This isn't particularly timely but I just came across this terrific photo, taken at a televised Friars' Roast of Jack Benny that ran on the Kraft Music Hall TV show in (I'm guessing) 1970.  It was definitely before Johnny Carson moved The Tonight Show to Burbank, which he did in 1972.  The folks depicted — just in case anyone's puzzled — are, left to right: Carson, Alan King, Ed Sullivan, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Benny, George Burns and Milton Berle.  It is perhaps significant of something that the only one of these men who is still performing is Alan King, who was recently seen on Comedy Central's airing of the Friars' Roast of Hugh Hefner.

The photo reminds me of one of the funniest ad-libs I ever heard on a TV show…and it was also, perhaps, the last time anyone ever did a "surprise walk-on" on a talk show that the host didn't know about in advance.  I suspect Mssrs. Leno and Letterman would fire their entire staffs if anything ever happened for which they did not have adequate preparation, including a few pre-scripted lines.  It's a shame since one of the great appeals of the talk show was, once upon a time, the spontaneity and the joy of seeing witty men working without a net.

The line I loved was uttered by David Steinberg.  He was guest-hosting The Tonight Show that evening while Mr. Carson was elsewhere in the building (Rockefeller Center in New York) taping the above roast.

So what happened was that Steinberg was interviewing some guest and, all of a sudden, Milton Berle walked out on stage — absolutely unannounced and apparently a complete surprise to Steinberg.  The audience, of course, went berserk.  Berle ousted the guest from the guest chair, sat down and said a few words before Jack Benny walked out.  Again, the audience went nuts.

Benny displaced Berle in the chair next to the desk and muttered a few words.  The audience was cheering and howling with glee, and I thought they couldn't get any more excited.

Then Johnny Carson walked out from the wings.

That's right: Johnny Carson did a surprise walk-on on The Tonight Show.  I have never heard an audience get as excited, as utterly apoplectic as they did at that moment.  Finally, the ruckus died down and Carson — now seated in the guest chair — explained how they could only stay a minute since they were on a break from taping The Kraft Music Hall.  For some odd reason, Steinberg chuckled.

"What are you laughing at?" Johnny asked him.

Steinberg grinned and replied, "I was just thinking about how wonderful the rest of this show's going to go after you all leave."

Let's talk about Sneaky Pete's Magic Show, a Remco toy that was among the favored Christmas/Hanukkah (we celebrated everything) gifts of my youth.  I'm guessing I was eight the year I got mine and I loved it, though I can't recall ever using it to put on a show for anyone.  It was just knowing how to do the tricks — knowing I could do them — that mattered, though I was never quite able to master the cups-and-balls.  There was no gimmick to the cups-and-balls, apart from the fact that you actually had one more ball than an onlooker might think.  The cups-and-balls required practice and dexterity and at that age, I was looking for more immediate gratification and easier answers to the mysteries of the world.

There was also the disappointment of the sawing-a-lady-in-half trick promised on the box and in the commercials.  The set came with a little plastic harem girl, a rack on which you'd place her, and a special sword.  The figure was made with some kind of internal wheel that allowed the sword to actually pass through the stomach seam without damaging the doll.  It was surely the greatest feat of engineering managed by the Remco folks (the other tricks were pretty basic ones) but it was the least satisfying to me.  It didn't relate to the way I saw Mark Wilson sawing women in half on his TV show, The Magic Land of Allakazam, didn't show me how he bisected his wife/assistant, Nani Darnell.  She didn't have one of those little wheels inside her.

Believe it or not, that's just about my most painful Christmas memory.  I had it pretty good.  I wish the same for you.

It's only been 104 days since 9/11…since everyone was saying, "Things will never be the same again."  And I'd be the last to suggest the tragedies of that day are forgotten or ever could be…but, sitting here on Christmas Eve, doesn't it feel a lot closer to "normal" than you thought it would back in September?  We are a much more resilient people than we sometimes think.

• Magic Carpet Jihad by Gene Lyons, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
• From Green To Dirty Brown by Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate
• The Demonizing of Tom Daschle by Jonathan Chait, Slate
• Diagnosis: It's All About Oil by Jimmy Breslin, Newsday

The above links are to articles that the operator of this website believes contribute to the national debate. He does not necessarily agree with all or any of what they say…and you won't, either.

I put up a "tipping" box the other day, fully expecting that, within a year, it might net me the price of a box of Fig Newtons.  Amazingly, quite a few of you have "tipped" in the last day and a half…and I thank you all.

One thing I learned in setting this up is that, if you tip websites, you oughta tip big.  This is because PayPal — which is what I'm using to pass the hat — takes too big a bite out of tiny payments.  Their fee is 30¢ on each payment plus 2.9%.  This means that on a ten dollar transaction, they only get 60¢ but on a one dollar tip, PayPal takes a third.  (They take a smaller percentage with their merchant accounts).  Amazon-dot-com, which some folks use for this purpose, charges 15¢ plus 15%.  This means that they get 30¢ on a dollar tip and $1.65 on a ten dollar gratuity.

