Several correspondents wrote regarding the long-hidden episode of Saturday Night Live that recently (finally) reran, and which we discussed here before.  All said it wasn't as awful as expected; that it was no worse, and maybe a notch above many other episodes of that season.  Some of that, of course, was because we were watching an hour version of what was originally a 90-minute show.  Every SNL gets a little better when its weakest moments are tossed, and we might have thought less of this one, had the trimmers not dumped Berle's closing rendition of "September Song" and a few other bits.

Certainly, his opening monologue of hoary one-liners bombed big, including the spot where they had someone off-stage make a noise so Berle could "ad-lib" that NBC had dropped another show.  But you know what?  That act was Milton Berle.  He did the same routine for decades.  I heard many of the same jokes in the Vegas appearance described in this column, and they went over big with that audience.  To book Berle as your host and then be upset at ancient jokes is like hiring Tony Bennett and freaking out because he insists on singing, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco."

The funny thing is that the writers wrote a pretty broad show that week.  One sketch was "The Widettes," which had everyone padded with huge buttocks.  Odd how I'd forgotten that bit.  Years ago, I worked with one of the former producers of the Sonny & Cher Show.  One day, he read me a quote one day from an SNL writer about how they were advancing sketch comedy from the infantile level of what Sonny and Cher had done.  Then he popped in a videotape and showed me, back-to-back, the Widettes sketch and an almost identical spot from Sonny & Cher.  Anyway, it's inconceivable that anyone could be "too broad" for a Big Ass sketch, no pun intended.  One wonders if one reason Berle made SNL uncomfortable is not because his style of comedy was so dated but because he reminded them of how much
they had in common.

But there are other theories.  One fellow who wrote me said, "I think Uncle Miltie may have gotten a bum rap on this one.  I wonder if he wasn't just so annoying during rehearsals that it colored everyone's view of the episode."  Maybe.  In the new Tom Shales book on Saturday Night Live, one of the writers is quoted as saying that Berle insisted on showing him his famously-huge penis.  A thing like that could color anyone's views.

An enormous new cathedral is being erected in downtown Los Angeles.  For it, an Ojai artist named John Nava has created 25 enormous tapestries depicting the various saints, each rendered by having a friend or professional model pose.  His model for St. Francis Xavier was my pal, cartoonist Sergio Aragonés.

That's right.  If you go to this cathedral when it's completed and look up at the tapestry of St. Francis Xavier, Sergio will be looking back at you.  Here's a link to an article in the Los Angeles Times that tells about the project.

The new edition of Ad-aware is now available.  This is the best of several programs out there that scan your computer for traces of "spyware" — programs or modules that secretly disseminate info on you.  There's a pay version of Ad-aware and a free version, and you can get either by going to their website.  It's easy to use and you don't want that scummy spyware on your system, do you?  Of course not.  Why did I even have to ask?

Susan McDougal is the woman who went to jail rather than cooperate with the Independent Counsel (i.e., Ken Starr's office) in the Whitewater investigation.  She was ultimately acquitted on some charges of obstructing justice, and the jury deadlocked on others, triggering a mistrial.  She was also acquitted of a supposedly unrelated embezzlement charge in Santa Monica.  The "supposedly" in that last sentence is because a lot of observers, including most of her jury, believed the case was bogus, and it was only brought to put pressure on her.  A lot of those folks also think she was literally tortured with her jail time, treated worse than a mass murderer, in a manner shockingly disproportionate to her alleged offense.

Some people think she's a criminal who was financially and/or romantically involved with Bill Clinton, and that she deserved every day she spent in the cooler.  Others hail her as a hero who lost years of her life and everything she owned, rather than confirm a couple of allegations against the Clintons that she knew to be false.  She is not at all subtle about insisting that she was offered immunity and freedom if she would lie, and punished because she refused.

Last evening, I wandered into my nearby Barnes & Noble and found Susan McDougal speaking, signing books, and just chatting with people.  A decent-sized crowd had assembled, which included two of her lawyers and two of the jurors from her embezzlement trial.  One of the latter stood behind me in the autograph line and told everyone that the case against Susan was an utter sham from Day One, and that she was still horrified that our judicial system could be used that way.

Before that, Susan spoke, primarily about what she observed in the various jails in which she was incarcerated.  It was a horrifying account of things you don't want to believe are done in our name, often to people who are only criminals on some technicality.  She is now working to bring these conditions to public attention.

