A year or three ago, the U.S. Postal Service came out with these six stamps honoring great Broadway composers.  Someone recently gave me a pane of them and they got me thinking.  These men all did their major work in a 40 year period (30 if you leave out the Gershwins) and they hardly had the field to themselves.  If the U.S.P.S. had done six or even ten more stamps, they'd have had no trouble finding worthy candidates: Jule Styne, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, etc.  If they tried to do stamps covering the last 30-40 years, they'd be hard-pressed to find six.  Sondheim, certainly.  Jerry Herman, I would imagine.

And then the next stop after that is Andrew Lloyd Webber.  At that point, it would cease to be much of an honor.  It is also worth noting that, in my last few trips to New York, the musical shows I've attended have, as often as not, been shows written by the guys on the stamps above.

Another thought I had about these stamps is that whoever decided what stamps would be on the same row was trying to make a small historical statement.  The Gershwins are on the same tier as Lerner and Loewe, which is vaguely symbolic.  A lot of critics hailed the latter as the successor to the former.  (Also, Lerner won an Academy Award — a major turning point in his career — for adapting the Gershwin's work into the movie, An American in Paris.)

The second row of stamps has Lorenz Hart on the left, Rodgers & Hammerstein to the right.  Rodgers and Hart, of course, were a team and due to Hart's drinking and decaying work habits, Rodgers finally left him and began collaborating, with greater success, with Hammerstein.  Don't those two stamps, viewed as a unit, look like Hart is looking with mixed emotion at his former collaborator who has not only left their partnership but his stamp, as well?

Lastly, we have the pairing of Meredith Willson and Frank Loesser.  The connect here is that Willson's best works were published by Loesser's music company, done under his encouragement…and have always been dogged by rumors that Loesser ghost-wrote or ghost-rewrote certain key numbers.

This may seem like I'm projecting history where none was intended…but there are 720 different ways to arrange six stamps and this is the only one where the honorees on each tier have anything in common with one another.

When Phil Silvers was in the Broadway show, High Button Shoes, one of its producers, Joe Kipness, noticed that his star seemed dejected and not at his best. He asked Silvers what the problem was and Silvers explained he was on a tremendous losing streak as a gambler. Every bet he made, he lost…one after the other. No matter what it was, Silvers bet and Silvers lost.

Kipness came up with a way to help Silvers get his old spirit back and most of his money, as well. He found out about a prize fight that was fixed and he told Silvers, "Bet everything you can on the kid in the black trunks. Hock your car, borrow against your life insurance, rob your mother if you have to. Just put it all on the kid in the black trunks." Silvers thanked him and rushed off to do so.

The kid in the black trunks won in a major upset, as planned. The next day, when Kipness went to see if his star had his old energy back, he found Silvers more depressed than ever. "What's wrong, Phil?" he asked. "Couldn't you raise any money to bet?"

The actor said he'd raised thousands of dollars and bet it with his local bookie. "So," Kipness asked, "why are you so dejected?"

Silvers looked up at him with sad eyes and said, "I liked the kid in the white trunks."

Whatever happened to Richard Lamparski?  I'm serious.  It's been more than ten years since he issued one of his entertaining Whatever Happened To..? books.  Anyone know what became of him?

If you use Microsoft read the warning over at the Gibson Research website.  This is a good place for everyone to occasionally peruse.  Steve Gibson has proven to be the Internet's most adept, independent watchdog of major security breaches.

Can you spare 90 minutes?  That's how long it'll take you to watch a pretty good interview of Stephen Sondheim over on the Lincoln Center website.  New York Times critic Frank Rich asks the questions and you'll need RealPlayer installed.  While you watch, browse the site and see how many places you can find where they've spelled their honoree's name "Sondhiem."  (When it first went up, there were more but they've fixed some of them.)  Here's your link.

