Talk about a "sweeps" stunt that worked: Katie Couric's turn guest-hosting The Tonight Show last night yielded a 7.1 rating. That's probably way above what even the most optimistic NBC folks expected. Letterman had a 3.9 and Nightline had a 3.1. That's within those shows' normal fluctuation, confirming the theory that the late night shows don't really take audience away from each other. That is to say, when Dave gets a high rating, it doesn't mean he hijacked a lot of Leno viewers but that more people stayed up late that night.

I thought Ms. Couric did an okay job thanks to strong support from guests and written material. I'm still watching (in increments) Leno hosting The Today Show. I'm about halfway through and he seems pleasant enough — but I can't believe anyone not on the Fox Network would interview Colin Powell and not ask, "So…where are all those Weapons of Mass Destruction you told the U.N. we'd definitely pinpointed?"

This amused me. I was reading a recent transcript of an episode of the CNN show, Crossfire, and I spotted this line…

BETSY HART, COLUMNIST: I'm so delighted my liberal friends, Oliver Washington, (ph) are willing to make a value judgment about a consensual adult activity.

I didn't see the show but I have a hunch that what she said was, "…my liberal friends all over Washington…"

Stan Freberg's Manhattan gig — performing at Feinstein's at the Regency — has had to be rescheduled again. I'll let you know here when I hear of a new date. It'll be worth waiting for.

…before I submerge into deadline-meeting mode. This morning's Los Angeles Times features an op-ed piece by, of all people, Monica Lewinsky. And what's more, I agree with it. Basically, she says that parents should enjoy a confidence with their children similar to the lawyer-client or priest-confidante privilege. She's right. Read here for the full piece while I get back to that script. Bye for now.

Yes, that's right. I have posted a picture of a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. This is an ancient Internet custom that I recently started. When you see a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup on a website it means either (a) that the proprietor of that website is buried under a deadline and too busy to update his site for a while or (b) that you're on a site for a market that delivers. In this case, it's the former. We'll be back in a day or two after we complete a script that even now is mocking us.

I know where it is.

I was just watching a tape of one of my favorite stand-up comedians, Lewis Black. He was doing his routine about how, one day while playing a comedy club in Houston, he took a walk and found a spot where there was a Starbucks directly across the street from another Starbucks. This, he says, is the End of the Universe. (I won't blow the rest of the routine for you here, just in case get the chance to see him perform it. It's really quite funny. So is he.)

I somehow sensed Mr. Black was telling the truth but, just to reassure myself, I went to the Starbucks website, did a search for Houston and noticed instantly that there's a Starbucks at 2029 W. Gray and another at 2050 W. Gray. I assume this is the location of which he speaks. Further research revealed that the Houston Laff Stop is located at 1952 W. Gray, so I'll assume that's the comedy club where he was appearing.

On the other hand, there are 120 Starbucks in Houston and a number of other comedy clubs. So maybe there are two Ends of the Universe.

My buddy Scott Shaw! trots out the oddest of the Oddball Comics. Go find out all about Manuel Pacifico, Tuna Fisherman.

Another article — this one in the New York Times — by Harvey Fierstein.

As mentioned here a while ago, the Treasure Island hotel in Las Vegas is retooling its infamous pirate show. Four or five times a day except in inclement weather, a bunch of guys in pirate suits swarm over two ships and mime to an unintelligible soundtrack as the crafts fire on one another. There's a lot of noise and flames and pyrotechnics and at the end, one of the ships sinks…and if you stick around for a while after the show, you get to see them dredge it back up so they can reset for the next performance.

Crowds have flocked to see it because it's kind of corny and/or because it's free, but that ends July 7 as the whole front of the hotel receives a makeover. Here's part of the casting notice for the new offering…

Treasure Island Hotel will hold an open call for Battle of Buccaneer Bay, an outdoor theatrical spectacle. A new, modern interpretation of the Las Vegas favorite being revamped by Emmy winner Kenny Ortega to include the "Sirens of T.I.," a singing, dancing, acrobatic band of female pirates. Prod./dir. Kenny Ortega, choreo. Travis Payne. Rehearsals start Aug. at the Buccaneer Bay at the Treasure Island Hotel in Las Vegas. Performances run indefinitely, contracts are for one year. Breakdown — Females: 21-28. All auditioners wear body-concious outfit and bring heels. Singers who dance: prepare 16 bars of pop rock or R&B ballad and bring sheet music, accompanist provided. May sing to tap or CD with no lead vocal on track. Dancers: strong in jazz and hip hop, gymnastic and aquatic abilities a plus for some roles.