Everyone there, of course, believed her claims about Starr's office pressing her to lie about Bill and Hillary so, after years of fruitless investigation, they could indict them over something.  I don't know if I buy every word she utters but I do believe her "crimes," if any, were grossly exaggerated by prosecutors with ulterior motives.  And I also believe her when she says that, if she'd said what Starr's goons wanted her to say, she'd never have served a day behind bars, and she'd have right-wingers throwing millions of dollars at her for books and lectures.  One of my great disappointments of the whole impeachment saga was in the way some people seemed to believe that there was no such thing as an immoral act if there was the chance of nailing the Clintons on anything.

Also, I definitely believe her about the jailhouse conditions, and I believe she is an extraordinarily brave lady who stayed the course in a situation where 90% of us would have crumbled.  We got to talk a bit, and I found her to be very warm and friendly, and genuinely moved that so many had turned out to buy her book.  I mentioned I'd been watching Bill Clinton on Larry King Live earlier and she asked me how he did.  I said, "I'd forgotten what it's like to have a president who can get both a subject and a verb into every sentence," and she laughed.  I always like people who laugh in a certain very real, honest manner, and that's how she laughed.  So I liked her.

Like I said, I don't know if I completely buy the way she spins her story.  Maybe I will after I get time to read the book, maybe not.  Lately, I don't 100% believe anyone in public life.  If you'd like to read the book and see if you do, this link will take you to the deepest Amazon where you can purchase a copy.

The Disney website has posted a nice online preview of the upcoming TV-Movie version of The Music Man.  Here it is.  In various Internet forums that relate to Broadway stuff, folks have already started condemning the thing as an outrage and desecration.  A certain percentage of theater buffs practically live to bash, and don't bother waiting until they've actually seen something to set their opinions in cement.  I will admit Matthew Broderick does not look like a carbon of Robert Preston but that's not necessarily bad.  In any case, I think I'll do something radical and wait until the show airs to decide how good it is.  This will occur on Sunday, February 16.

Over in Salon, they have an amazing interview with one of the jurors who voted to convict Ed Rosenthal and is now horrified by that verdict.  As I understand it, California law allows the growing of marijuana for medicinal purposes but federal law, which supersedes, says all marijuana cultivation is illegal.  Going by the books, it would seem that the verdict is unjust but technically correct…but (and this is a big "but") shouldn't the feds also be prosecuting the people who received Rosenthal's marijuana and everyone who was part of the dispensing process?

If this were a non-medical situation — and the federal agents are insisting that under the law, there are no such things as medical situations — then the pushers and customers would be prosecuted too, right?  I am absolutely not suggesting they deserve to be, but maybe the absurdity of this prosecution would be amplified to the breaking point if they did.  There are 80-year-old women out there smoking marijuana because it seems to stop them from losing their eyesight.  Shouldn't Mr. Ashcroft's justice department be hauling them into court?  For consistency, shouldn't they be put on trial and not allowed to mention the doctor's prescription or why they're doing it?  Maybe then someone would do something to clear up this Catch-22.

There's something really wrong with a justice system where Ed Rosenthal and Susan McDougal do hard time but Ken Lay and O.J. Simpson are out playing golf.

Oh — here's the link to the Salon piece.  If they make you click through a lot of ads to read it, do so.  It's worth it.

I had to turn off the ABC special on Michael Jackson.  The guy's just too weird, and seemed too clueless as to what he was doing to his own image with the interview.

In 1987, I worked briefly on a proposed cartoon series called Michael's Pets, which would have been based on a then-current line of plush toys.  The plush toys were, in turn, based on…well, on Michael's pets — the animals he had on the grounds of his mansion.  The show never went anywhere largely because though Michael had once been the star of an animated series (The Jackson 5ive — that was how they spelled it), he now thought it would be detrimental to his image as a rock star if he appeared on a kid's show.  Since the network wouldn't buy the series if Michael wasn't going to appear in it, that pretty much ended that.

(Michael did, however, make it clear that he loved Saturday morning cartoons.  He just didn't want to be one again.  At one point, he noticed one credit on my résumé and said, "I really love Richie Rich."  I looked around at his house and said pretty much what you would have said.  I said, "Michael, you are Richie Rich!")

I was only at his home (the one in Encino) three times for less than an hour each, so my impressions are definitely from afar, and possibly out of date.  But he struck me as a big kid who either had no one around to tell him "no," no matter how wrong he was, or was long since past the point where he'd listen to anyone who told him "no."  I was then reading a number of books about Howard Hughes — a man to himself, was carried out.  I couldn't help but note the parallels.  Some of those who worked for Michael seemed to be giving him good, pragmatic advice but I got the feeling that if he had suddenly decided he wanted to see Ventura Boulevard paved with chocolate pudding, somehow that would have happened.