The truest thing I've seen or heard a public figure say this week:  I'm watching the show Biography and they're covering Raymond Burr.  I just heard the following quote from famed attorney Alan Dershowitz…

Perry Mason was my dream and then my nightmare.  He started as my dream.  I wanted to be Perry Mason.  I dreamed of the courtroom battles that Perry Mason had fought.  But then he became my nightmare because I learned that the clients that Perry Mason represented don't exist in real life.  Most of my clients were guilty.

Mr. Dershowitz's most famous client was Orenthal James Simpson.

The dumbest thing I've seen or heard a public figure say lately…

Since this year's measure qualified for the ballot, Asa Hutchinson and John Walters, heads of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, have visited to warn that legalizing pot would turn Nevada into a drug tourist spot.  "You're going to have a much more permissive environment," Hutchinson says.  "People will be coming from other states to visit their relatives so they can use marijuana."

Yeah, wouldn't it be a shame if a state with legalized gambling and prostitution descended into a more permissive environment? (Here's the text of the entire article.)

Another person I knew was smart has proven themselves to be even smarter than I thought.  That's right.  It's another rave review of Comic Books and Other Necessities of Life.  This one comes from the brilliant Alan David Doane over at Comic Book Galaxy.  Check it out.

I notice that the website for A&E Video does not give a specific running time for the Courageous Cat DVD set.  It just says "720+ minutes."  This means that nobody there could stand to watch the whole thing, either.  (Note, if you will, that it's cheaper to order it via our Amazon link than it is from its maker.)

Jim Backus and Victor Mature were filming Androcles and the Lion, a film which required them to appear in the full regalia of Roman soldiers. One day, during a break in filming, Mature told Backus, "I have to run an errand. Want to go for a ride with me?" It was too much trouble to change out of their costumes so they didn't. They got into Mature's car, drove off the lot and made a quick trip to a business that Mature owned about a mile away.

On the way back to the studio, Mature insisted they stop off at a neighborhood bar for a quick drink. Backus protested that they were still in costume but Mature said, "Aah, they won't care in this place."

The two men walked in and the bartender stared at them in amazement. After a few seconds, Mature asked him, "What's the matter? Don't you serve servicemen?"

Lyn Nofziger was a biggie in the administrations and campaigns of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.  (He's the guy who took command the day Reagan was shot, Al Haig was sweating buckets and the TV news channels began broadcasting erroneous reports that the President was undergoing open heart surgery.)  I disagree with about 95% of his worldview but find it interesting and enlightening to visit his website, which you can do by clicking here.  Currently, he's dumping on the Clintons, John McCain and Bill Simon.  Once you get there, click on the button that says "musings."

In 1960, Bob Kane created a cat/mouse version of his other famous concoction, Batman and Robin.  130 short cartoons were produced of Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse.  (The voices for almost everyone on the show are usually credited in animation history books to Bob McFadden.  This is wrong.  They were done by Dal McKennon.)  You can now own all 130 episodes as a boxed set of four DVDs from the Arts & Entertainment Network's home video division.  In fact, if you click right here, you can order the set from Amazon and give this website a small cut of the purchase price.

My sense of decency compels me to add that I'm not sure why you'd want to do this.  Courageous Cat was an okay, low budget show and it does have a certain nostalgia value for some of us.  But it was low in wit or differentiation of plotlines.  There's something like ten hours of Courageous Cat on these DVDs and I doubt I could make it through more than around 30 minutes without running screaming up the boulevard.  But if you loved the show and are going to buy the set, buy it through our link so we get the money.  If enough of you do, it will convince me to reconsider my opinion of it.  It's about the only thing that will.

Currently playing in both New York and Los Angeles is a show called Puppetry of the Penis.  It consists, as I understand it, of two men who come out on stage nude and proceed to twist and adorn their genitalia into unusual images, all of which are projected on a large screen.  My initial reaction when I heard this was that someone sat down one day and said, "Hmm…what kind of production can we create that we're absolutely guaranteed Mark Evanier won't want to see?"  And if that was the thinking, they can relax: I don't.  But I did laugh out loud when I saw the following casting notice posted over on the Backstage website…

PUPPETRY OF THE PENIS
Open auditions for Aspiring Penis Puppeteers.  Must have own equipment.

