done for Amazon. I'm impressed that after that long hiatus, they're still at the top of their game.

It's really sad how so many people have accepted a couple of mass shootings per day as just one of those things that happens in the world and we have to live with it.

My article about corned beef here brought some odd comments from folks who don't seem to understand that I avoid spicy foods and things like horseradish not because I do not have their refined palates but because some foods make me seriously ill. I've been meaning to restart a series of articles here about living with food allergies. One of the amazing things to me has always been that some people don't get that just because they can eat a certain thing doesn't mean anyone can.

If you have a P.C. and you're always searching for files you can't locate on your hard disk, give Everything a try. It's, as they say on their site, "…a search engine that locates files and folders by filename instantly for Windows. Unlike Windows Search, Everything initially displays every file and folder on your computer…hence the name, 'Everything.'" It's saved me a lot of time.

And I'm going to put that time to good use and finish that script. Be back later.

From this year's Olivier Awards in London…a tribute to Stephen Sondheim. A bevy of understudies sing his "Our Time" from Merrily We Roll Along…

Gordon Robson sent me this question about the fine comic book artist John Buscema…

Hi, I found your post about Dorothy Parker saying she hated writing, but probably not meaning it quite thought-provoking. Do you think when John Buscema said he hated drawing superheroes that he likewise didn't mean it, or was he serious? He sure drew these strips fantastically well for someone who'd have preferred not to do them. Just wondered what you thought on the matter.

I didn't know John all that well but I think I knew him well enough to answer this question. John was a guy who loved making his living by drawing all day. During his long, glorious career, he drew thousands of pages of all different kinds of stories — not only super-heroes but romance, war, western, historic, etc. Obviously, he liked some of those assignments more than others and I think what he said was his way of saying that the super-heroes were generally not his favorite jobs.

He also didn't like drawing romance comics. He did a beautiful job on them but to him, the stories were devoid of action (unless you consider kissing "action") and interesting settings, and because he found most of the stories stupid.

He was the kind of guy who grew up only wanting to draw and if left to his own muses and desires, he would have depicted more swashbuckling, adventure settings and more realistic characters than most Marvel Super-Heroes…but that was the job that was offered. After some unpleasant experiences working in advertising, he was glad to have it.

He also would have preferred to do finished art on his own, rather than just pencil or do "breakdowns" for inkers he did not think did a great job finishing his work. He only liked one or two of them. (A lover of the art penciled by John and inked by one of those he disliked once accused me of lying when I told him John did not like the end product.)  Buscema especially wished he could slow down and do finished art, taking more time, on Conan the Barbarian.  That was what he usually said was his favorite work for Marvel.

But it served Marvel's purpose to deploy John the way they did and it was probably more financially beneficial to him and his family to pencil-only so many comics that were not his favorites to draw.  He was sure good at all of them.

So I would say that "hate" is too strong a word. Aren't there parts of your job you enjoy more than other parts even though you do them all?

Sticking with a recent topic here: I received a half-dozen e-mails quoting a line that is usually attributed to Dorothy Parker, though one of my correspondents thought it was said by George S. Kaufman. Just about every witty thing ever said by any writer in New York for about forty years was at one time or another attributed to George S. Kaufman but I doubt he said this unless he was quoting Dorothy Parker.

The line is "I hate writing, I love having written." And a quick search of this site for "written parker" would have shown the folks who wrote in that I've discussed it many times on this blog, though not lately. At one point, I said, "To me, that's like saying, 'I hate hitting myself over the head with a ball-peen hammer but I love how it feels when I stop.'" Why become a writer if you hate writing? I hate cole slaw. Why would I become a professional cole slaw taster?

And I wonder if Ms. Parker really hated writing. Those of us who try to write witty, amusing things often say or write lines that we don't believe. We just believe they're witty or amusing. I don't think Henny Youngman really wanted you to take his wife…please. Don Rickles probably never had any true intention of dropping his pants and firing a rocket. Dorothy Parker might have loved writing but thought it was colorful or funny to say she didn't.

I love writing. If no one would pay me to do it, I'd probably get a job I hated to pay the bills and then when I wasn't doing that job, I'd be at this computer writing, if only for myself.

And in saying this here, I think I just answered my own question of earlier this morning as to why I was at this keyboard at 4:08 AM.