Like Hughes, he fascinates us because we can't fathom how someone with that much success could so fritter it away on childish self-indulgence; how a person could spend so much constructing their private prison and lose all contact with the real world.

While I was waiting for him to come downstairs for what turned out to be our last conference, I had a quick fantasy.  In it, I said to Michael, "Come on.  Let's leave the bodyguards and all these handlers, get in my car, and I'll drive us down to Carney's for a couple of burgers."  Shocking all his aides in my daydream, he agreed — and we went there and as he ate a veggie burger and I had beef, I explained tactfully to him why he was becoming a public laughingstock.  (At the time, the jokes were just about him being effeminate and suffering from arrested development.  They have now evolved to explicitly charging that he rapes small children.)  In my fantasy — which lasted all of 30 seconds before he walked in and the real meeting commenced — he "got it."  Though I drove him home and never saw him again, he began leading a life that raised fewer eyebrows and triggered fewer monologue jokes and Enquirer headlines.

But of course, that could never have happened.  If he could have understood or changed, he would have long since done both.  And I guess the reason I had to turn last night's interview off was the same reason I can't watch news footage of accidents where you think, "If only someone could have done something before it was too late."  In Michael Jackson's case, I'm thinking it was probably too late about the time he stopped dancing alongside Jermaine and Tito.

Let me clarify something, if only to see if I've got it straight: The building on Hollywood Boulevard from which Jimmy Kimmel is broadcasting is referred to as the El Capitan.  It's actually a TV studio that's part of a complex that is still being developed around the El Capitan Theater, which has been a fixture of Hollywood since it opened in 1926, right across from Sid Grauman's famous Chinese Theater.  The following year — over on Vine, just north of Hollywood — another theater opened.  This one was called the Hollywood Playhouse.

The El Capitan on Hollywood housed plays and then movies.  In 1941, Citizen Kane had its world premiere there, and then the theater closed for remodeling, reopening soon after as the Paramount Theater.  In the meantime, the Hollywood Playhouse had segued from hosting plays to network radio programs, including Baby Snooks and Lucille Ball's My Favorite Husband.  When the name became available, they redubbed this theater the El Capitan, and it later became an NBC television facility for shows like This Is Your Life and The Colgate Comedy Hour.  A lot of the celebrities who were surprised on This Is Your Life were snared at the Brown Derby restaurant near Hollywood and Vine because it was just down the street.  The celeb could be "caught" in the opening segment and then quickly driven up the block to the El Capitan during the first commercial.

In 1963, Jerry Lewis launched a highly-promoted, prime-time 2-hour live talk show for ABC on Saturday nights.  For it, the network purchased the El Capitan on Vine and completely redesigned it, installing all new seats and equipment in one of the most expensive facelifts in Hollywood history.  They also renamed it the Jerry Lewis Theater.  The program was a spectacular failure and it left ABC with a 2-hour hole on Saturday evenings and a theater which they'd spent millions to acquire and refurbish.  They solved half their scheduling problems by creating a variety show called The Hollywood Palace, which filled one hour on Saturday nights for several years.  It was done from the theater on Vine, which they then renamed the Hollywood Palace.

After the variety show was cancelled, ABC rented the facility out to anyone who wanted to pay for it.  For a long time, Merv Griffin's syndicated talk show was done there.  Around 1975, Merv was tossed out.  The way I heard the story, ABC needed a home for some new game show.  Merv, who didn't want his operation displaced, offered to pay the difference if the game show would go elsewhere, but there was a network corporate policy that said that an ABC show had to be given preference over some non-ABC show that was merely renting space.  Merv went down the street to a videotape facility called TAV, bought it and moved his show there for the rest of its life.  A video engineer I know told me this tale and said it sealed the fate of the Hollywood Palace.  They lost a lucrative long-term tenant to take in a quiz show that only lasted 13 weeks.  The theater then sat dark so long that ABC closed it down as a videotape studio and finally sold it to a businessman who gutted and restored it as a nightclub.  In 1982, it opened as The Palace, which is its current identity.

In 1989, the Disney folks bought the very dilapidated Paramount Theater on Hollywood, right across from the Chinese, and began retooling it into a state-of-the-art theater as part of a new entertainment complex.  Kimmel's show comes from the TV studio which now adjoins the movie theater.

