You know what an improvisational comedian's greatest nightmare is? Being on stage and knowing his lines. No, but I wanna tell ya…

Saw a bunch of very good improvisers last night. My pal Vince Waldron is the director of a show called Totally Looped that does (sadly) but one performance a month here in Los Angeles. Coming from me, this is high praise because I've seen good improv and bad, and even phony improv, which is the most common variety. Phony improv is kind of like what Morey "The Human Joke Machine" Amsterdam used to do, though he had the integrity not to pretend he was making it up. You'd say "three-toed sloth" to Morey and he'd tell you a joke about a three-toed sloth. He readily admitted it was a feat of (a) memory and (b) switching. If he didn't recall a joke about a three-toed sloth, he'd just tell the one he did remember about the horny rhinoceros and make it into a three-toed sloth. That was clever but it wasn't improvising.

I once heard a great improv teacher describe the art as follows: If you think of the line and then say it, you're not improvising, you're just writing on your feet. The essence of improvisational comedy is that you respond to the scene immediately and react as the character would. An improv performer must be continually challenged and not merely playing Mad-Libs, fitting a few nouns into a predetermined template.

Unfortunately, a lot of folks don't get that. Around the time people from The Groundlings (a fine L.A.-based improv troupe) began getting on Saturday Night Live — and performers from there and Second City began getting movie deals — a lot of wanna-be actors began thinking that improv training on the old resumé might net them the kind of deals Chevy Chase was getting. Improv classes were flooded with folks who either couldn't learn the basics from scratch or didn't want to bother. They just wanted to learn that trick of looking like you were making it up. I went to a couple of "improv" shows that might as well have been using TelePrompters.

So it was great to see what Vince has come up with in Totally Looped. The title refers to the fact that much of the show involves the performers being shown film and video clips they have not seen before and having to loop (dub) them live, working in a preselected title or plot point. There was a clip from Valley of the Dolls, for example, that they had to turn into a movie called Who Stole My Platypus? — a title suggested by an audience member. Amazingly, they did it. (Instead of weeping about her addiction to pills and plummeting career, Patty Duke was now sobbing about how she left the back gate open and the family platypus disappeared.) Very fast, very funny…and genuine improv.

The genuine improvisers in Vince's show are Dan Castellaneta, Richard Kuhlman, Joe Liss, Deb Lucasta, Gail Matthius and Angela V. Shelton. Kuhlman was out last night but the rest managed to become a cast of thousands without him. My favorite moments came when Liss was portraying Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne (introducing the clips) and Castellaneta wandered on as his vastly less-successful younger brother who works in a shoe store. Dan is an amazing actor. As fine as he is voicing Homer and other characters on The Simpsons, that still taps into only about 30% of what he can do. At least, that's the ballpark number that came to mind as I watched him rattling off spurious cast lists to the movies the Osborne boys were introducing, all performed with a solid underscore of sibling rivalry. Actually, everyone in the troupe is terrific but improv comedy doesn't really survive being quoted the next day. You have to be there.

If you want to be there: They do it once a month at the little Second City stage directly next door to the Improv on Melrose in West Hollywood. The next scheduled performance is July 12 but I'll remind you when we get closer to that date.

The 2003 Tony Awards are Sunday night and the only real suspense seems to be how low will the ratings go this year. The pundits are all predicting that Hairspray will win Best Musical, that Take Me Out will win Best Play, that Nine will win Best Revival of a Musical, that Long Day's Journey Into Night will win Best Revival of a Play, that acting awards will go to Harvey Fierstein, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Dick Latessa, Jane Krakowski, Denis O'Hare and Vanessa Redgrave, etc. Oh, a few categories might be horse races. Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play might be Brian Dennehy for Long Day's Journey Into Night and it might be Eddie Izzard for A Day In the Death of Joe Egg, and there are one or two others that could go either way. But only one or two. Since the winners won't matter to anyone who is not connected to them by either blood or financial arrangement, it won't impair the broadcast.

