The meaning of life is that we are all not compatible. Or at least, some DVDs are not compatible. If you purchase the new DVD of Monty Python's Meaning of Life and find that Disk 1 will not play properly in your DVD player, here's what you do. And thank Kevin Boury for finding that for us all.

Back to that deadline…

Say, whatever happened to "Grandpa" Al Lewis? Click here for the latest.

For those of you who are new to weblogs: When the operator of the page you're visiting is swamped with deadlines and just too busy to post witty observations, pithy remarks and links to items of great interest elsewhere on the 'net, it is traditional to put up a picture of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup as a means of saying, "I'm occupied and I may not be posting for a while but I haven't abandoned you and I will return shortly." Of course, by "traditional," I mean that I do this and almost no one else. But it's a tradition around here, and that's all that counts.

Yes, I am busy. And yes, I am way, way behind in answering e-mail so if you're waiting for a reply and you aren't the child of some high Nigerian official who wants to use my bank account to transfer $47 million bucks into this country, my apologies. I'll be back soon. In the meantime, thanks to all of you who have made donations to feed the raccoons that invade my backyard and devour a large size bag of Friskies almost every evening. They are also lately engaging a game which seems to involve knocking over the water dish and playing some kind of Raccoon Hockey with it, rolling it all over the yard. This seems to cause them to work up even more of an appetite so keep those donations coming. Muchas gracias.

Like you and everyone else, I have no idea what the delay in the recall election will mean, or even if it will get undone. Cruising political websites just now, I see opinions are all over the place: It'll help Davis, it'll hurt Davis, it'll help Cruz, it'll hurt Cruz, etc. If the Supreme Court overturns the postponement, we'll all be back arguing about Florida again. This thing is such a circus, P.T. Barnum should get royalties.

This afternoon, I helped my mother mark her absentee ballot, just in case they matter. I must say it is a little confusing. In the interest of supposed fairness, the order of names is not alphabetical but was determined by a scrambling of letters. "R" comes before "W" and so on. To further complicate matters, the top position is different in each of the state's 80 assembly districts.

This makes it messy because what you have to do — or at least, what my mother has to do — is to punch out a hole (or "chad," as we now call them) on a punchcard ballot. Which hole do you punch? Well, you consult the sample ballot, find out which number corresponds to the vote you wish to cast, then you punch out that number hole on the ballot. For example, to vote against the recall, as she wished to do, you punch out chad #5…I think. At least, that's what I punched out for her. I hope it's right. Then she wanted to vote for Cruz Bustamante on the second part but, wading through the ballot, she literally could not find his name. That's why she asked me to help…and even though I have 20-20 vision and I'm pretty observant, I must admit I had a little trouble finding him.

Back in the last presidential election, I had little sympathy for those who claimed that a confusing ballot had caused them to vote for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. I guess I thought that if you weren't wise enough to figure out the ballot, you almost didn't deserve to vote. But my mother is very smart and alert, and today it seemed quite possible that without me there to help, she would have marked her ballot wrong. At the very least, she couldn't and wouldn't be sure she'd voted the way she wanted.

My mother used to run a polling place at our home, back when the ballots were paper that you marked with an "X." After the polls closed, the ballot box was opened and the precinct workers would sit in our living room, often until late at night, and count the votes by hand. I can remember the year they went to punch cards and everyone said, "Oh, this will be so much more accurate. There will be no questions that the vote is correct."

Sure hasn't worked out that way, has it?

Several years ago, I got a call for jury duty and dutifully reported to the courthouse, even though I knew the chances of my getting on a jury were about the same as my chances of getting on Sharon Stone. Neither happened but I got a column out of it, and I have just posted that column. Here's the link.

I'm not sure I understand this news item but it's something about scientists using Sylvester the Cat to illustrate the different ways in which different nationalities describe things. Or something like that.

The passing of the great Al Hirschfeld seems to have raised the value of his work. I guess it's because of the attention his passing brought to his artistry. It couldn't be because the death of a man who was 99 and a half years old caught the art world unaware…could it?