So the El Capitan became the Paramount and then went back to being the El Capitan.  And the Hollywood Playhouse became the El Capitan and then the Jerry Lewis Theater and then the Hollywood Palace and it's now the Palace.  I think.

Speaking of Mr. Kimmel's show, here's a link to a news story on his first week's ratings which, as mentioned here, are being spun as encouraging.  (And they kind of are, though I hear that given the amount of promotion the show had, ABC was expecting a bit better.)  The current version of this story over on Zap2It has a funny typo in it.  Take a look at the screen grab above and see if you can spot the error.

How bad does a Marx Brothers movie have to be that even the Marx Brothers didn't want to admit to having made it?  Most of the early books by — or authorized by — the brothers didn't acknowledge the existence of the last movie in which Groucho, Harpo and Chico appeared more-or-less together.  In interviews, Groucho always referred to A Night in Casablanca (1946) as their last movie, ignoring the 1950 Love Happy.  Okay, maybe Groucho had an excuse.  His role was more of a glorified cameo, remembered mainly because he played opposite a then-unknown lady named Marilyn Monroe.  But Harpo carried the bulk of the plot and even received credit for coming up with the story, which was originally intended as a Harpo-only movie.  When he wrote his 1961 autobiography, Harpo Speaks!, he chose to forget about the film.  Why?  Well, you might get a clue if you watch the thing.  Turner Classic Movies is airing it very early Saturday morning — 4 AM on the East Coast.  At 4 AM, it might even be funny.

Those of you worried that Hollywood is not taking the prospects of war and loss of human life seriously can take comfort in the following news item…

LOVE+PEACE+HOPE While Secretary of State Colin Powell Makes His Case for War

HOLLYWOOD — (BUSINESS WIRE) — Feb 5. 2003 — "American Idol's" Paula Abdul brought some extra love, peace and hope to the hit TV show this past Wednesday, Feb. 5, on the Fox Network.  On the same day that Secretary of State Colin Powell presented his case for war before the United Nations, Ms. Abdul made her "statement" for Peace by both wearing a necklace from the LOVE+PEACE+HOPE jewelry collection, designed by Udi Behr for Oro Alexander, Inc., and presenting these symbols of peace to the contestants.

Ms. Abdul is one of numerous celebrities who have made a statement for peace with this beautiful collection, featuring eye-catching symbols of freedom, envisioned by New York artist Udi Behr for Oro Alexander, Inc.  The collection signifies the resilience, optimism and determination of the human spirit.

You can read the rest of the story by clicking here. But just this much should be very reassuring.

When anyone in the field of cartoon voices is asked who the good teachers are for studying that craft, the answer — whatever it is — is usually preceded by, "Well, the best was the late Daws Butler but…"

Daws was not only one of the most talented actors (voice or otherwise) but an exceptional tutor, as well.  You can't study with him but you can absorb some of his teachings in a forthcoming book called Scenes for Actors and Voices.  Ben Ohmart and Joe Bevilacqua have collected many of his scripts, exercises and theories in what will surely be a must-have item for anyone interested in acting for animation — and probably acting anywhere.  It's scheduled for a June release but you can get your order in now by visiting their website.

I haven't made my mind up about Iraq or Colin Powell's speech.  But I did laugh out loud at Neal Pollock's minute-by-minute analysis.

The voice cast of The Simpsons goes Inside the Actors Studio this Sunday on Bravo.

The answer: This photo of this attractive lady appears on the back cover of the new DVD release of the classic Mel Brooks film, The Producers.  Now, the next question is "Why?"  Is this individual even in the film?  The only attractive blonde in the whole movie is Lee Meredith, who plays the Swedish-speaking Ulla.  That doesn't look like her to me, and nowhere in the movie does Ulla wear an outfit even vaguely like that.  She wears a raincoat, an elegant gown and a bikini.  The "Truth in Advertising" part of me thinks that it's dumb to put this photo on the cover since what they're selling is a zany, hip comedy, and potential buyers need to be reminded of its brilliant performances and legendary bad taste.  Is anyone really going to purchase this movie based on sex appeal?  And if they do, won't they be really, really disappointed?  Or conversely, let's say I'm wrong and there are guys who will check out the packaging of The Producers to see if there might be any hot babes in the film.  Wouldn't it then make more sense to use one of the photos of Lee Meredith in her bikini?  There are plenty of those around (some even in the DVD's photo gallery) and they actually depict what's in the movie.

Should you wish to ponder these questions further, you can order a copy of The Producers from the Amazon folks by clicking here.  But I didn't bring this up just to sell DVDs for them.  Honest.