The interesting thing about the Tony Awards is that it's the opposite of the Oscars. When they give out the Academy Awards, we dread the musical performances between envelope-openings; they feel like filler and they delay us getting to know who won Best Actor. On the Tonys, we pretty much know who's going to win Best Actor and don't much care. The musical performances are the show — a rare chance to see what is often the best moment from what's currently playing on Broadway.

And I guess there's one more slight bit of suspense, which is whether they'll get the whole show in. Unlike most other live awards ceremonies, the Tonys are forbidden to run over. CBS has assured its affiliates that it will not delay their local late news broadcasts for the spillover of such a low-rated program, so it ends precisely when it ends. If someone's in the middle of announcing an award, tough. In past years, it has occasionally been necessary to drop the last musical performance of the evening in order to get all the trophies distributed, and one year Nathan Lane practically gave himself a hernia trying to present the Best Musical award in about eleven seconds. Since the last awards of the evening seem to be obvious, the race to finish on time may be the closest thing we get to a cliffhanger. Enjoy.

Peter Paul was the main business-type person behind Stan Lee Media, a short-lived company built around the work of Marvel Comics guru Stan Lee. When the company came crashing down, stock fraud was charged, indictments were handed down against Paul and several associates, and Peter fled to Brazil where he was arrested — at least for a while — and is still reportedly fighting extradition. (In the interest of Full Disclosure, I should note that I briefly worked for Peter and Stan Lee Media, and I always want to emphasize that Stan himself has never been charged or accused in relation to any of the alleged lawbreaking.)

From Brazil, Paul has made a series of charges against Bill and Hillary Clinton, offering to trade proof for immunity from prosecution. No one has taken him up on these offers, perhaps because he is represented by Larry Klayman of the activist group, Judicial Watch. Mr. Klayman seems to be trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for charging that he has solid proof of government (usually, Clinton-related but sometimes Bush-connected) wrongdoing and then getting tossed out of court. I can't find it at the moment but there's a website that itemizes Larry Klayman charges that have floundered for lack of evidence. It's pretty big.

One of Klayman's latest unfounded charges — spinning off info supposedly supplied by Peter Paul — almost derailed a nominee to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Here's the whole story.

We have two for you today, both featuring the outstanding work of Colleen Doran. Go visit her official website and then, when you're done there, go see the website for A Distant Soil, which is a superb comic she's been doing, lo these many years. As you'll see in both places, the lady knows how to draw.

Just fixed a great typo in the previous message. It previously thanked Sean Kelly for altering me.

The Washington Post has an obituary (about halfway down the page) for Pierce Rice, who drew for Timely (Marvel) Comics and Harvey and I suppose other companies. I'm afraid I don't know much about Mr. Rice's work. Thanks to Sean Kelly for alerting me.

Molly Ivins discusses some of the factually-challenged statements of the Bush Administration. My friends who thought that "I did not have sex with that woman" was reason enough to remove Mr. Clinton are tap-dancing madly to explain why it doesn't matter when George W. and Dick and Ari say things that they have to know aren't so.

If you ever get the chance to see David Brenner perform live, go. If you can't, you'll have to settle for a visit to his website.

Odd how some of us get nostalgic for fast food restaurants. I remember Roy Rogers Roast Beef Sandwich restaurants in L.A. in 1968. When I started working with Jack Kirby in 1970, there was one not far from his home in Thousand Oaks. Sometimes on a Saturday afternoon, everyone in the Kirby house would caravan (usually took two cars) down there for lunch, where Jack would drive his wife Roz crazy by dipping his french fries in barbecue sauce. "You're supposed to put ketchup on french fries," she'd tell him — as if the police were likely to come by and bust him for Improper Use of a Condiment.