As eight e-mails in the last hour have informed me, the famous actress who filled in for her daughter on a soap opera was Joan Crawford, holding down the role that Christina Crawford had on Secret Storm. Here's a page with all the details, including the fact that Ms. Crawford was drinking heavily during the taping. Apparently, the incident was dramatized in the movie, Mommie Dearest, but I guess I never made it that far.

My buddy Rick Scheckman provides the following info. And trust me…he's always right about this kind of stuff:

The below recounting of the switchover of Harry Morton's that was on the web page today is slightly incorrect. The episode in question "The Iron Deer" was the first episode of the second filmed season of Burns And Allen. The way it happened was thus:

Blanche Morton is mad at Harry and is standing in her kitchen holding an iron skillet to hit Harry over the head. She calls him into the kitchen. George off-stage calls out hold it. Blanche freezes in place and George walks on-screen and explains that Fred Clark has left the show to go to NY and from now on Harry Morton will be played by Larry Keating who he brings on and introduces in front of the frozen in place Blanche. He asks Larry if he has ever met his TV wife and calls Bea into the foreground to meet Larry Keating. They exchange pleasantries. Then George says it is time to go on with the scene. He and Keating walk off and the scene resumes and the new Harry Morton walks in and gets hit with the skillet.

Fred Clark had left on bad terms with George and was not in the transition episode.

When Bill Goodwin was replaced by Harry Von Zell in the live days, he was introduced by Goodwin as the new announcer. And when Hal March was replaced by John Brown, George did a similar scene to the Keating change in welcoming John Brown explaining that March had left for NY with his partner Bob Sweeney to do a television show. Brown was shortly replaced with Fred Clark because his name turned up in Red Channels.

That sounds right. And into all this talk about how to replace departed cast members, I should mention that soap operas have this problem occasionally…and had it rather often back when they were done live. They would sometimes just have another actor come in and start playing Diana's husband or whatever the role was, and there were a few times when they'd have a voiceover announce the change. I seem to remember that there was some soap where a key role was played by the daughter of some famous actress. The daughter was off the show for a time and her mother came in and filled her part for a few weeks. At the beginning of the broadcast, a voiceover made the announcement that So-and-So, who played such-and-such a character was off for a while, and that her mother was playing her character until she returned. I don't recall the actresses or the soap but I'm pretty sure it happened that way.

By the way: Yes, this is the same Rick Scheckman who works for Late Show with David Letterman, where his duties include film coordination, appearing occasionally in sketches, and impregnating the host's girl friend. He's a good friend and a decent human being, as evidenced by the fact that he was the first person to donate money to our Feed the Raccoons fund. (Yeah, I know I'm really pushing it. But you should see how much seven raccoons can eat…)

Jim Korkis has a nice two-part biography of the great animator, Ub Iwerks, over at Jim Hill Media. Here's that link.

Every so often, I hear about a theatrical production in another city that sounds so intriguing, I momentarily mull if there's a way to jump on a plane and go see it. The only time I ever acted on it was when Jerry Lewis debuted on Broadway in Damn Yankees. My friend Paul Dini and I decided to spring for the cost, I ordered opening night tickets for the show…and then, just before I called the travel agent, a comic convention in New York that coincided with that date called and invited to fly me back to be a guest. I said, "I'll do it, and I'll bet I could get Paul Dini to come back, too." The convention organizer said, "Really? That would be great." So Paul and I got someone else to pay for our air fares and, just to make it really weird, the convention put us up at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square. Damn Yankees was playing in the Marquis Theatre located inside the Marriott Marquis.

I don't expect that to happen again. I don't even expect to go see this. But I must admit that I'm intrigued at the prospect of Patty Duke starring as Momma Rose in a production of Gypsy. She may not be able to sing like Ethel Merman but she knows a thing or two about the ruthless exploitation of child stars.