Over on one Vegas message board, some folks are acting like this is some sort of desecration of a grand tradition; like the Statue of Liberty is going topless or something. (There's also one guy who keeps posting, "Who the hell cares what's out front? We just go to these places to gamble." It's probably Bill Bennett.) To most though, it's typical of the transitory nature of everything in town. Shows close and old hotels are imploded or completely renovated all the time. The pirate show isn't even a long-standing tradition that is coming to an end. It's only been there since the hotel opened in '93. It's indicative of the rapid turnover that is becoming the norm in Vegas that ten years seems like Ancient History. Anyway, if you want to see the current pirate show, you have a little less than two months. The new show is supposed to open October 26.

If you were to poll everyone who's ever drawn comic books for any length of time and ask them to name the artist they most respect, you'd get a lot of different answers. But certainly in the Top Five, you'd find the name of Alex Toth. I've recommended The Official Alex Toth Website before but between its discussion forums and examples of Toth art (some of them annotated by Alex himself), it's well worth another mention.

According to this article, we may be in for a national emergency. Here's the worst of it…

The tornado that ripped through Jackson, Tenn., Sunday shut down the Pringles plant there — the only one in North America — and Procter & Gamble has temporarily suspended all U.S. distribution of the snack food. There's an estimated six-week supply of Pringles already in stores or en route. But if you get the munchies, you might want to stock up.

We may have to start deep-frying dress shields to get the same wonderful taste.

Recently, the National Archives released some 9,000 pages of heretofore-secret testimony from the famous Commie-hunting inquiries by Senator Joe McCarthy. Here is an article that will give you some background on it all. And here's a link to a page through which you can access the transcripts. The interrogation of the great mystery writer Dashiell Hammett occurs in Volume 2 but is generally unremarkable. They keep asking him if he's a member of or has ever contributed money to the Communist party. He keeps invoking the Fifth Amendment. Still, the whole fishing expedition is pretty scary.

A reader of this website named Summer writes to ask…

Interesting about Saturday Night Live maybe changing the tape for a rerun or the West Coast broadcast. You're sort of an expert on The Tonight Show so maybe you could tell me if Carson ever did this? Did they ever edit reruns or the West Coast broadcast?

Well, I know of one instance where they did both with the same show, but I have to tell this without divulging one name. There was a TV star (we'll call him Joe Blow) who did a series that was a rather spectacular flop — so big that Carson took to doing jokes about the failure in his monologue. A friend of Joe's who also knew Carson went to Johnny and asked him to stop with the digs. He said, "You have every right to do them but I thought you ought to know that Joe's daughter is dying and he's had a nervous breakdown. In fact, one of the reasons his show was so poor was that he was in a deep depression all through the taping." Johnny had not known about Joe's problem so he immediately stopped mentioning Joe and phoned the man to apologize. He also told his staff to make sure those jokes were edited out of those shows if and when they were rerun.

About nine months later, one of those episodes was rerun and one of the jokes was left in…but only in New York. The fellow who'd intervened with Carson had a friend in New York who saw the show when it was run there. The New York guy called the friend out here who then tracked Johnny down on his vacation and told him. Carson immediately phoned and ordered the joke edited out of the West Coast broadcast.

There were a few times when jokes were cut out of a rerun because, for example, they were about someone who had died since the show originally aired. This, however, was the only time I know of when the edit was done between the East Coast and West Coast transmissions. They generally did it sparingly because a cut in Johnny's monologue was usually pretty obvious. I remember watching a rerun one time when there was an abrupt cutaway to a shot of the studio audience laughing. You never saw the audience when Johnny was delivering the monologue but you did (briefly) that night. Between that and a jump in the audio, I think my grandmother could have spotted that something had been edited out. This occurred not long after Elvis Presley died and I guessed that what was cut was one of those jokes about him being too overweight to fit into his blue suede shoes or whatever.

If the Bill Bennett gambling scandal (mini-scandal, actually) has done nothing, it has made some strange bedfellows of liberals and libertarians. Here's a piece from the National Review that summarizes a libertarian viewpoint with which I pretty much agree.

One of the great voices of animation, Lucille Bliss, is receiving a much-deserved honor. Here's an article about that. Congrats, Lucille!