Like I said, I have no interest in seeing this show.  One reason is that, when I was a kid, my friend Carl kept performing it.  Every time we used either of our Magnajectors, he'd wait until I turned away for a moment, unzip his fly and project his johnson on the wall and announce it was Pinky the Elephant.  I'm not sure if he thought this was just a great joke (if so, he was wrong) or if he had the idea that, once he started dating, he'd take his Magnajector along and try to impress the ladies.  Alas, even at the highest magnification, Pinky wasn't too impressive.

This weekend, the blurbs say, "O.J. Simpson tells his side on The E! True Hollywood Story."  Is there a less true Hollywood story than O.J. Simpson's?

I don't think I ever had a toy I enjoyed more than the Magnajector.  It was a simple opaque projector made of rather attractive Bakelite.  Inside was a light bulb and a mirror.  You plugged in your Magnajector and whatever you put it on top of was projected on the wall.

Somewhere around age nine, I used mine to make a series of cartoons starring a dog character I named Daniel Bone.  Actually, "cartoons" is way overstating things since even crude animation was not possible.  They were more like unlettered comic books projected one panel at a time, with me doing the voices live for whatever friends or parents I could drag into a dark room.  Later, I learned I could trace drawings with it, and a friend of mine named Carl invented a usage for his that I'll divulge in a moment.  But I recently came across a picture of a Magnajector and couldn't resist sharing it with you.

The debate goes on over whether or not the U.S. should declare war on Iraq.  I haven't made up my mind and may not for some time.  I think good points were made in this article about why we shouldn't (yet) by John Kerry, and this article on why we should (now) by George Shultz.

Those of you interested in animation, stop reading this page and hustle over to www.frankandollie.com, which is the new domain of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.  They are, as you know, the last two of Disney's fabled "Nine Old Men" — two lifelong friends who have worked on more great animated films than a lot of folks will ever see.  Their site has animation tips, biographical info and even a new, on-line cartoon that they've been creating.  It's…uh, unusual.  But I think for two guys in their age bracket to embrace the Internet and get a website up and running is terrific so I'll not quibble.

Younger cartoonists have websites, too.  I just this minute found out that Scott Shaw! has a website up showing lots of his fine work.  It's at www.shawcartoons.com and if he'd told me about it, I would have plugged it sooner.

Forgot to mention that the Heads Up on that episode of Password was courtesy of my buddy, Rick Scheckman, a fully-tenured member of the staff (and, on occasion, the cast) of The Late Show with David Letterman.  Thanks, Shecky.

The comedian Lewis Black has a joke which I'll probably get wrong here but it's a good joke.  It'll survive my mistelling.  It has to do with a half-time show at a football game that he found himself watching — one of those relentless celebrations of patriotism and flag-waving and America's fruited plains.  "After two or three hours of this," he says, "I was actually sick of freedom."

I'm afraid I'm starting to feel something similar regarding tributes to the fallen heroes of 9/11 and resurrections of national grief.  I feel as bad about what happened that day as anyone.  I also have the greatest respect for firemen and other emergency workers and, unlike many who sing their praises, I think the least we can do is to pay these people better.  But all the remembrances and memorials and slow-motion montages are starting to ring very phony to me, especially when accompanied by someone making a profit or wrapping themselves in the tattered flag.  Even some of the well-intentioned ones are already starting to feel like overkill and we have almost a week of this to go.

What I think I'd like to see is someone — anyone, but preferably a person of some prominence — get up and say, "Hey, things haven't changed as much as we thought they would.  We're a much more resilient people than even we knew."  I'd also like to see more folks complain that, for all the outpouring of woe and a national consensus to do whatever was necessary to prevent another 9/11, we are still slow and stingy bastards when it comes to spending a little more money on airport security or firefighters' salaries.  Most of all, I think I'd like to see the nation experience a mass revulsion at those who have tried to exploit the tragedy to sell cheap merchandise or cheaper political causes.

I'm not holding my breath…