Learning this has changed the way I tip when I web-surf.  Instead of making a lot of little $2 payments, I'm sending $10 to a fifth as many sites.  It may not be as fair but it gets more money to folks who operate the websites I like.  (This is not intended as a hint but, if the urge seizes you, there should be a "tip box" somewhere on this page.)

There are a couple of transaction services that charge smaller fees (or none) but from what I can tell, they force your "tippers" to open accounts and/or to give credit card numbers to firms that are less well-established than the two mentioned above.  I'm avoiding them and you probably should, as well.

Good article in the L.A. Weekly about the ongoing (and unfortunately rancorous) attempts by the Writers Guild of America, West to organize animation writers at Nickelodeon.  (Here's the link.)  My sympathies are about 110% with the writers, natch, and I spent many years of my life working with the WGAw on earlier attempts.

During those efforts, we found that sentiment among animation writers was nearly unanimous.  Apart from one or two who probably (one, admittedly) sought to court favor with their employers by offering token resistance, all who wrote cartoons wanted desperately to have the WGA represent them.  To understand why, one only has to work, as I and others have, for the same company with and without WGA coverage.  I wrote live-action for Disney and animation for Disney and, believe me, it was like the difference between being treated as a person and as some sort of low-grade industrial droid.

It is not, as some might believe, merely a matter of money.  I would say it has more to do with simple human decency with regard to business dealings.  When you work under the WGA contract, it's a lot less likely that they're going to waste your time and get you to spend days thinking up or even writing up ideas for projects that are not going to go forward.  There is a reasonably-mature mechanism in place to deal with business disputes that may arise.  You are reasonably assured of getting proper credit for your work.  (I could go on and on…)

Having put in my time in the salt mines of union organizing, and suffered considerable losses (both personal and financial) for it, I have opted to curtail my activism in the current crusades.  However, in case it matters to anyone reading this, I — like just about everyone else who's ever written a cartoon — am firmly on the side of the Writers Guild.  And I doubt that anyone on either side seriously doubts they will prevail.  The folks at Nick know the WGA will triumph; they just want to get as many shows as possible done before that happens.

Obituary for Dan DeCarlo in The New York Times.  Click here.

Just noticed that today is the big five-oh for my friend of 30-some-odd years, Tony Isabella.  And some odd years, they've been.  Tony is a fine writer, critic, defender of creator's rights, snappy dresser…okay, forget snappy dresser.  But he's an all-around goodguy and someone I've been proud to call paisano for all this time.  He writes two on-line columns for comic book sites and, like me, occasionally talks about comic books in them.  You can find one of them at www.perpetualcomics.com and the other at www.wfcomics.com and they're both worth a regular mouse-click or two if you can tear yourself away from the porn sites for five minutes.

Foster Brooks — aka "The Lovable Lush" — has passed away at the age of 89.  They said it was "natural causes" which, in his case, should have meant alcoholism, which he portrayed so well on stages for decades.  That is, it would if he really drank, which he reportedly didn't.  But he sure played a funny drunk.  I don't usually find that all that amusing — and less so as I get older — but I do recall the first time I saw him.  There was a brief time on The Tonight Show when Mr. Carson was occasionally booking fake guests to come out and be silly.  He'd bring them on with serious, deadpan intros and then, once they were seated in the chair next to him, they'd say or do something outrageous.

Brooks, who was then an unknown actor, was introduced as the Mayor of Burbank.  This was back when Johnny was based in New York and occasionally doing his show from "Hollywood," which on NBC meant Burbank.  Out came Brooks, looking for all the world like a Mayor of Burbank, and the first few exchanges were sober and somewhat boring.  Mayor Brooks was sipping nervously from a cup and, around the third or fourth question, you started to notice him slurring his words.  He got more and more tipsy and he did it so well that I suspect a lot of viewers actually thought, "Oh, my God…the Mayor of Burbank is getting drunk on The Tonight Show and embarrassing himself."  By the end of the spot, he was practically falling off his chair and so was Carson, who was finally unable to keep a straight puss.  He had Brooks on again a few weeks later, introduced as some other dignitary, and Foster was launched on a new career.

He embarked on a stand-up act that was, I thought, pretty awful — old, slightly blue jokes that would have gotten tossed off the Playboy Party Jokes page for sophomoric content — but he did have that funny, intoxicated delivery.  It kept him working, especially in casino rooms, for a long time.  I saw what I think was his last Vegas engagement — at the Sahara, as part of Milton Berle's Comedy Roast of Sid Caesar (mentioned in this column) — and he got around 10 minutes of solid laughs from pretty dreadful material.  The one joke I remember was how Tang, the breakfast drink, now came in different flavors and he liked the prune, because "every man loves a little Prune Tang."  I suppose we should have a certain respect for a comedian who can build a whole career on one drunk act and jokes like that.