At the same time, there was a competing attempt to launch a chain of Lone Ranger Restaurants. Locally, there was one in Santa Monica and another at the corner of Pico Boulevard and Westwood — where now there's a huge mall called The Westside Pavilion. The Lone Ranger Restaurant was right where the Barnes & Noble is now situated. I recall the burgers at the Lone Ranger being amazingly close to inedible, which may be why the whole chain went under in less than two years, but the places did have one thing going for them. The Lone Ranger himself appeared often at the ones in Southern California…and I don't mean some actor in a Lone Ranger suit. I mean Clayton Moore himself. You could go, eat a terrible hamburger and meet Clayton Moore and get an autographed photo. He also had a little stash of silver bullets which he passed out to anyone who seemed to know a little Lone Ranger history. It almost made up for the food.

Turning to more important matters, my buddy Earl Kress writes…

Hey, now just a minute! At least on the east coast, Roy Rogers' Roast Beef Sandwich was actually good! As opposed to Arby's which served something gray with little holes in it that they called roast beef. I haven't eaten in an Arby's since 1978.

To which I tell my buddy Earl Kress: Yes, once upon a time, Roy Rogers' Roast Beef Sandwich outlets did serve a great sandwich. Back in the early seventies when they were all over Los Angeles, they were just about the best of the fast food places. But things change. Their L.A. outlets all closed. I think they all turned into Bob's Big Boy Jr stands, and then some of them were bought by the Golden Bird Fried Chicken company. I missed them.

Around 1983, I was flown to an outta-town comic convention and as I was driven from the airport to the hotel, we passed a Roy Rogers. "You have them here?" I asked my driver with great excitement. He told me the whole town was lousy with them — and I guess the word "lousy" should have been a dead giveaway. The next day, I arranged for a group of us to lunch at one and, boy, what a disappointment. It was nothing like the old Roy Rogers Roast Beef Sandwich places of Southern California. It was even a cut below Arby's, where I've always thought they had one large lump of synthetic meat and no matter what you order — beef, ham, turkey, a milk shake, an Arby's t-shirt — they carve it from that lump. A few years later, for I am a fool who doesn't give up easily — I tried a Roy Rogers place in New York and had much the same reaction. Apparently, the chain has changed hands a few times over the years and, legalisms aside, the current Roy Rogers empire has nothing to do with the ones in which I dined in my late teens/early twenties. This is why we prize places like In-n-Out Burger, which still have the same owners and management they've always had. Some things just shouldn't change.

Here's another guy who started out doing comics that looked a lot like his predecessors — in his case, Neal Adams — but quickly became a unique and welcome presence in comic art. Bill Sienkiewicz soon became one of my favorites and if you visit his website, you'll see why.

The other day, I linked to an article not unlike this one that said that the TiVo people are selling, or are about to start selling, data about the viewing patterns of TiVo users. My initial reaction was negative but on reflection, I don't think it's that big a deal. The information at issue is only identified by zip code, meaning that someone will find out that some guy in the 90036 area watched Leno and Conan O'Brien tonight, then skipped through Letterman and watched the late night block on the Game Show Network. That's not much of an invasion of privacy, so I withdraw any concerns I may have implied.

If even that much prying into what you watch bothers you, you can opt out by calling TiVo Central at (877) 367-8486. But I can't imagine that anyone would care that much.

Five days a week, my pal Scott Shaw! posts an unusual comic book cover over at Comic Book Resources and provides clever and informative commentary. In this installment, he features a comic called Foxy Fagan that was drawn by the late Harvey Eisenberg, one of the great unsung cartoonists. Eisenberg was the main artist on the Tom & Jerry comics published by Dell and Gold Key, as well as many of the Hanna-Barbera comics from the same company. He was amazingly prolific, especially when you realize that for much of the time, he was moonlighting from animation studios. Among other gigs, he had a lot to do with the look and feel of the early Hanna-Barbera shows. (One day when we were both working at the studio, Scott found the original artwork to the storyboards for the first Top Cat episode — drawn by H. Eisenberg — and a full set of stats in a dumpster out back. Scott kept the originals for himself, natch, but was nice enough to give me the stats. They're very detailed, since they were used in the sale of the show, and you can see where the lead character's name has been changed. Originally, the show was going to be called Top Cats — plural, referring to them all — and the Bilko-like ringleader was going to be called J.B., as in "Joe Barbera.")