I'm not sure how many cities are getting it but tomorrow night (Sunday) is the annual Chabad L'Chaim to Life Telethon. It's on in Los Angeles (starting at 5:00 PM on KCAL, Channel 9) and I think in New York (presumably at 8 PM due to the time difference) and I don't know where else. It's seven hours of dancing Jews, celebrities (including many you've heard of), pleas for money, and generally wonderful Yiddish-style music. It is at times entertaining in a campy manner and at times, genuinely entertaining.

For years, it was hosted by comedian Jan Murray who was wonderful at it. As Jan got older, one aspect of the show got more entertaining. You see, every time they go to the tote board for a new total, they play a peppy Jewish folk tune and a group of young men come out and dance a rousing hora in celebration. It was tough enough for Mr. Murray to host for seven hours but every fifteen minutes or so, he had to join in this dance and as the show wore on, he'd get more and more winded, and I think some people just watched to see if Jan Murray was going to drop dead on camera. Some may even have donated just to hasten the next tote.

The last year or two he did the show, Murray begged off dancing and they brought in Jon Voight to be his "dance-in" (as in, "stand-in") which deprived us of that fun, but there were other joys. One year, Bob Hope was on and did a great job of mentioning the name of the charity about ninety times without once pronouncing it correctly.

"Chabad" is pronounced, like "Chanukah," with the "c" almost but not quite silent. You pronounce such words as if they begin with the "H," but you insert a little inhaled gasp before that letter. That's if you're trying to be correct. If you're Bob Hope, who was about as unJewish as a guy who did one-line jokes could be, you pronounce it with the "ch" sound of "charlie" or "cha-cha." Then to really get it wrong, you put the emphasis on the wrong syllable and…well, it was one of the funnier things Mr. Hope did in his last decade.

I don't know who's hosting this year. After Jan Murray retired, they tried Fyvush Finkel, who did a credible job, and radio talk show host Dennis Prager, who was awful. The publicity for tomorrow night's affair lists celebs including Jeffrey Tambor, Martin Sheen, Regis Philbin, Serena Williams, Magic Johnson, Howie Mandel, Darryl Sabara, and the cast of Friends, but doesn't say who's hosting.

Still, it'll be worth watching just to see the energetic Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, who runs the West Coast Chabad-Lubavitch. There's a page about an earlier Chabad Telethon at this website, including a page where you can see some video excerpts from past broadcasts.

One other thing will be missing besides Jan Murray. My friend, actor-writer Stanley Ralph Ross passed away in 1999. Stanley used to work on the telethon every year, often as its announcer and always answering phones. Stanley was very tall and though a very sweet man, he had a deep, gravelly voice that often got him jobs on cartoon shows as dastardly villains.

Every so often, someone on the phone banks would get a call from some Jew-hater uttering anti-Semitic garbage. If Stanley was around, they'd pass the call over to him and he'd signal the Stage Manager to tell the director to cut to a shot of him if possible. Then he'd tell the caller, "You see that 6'6" Jew on your screen? That's me. Come on down to the station, meet me in the parking lot and say that to my face, you cowardly bastard!"

According to Stanley, he'd hear them gulp and hang up. The telethon after he told me this, I watched and, sure enough, at one point in the middle of a number, they cut suddenly to Stanley and though I couldn't hear him, I could read his lips as he challenged the guy and called him a cowardly Nazi bastard. Then Stanley started laughing and I knew the guy had hung up. I immediately called up, got routed to Stanley and donated a hundred bucks. Best thing I saw on television that year.

I've known William Stout for thirty years and I'm still amazed at his talent and versatility. Talk about a guy who can draw anything. Think I'm kidding? Think I'm just praising a guy 'cause he's a friend of mine? Then take a look at his website and tell me that isn't one amazing artist.

Early next Friday morning (in other words, late Thursday night), Game Show Network is airing an interesting episode of To Tell the Truth from 1967. One of the contestants is Hunter S. Thompson.