Michael Sangiacomo writes a good comic book review column for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.  In today's column, he has a brief-but-rave review of The Art of Nick Cardy, a splendid volume that has just been reissued following a sold-out pressing a year or two back.  Here's a link to the review but ignore that line about Cardy, "who died earlier this year."  The lovely Mr. Cardy is alive and well and surprised to hear of his demise.

Nope. We still don't know when The Game Show Network is going to rerun the two episodes of Press Your Luck in which an unemployed air conditioning mechanic named Michael Larsen figured out a way to beat the "wheel" for over $110,000. But the minute we do, we'll post that info here. And they'd better run them soon if they know what's good for themselves. (You're think a channel that runs The Newlywed Game 92 times a day could find time for something good.)

Here's a book that oughta have a big SPOILER WARNING on its cover.  The Producers: The Book, Lyrics, and Story Behind the Biggest Hit in Broadway History! by Mel Brooks and Tom Meehan contains the complete libretto and lyrics to the hottest show in years, along with tons o' photos and anecdotes and historical notes and stuff.  It not only reveals every joke in the show but some very funny ones that didn't get in.  The "Making of…" parts are a bit too self-congratulatory but the volume is a great memory piece for anyone who's seen the show.  And if you never will — or, at least, never will with Mssrs. Lane and Broderick in the leads — reading this and listening to the cast album is a not-completely-worthless substitute.  Click here to buy a copy.

Not seeing Lane and Broderick is becoming increasingly-likely for many as their contract expiration date — mid-March — looms and the show remains sold out for months after.  Lane is reported to be still nursing throat problems and committed to play Jackie Gleason (great, if obvious casting) in a movie.  Broderick is contracted to play Harold Hill (strange casting) in a TV-movie remake of The Music Man.

The rumor mill says that both are still haggling to return to their roles — individually, if not collectively — at various times in the future.  Since so much cash is being made there, the haggling is probably complex and includes a lot of arguing over how much of the show's success is attributable to its leads.

And I have no inside info on this but I can't believe someone hasn't discussed hauling in cameras and taping the proceedings for pay-per-view and eventual video release while the original stars are still ensconced.  That would presumably complicate negotiations further…though it could also represent most folks' only shot at seeing Nathan and Matthew together.  In the past, the taping of a Broadway show was never considered until it was nearing the end of its New York life…but the producers of The Producers are willing to give everything away in a book like this.  Maybe they'd be unafraid to put the thing on TV while it's still at the St. James.

Only a handful of men have drawn as many comic books as Dan DeCarlo.  He was widely recognized as the supreme Archie artist.  Didn't create the character, didn't even invent the broad strokes of the art style.  But he did it so well that others were told, "Draw like Dan," and they all tried.  He did create Josie (of Josie and the Pussycats) and co-created Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch.  At the time of his death — alas, this morning — he was fighting a losing legal battle over those two successful properties.  This is a hell of a thing to see happen to a man who drew such sexy girls and funny guys.

Dan was a charming man, impossible to dislike unless, perhaps, he was suing you.  But maybe not even then.  He lived cartooning and did it so well — and so often with little reward or recognition — that you couldn't help but love the guy.

Actually, in the last few years, he was starting to get some of the recognition he deserved.  At comic conventions, the feeling towards him from his fans and fellow professionals was one of genuine love and respect.  I'm sorry to see his life end when the recognition he deserved had so recently begun.

Over at the Telecharge website, whereupon one can theoretically, occasionally purchase tickets for The Producers on Broadway, they currently have the following two announcements up:

THE FIRST DATES AVAILABLE FOR ORCHESTRA SEATS ARE IN AUGUST, 2002!

Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick are currently contracted for performances only through March 17, 2002. At this time, the producers do not know if Nathan or Matthew will renew their contracts beyond this date. JUST A REMINDER – All sales are final and there will not be any refunds or exchanges.

When the show first opened, there was rampant speculation as to which Big Stars they'd bring in to replace Nathan and Matthew. Now, I'm wondering: What do they need Big Stars for? If they're sold out 'til next August and not giving refunds no matter who assumes the leads, why spring for someone who's going to expect a piece of the gross? Better to save those folks for whenever they start having empty seats…some time in 2003, maybe later…

• Terrorism's First Goal: Repression by Gene Lyons, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
• Connect the Enron Dots to Bush by Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times
• Spin Works Its Way Into Liberal Harping on Enron by Ben Fritz, Spinsanity
• City of Ruins by Joe Brancatelli, The Brancatelli Files
• Osama the Invincible by William F. Buckley Jr.

This time, I'd like to call your attention to the Spinsanity piece, which finds errors of candor and omission in the above article by Mr. Scheer and the piece I recommended last time by Molly Ivins. Still, all three pieces make some valid points. I suspect Enron is one of those scandals which, like Whitewater, will be kept alive, not out of any thirst for justice but because it's politically useful to some.

Spinsanity is becoming one of my favorite sites — one that often mirrors my own point of view is that most folks on both sides of the political aisle are at least a little full of manure. How many sites besides mine have you seen that will direct your attention to articles by Robert Scheer and William Buckley?