Anyway, Eisenberg was great and his work is avidly studied by animation artists, especially his knack for posing characters so they have weight and movement. His son Jerry is now one of the best designers in the animation business, and one of these days I want to drag him to a San Diego Convention and have him participate in one of those "Quick Draw" cartooning wars we stage there.

Anyway, the other interesting thing about Foxy Fagan is that the comic was published by a short-lived company called Dearfield Publishing. I don't think it's ever been mentioned in any history of comics or animation anywhere, but this company was co-owned by Harvey Eisenberg and Joe Barbera. Yes, that Joe Barbera. Their names apparently appear nowhere on any of their comics because the two of them were then under contract to MGM — Barbera, producing and directing Tom & Jerry cartoons; Eisenberg, designing and doing key layouts. But they got together on the sly and put out some comics, and Barbera at least created some of the characters if he didn't actually write some of the scripts. As far as I know, Scott is the first historian to ever report this anywhere.

I thought the Bill O'Reilly/Al Franken dust-up on C-Span was interesting in a World Wrestling Federation sense. Franken did manage to nail O'Reilly on a lie, and O'Reilly responded about as Franken would have scripted it: By trying to shout him down and demand that the topic be changed. That's the modus operandi of just about everyone who hosts a political discussion kind of show these days. When was the last time Rush Limbaugh participated in a discussion where he couldn't shut off his opponent with the push of a button? The thing about O'Reilly is that he goes on other folks' shows, or appears on panels where he has equal status as the other speakers, and expects to control what is and isn't discussed — and usually, he succeeds. Just before the luncheon with Franken and Molly Ivins, O'Reilly appeared on a live phone-in interview and every time a caller got near a topic that O'Reilly didn't like, he insulted them and bullied the interviewer into going to the next call.

Anyway, if you want to see the brouhaha, you have two choices. C-Span (or maybe C-Span2) is rerunning it on Sunday. Consult their website for the exact time.

Or if you have RealPlayer installed, you can watch it online, at least for a while, at this website. Scroll down the page until you find it. According to Rob Means…

It's an hour and a half long, and starts with Molly Ivins (worth watching in her own right). O'Reilly's talk begins at about the 18 minute mark; Franken starts at about 29:00 (and ends "35 minutes later", at 48:30). Be sure to watch O'Reilly's body language during Franken's talk — it's hysterical. He starts talking about O'Reilly at about 41:15. O'Reilly tells him to "Shut up" at 49:00.

Actually, I liked Molly Ivins more than either of the guys…but I'll tell you what I think was going through O'Reilly's mind as Franken dragged him through the mud. O'Reilly's a smart guy and I think he was thinking, "Franken's found a great act. He's going to make a ton of money — selling books, getting lecture gigs, maybe even getting a radio show up and running — by attacking me and other conservatives. So we're going to hear a lot of it." A lot of folks got rich and famous via Clinton-bashing and there's a growing market for rip jobs on Bush and the right wing.

The thread here about the Jerry Lewis Theaters has brought a lot of e-mail. Here are some excerpts, starting with this message from Fred Hembeck…

I've been enjoying the extensive discussion regarding the Jerry Lewis Theater Chain (which I just this morning had the chance to read) over at your site, and I can attest to the following facts: the Jerry Cinema located in the town of Coram, fifty odd miles away from NYC on bucolic Long Island, amidst a thriving shopping center, and across from a popular Pathmark grocery store, morphed immediately from a failing flight of a funnyman's financial fancy into a venue blatantly showing triple X-rated features!! Whether there was any confusion during the turnover process with marquees et al, and whether the infamous Linda Lovelace starrer was ever there, I couldn't tell you, but the transition DID happen in (virtually) my home town. How can I be so sure, you ask? Well, while I never actually plunked any money down to support Jerry's particular dream, I, um, did take in the odd feature at the revamped picture palace — and lemme tell ya, some of 'em were pretty odd!?! Actually, I have a pretty funny story concerning my intial visit with the new tenants, but hey, I've gotta save SOMETHING for my own website, don't I? Well, if nothing else, maybe this'll spur me on to finally commit that story to the keyboard!

We'll watch for it over on www.hembeck.com. (It's not up yet, but Fred's site is well worth visiting anyway.) Now, this message comes from Jim Hanley…

Just thought I'd mention that while the central company may have failed, we had a Jerry Lewis Cinema on Staten Island until at least 1976. I distinctly remember seeing The Pink Panther Strikes Again there, which IMDB lists as coming out that year. I don't know if that means that they had replaced their projection equipment or not, but considering how many theaters had closed on SI in the years before that, second hand equipment was probably easy to come by. And it always seemed appropriate that the other occupant of the lot with the Jerry Lewis was an Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips stand.

And I wonder how many people who know the name of Arthur Treacher know that he was an actor (and Merv Griffin's sidekick) who had nothing to do with fish and chips besides being British and selling his name to a franchise operation? Probably the same number who'd be amazed to know that there was actually a Roy Rogers and that, apart from lending his moniker to a bad fast food chain, he made movies. Anyway, thanks, Jim. And now this next one is from Darren J. Hudak…

All this talk about the Jerry Lewis theaters brought back fond memories. There was a Jerry Lewis theater in the New Jersey town where I grew up. It was the theater where my parents took me to see the first movie I ever saw in a theater. The Barbara Striesand film What's Up, Doc? I behaved so badly that it was years before my parents every took me to another film. (I think I sat still during the two minutes that Bugs Bunny appeared at the end, other then that I was anything but well behaved). I do remember the cardboard standup of Jerry that stood in the lobby along with a mural of famous film figures from the past. At one point in the 70's, it stopped calling itself the Jerry Lewis theater but for years everyone referred to it as the Jerry Lewis theater. During this time the cardboard cutout of Jerry was gone but the mural of famous film figures from the past stayed for years to come. For what seemed like forever, (but was probably only a few months) it did show the x-rated film Caligula, probably adding to the urban legend. (I remember this because my Mom went shopping at the supermarket across the street and every shopping trip during this time included a complaint about "that movie"). It then closed for a few months and reopened showing more traditional fare, and there were many movies I remember seeing there. At some point in the 80's they put a wall down the middle of the theater in an attempt to turn it into a multiplex, (actually a two plex). The mural of famous film figures was also painted over at this time. About 6 years ago they finally tore down the theater and put up a Rite Aid drug store. This depressed me greatly since not only was this the first place I saw a movie but also the place where, (at age 15), I first kissed a girl. Anyway thanx for bringing up the memories of a place from my youth that will never exist again.

Lastly, here's one from my old fanzine pal, Wayne DeWald…

I know for a fact that a Jerry Lewis Cinema in South Miami did indeed show hardcore porn. (er…that is a good friend of mine TOLD me that it did…I of course would not have any personal knowledge.)

On further reflection, maybe the name of the place changed before the fare became hard core. No question it was the same building, but maybe there had been a name change. I wasn't — I mean, my friend wasn't — as concerned about the name of the theater as much as what really happened Behind the Green Door, which was the feature film.

Okay, I'm now convinced that it's possible/probable that some of the Jerry Lewis Theaters did turn to porn at some point. And if Jerry ever did see his name on a theater marquee along with that of Linda Lovelace, it was probably in that context. I still don't believe any theater would book a genuine hardcore sex film with a Jerry Lewis movie. Anyway, I think I've had enough of this topic for now, but I thank all the participants. (Oh — one more related trivial aside. Once upon a time, there was a Jerry Lewis restaurant at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Larrabee. It went out of business and was eventually replaced by a strip joint called The Classic Cat. It's now a Tower Video, right across from the infamous Viper Room where all the big rock stars go to overdose.)