In the next day or four, we'll be doing some of the software upgrading that your generous donations helped pay for. You don't notice any difference on this blog from your end but you may notice it being offline for five or ten minutes now and then. Do not panic. The changes will prevent longer outages.

My pal Mike Schlesinger died this morning…and movies have lost one of the best friends they ever had. I'm not sure I ever met anyone who loved them more…or knew more about them…or got so angry when they were mistreated.

When I first met this boy from Dayton, Ohio, he was an executive at Sony out here and was very much responsible for liberating many films from their vaults, restoring them, getting them released for home video or to revival cinemas, etc. We bonded over our shared love for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — and with Paul Scrabo, did the commentary track for its Criterion release. We agreed on that film but debated — always friendly — when our tastes differed. Mike actually was heard on a lot of home video commentary tracks and I was honored that he asked me to join him on several.

He was a fixture at a wide number of film festivals, screenings, lectures, interviews of stars and filmmakers (often, he was the interviewer) and he also made movies. After he left Sony, he wrote, directed and produced the Biffle & Shooster shorts and had recently made his first feature length comedy — Rock and Doris (try to) Write a Movie. It was a semi-remake of George M. Cohan's play Seven Keys to Baldpate, updated all the way to the sixties, starring Marilu Henner and Joe Regalbuto. It is, so far, unreleased. The last few times I talked to Mike, as he complained about various medical problems he was having, his biggest concern seemed to be that not feeling well was getting in the way of him hooking up with a distributor.

Then the medical problems got worse, he was hospitalized…and this morning, cancer took him at the age of 74. His friends (and he had many) owe a special thanks to his friend Catherine Dickerson who took so much loving care of him, especially in his last weeks. I am so very sad to lose a good friend like Mike…and like I said, movies never had a better one.

Please stop sending me photos and videos of burned-out houses, people crying because they lost everything, wide-spread destruction, the Magic Castle ringed in flames, etc. I'm not watching the news because it only saddens me to see this stuff. I know it's happened and if I want to look at such images, I have access to this thing called "The Internet" that has almost as much of that as it does of porn. It's almost like some people are thinking, "This horrifies and depresses me…I'd better send it to other people so they can be horrified and depressed, too!"

While we're at it: If you injure yourself, I will believe you injured yourself. You don't have to post bloody/bruised photos. Thank you.

Micki St. James wrote to ask…

You posted at 8:09 AM that you had no electricity and then at 9:03 PM that you were posting by thumb-tapping on your iPhone. What I want to know is, since you couldn't plug your phone in to recharge it, how did it manage to keep its charge for more than 12 hours? Mine doesn't last that long.

Mine doesn't either so I bought a couple of those portable phone chargers and I keep them charged so I can charge my phone with them. Also, there's this wonderful invention…

You see that thing there? That's the Duracell 2000 Lumen Tri-power Lantern and mine came in so very, very handy during my recent power failure here in L.A. "Mine" in this case is plural because I have several of these and I was glad I did.

What does it do? It's an LED light and you can set it to various levels of brilliance or make it blink. You can also plug a cell phone or other small electronic gizmo into it and recharge that gizmo. And how, you may ask, do you charge your Duracell 2000 Lumen Tri-power Lantern? Well, you can plug into the wall to recharge it or you can stick four "D" cell batteries into it or you can leave it outside in the sun and the little solar panel on top will charge it.

I got a batch of these from Costco and they still have them…for $21.85 and they occasionally go on sale for around fifteen bucks. The last time they were fifteen, I bought a dozen or so and have been giving them out to friends but I had five left — one opened, four unopened. They come fully charged so I opened 'em all up and put them to good use when my house went dark. By the way: Amazon sells them for $29.95 and Walmart sells them for $34.50.

There's less wind this morning, at least in my area and — according to the National Weather Service — most. Hopefully, all the fires will soon be controlled and then extinguished…but we're going to be moaning and shivering about this for a long time. And no, I don't know what you say to someone who lost everything.

With sadness usually comes anger and there is — and there should be — plenty of anger at the folks trying to make bogus political points off a tragedy like this. I'm trying to not read or watch a lot of the news coverage because it depresses me to no good purpose. But I came across Elon Musk's stupid statements and I also came across Kevin Drum debunking everything Musk is saying. This is the kind of thing we'll be seeing even more of in the next four years.

I may have underestimated the Department of Water and Power. They said my electricity would be restored by 10 PM and it came back on at 9:53. Wish it could be that simple for everyone.

It's a terrifying night in and around Los Angeles…and please forgive any typos in this as I am thumb-typing on my iPhone in a house that has been sans electricity for almost 24 hours. Soon, they say, there will be light, "they" being the L.A. Department of Water, Power and Questionable Time Estimates.

The fire is still far, far from me. I should say "fires, plural" as they keep popping up like new Shake Shacks. The latest new blaze is currently threatening our beloved Magic Castle and I'm hearing of too many friends who are evacuated and huddling somewhere, wondering if they'll have homes to return to. A couple of friends already know they will not. There's a very scary sky filled with smoke in many directions and so is the air in every direction. It's cold, it's windy, it's smokey and it's all around us. A day or two ago, all it was was cold…then outta nowhere, all this happens.

And here we were all hoping 2025 would be a better year.

I'm not sure why I'm posting this…maybe to show friends and acquaintances that I'm fine. And I am if you can be fine with feeling that your face looks like Edvard Munch's painting of "The Scream." Or maybe to let folks who feel that way know that they're not alone and that things will get better. They'd kind of have to.

The fires that are ravaging Southern California are still nowhere near me and likely to stay that way…but we've been without electricity since 8:54 last night and I sense my area is way down on the repairfolks' "To Do" list. Which is fine. Others need help way more. I just thought I'd tell you why you may not see anything from me here for a while. Things will be normal again…just not right away.

There's an awful fire burning in Pacific Palisades. I have many friends who live there and I sure hope they and their homes are okay.

I've had a couple of texts and e-mails asking if I've been evacuated. I appreciate the concern but I'm pretty far away from Pacific Palisades or from a couple of other locations where smaller fires have erupted. The Palisades fire would pretty much have to burn through the entirety of West Los Angeles and Beverly Hills before it got anywhere near my neighborhood.

Following-up on our previous ASK me, Gene Popa wrote to ask…

In response to Andrew Paquette's question, you said (and I paraphrase) that Jack's preference when he went to DC was to produce his issues himself (with his own staff), and submit the completed work to the publisher. I'm curious, in 1969 (when he left Marvel) or later in '75 (when he left DC) did Jack give any thought to offering himself to Gold Key?

Considering that producing complete issues from story to art to lettering and coloring is precisely what Western used to do for Dell, I wonder if they would have been receptive to allowing Kirby to provide such service to them? Granted, the market beyond the Big Two was rapidly shrinking in that period, but Gold Key still seemed to be holding its own as an important publisher (at least for the time being). I'm tantalized by the idea of covers for New Gods and The Eternals being painted by the likes of George Wilson and Jesse Santos!

Well, I started working for Gold Key (Western Publishing, actually) in 1971 and at that point, I don't think anyone there really knew who Jack Kirby was other than he was the guy who drew all those hit books for Marvel that they, Western Publishing, didn't want to emulate. And they probably thought those were all Stan Lee creations.

One thing that some folks don't get about the "credit" thing with Marvel was that while Jack was a little upset that readers thought all those books were wholly created by Stan, he was really angry that that was the understanding of those in the comic book industry who had hiring power and the power to set page rates. That included the new people who were running Marvel as of 1968-1969, many of whom didn't see why Jack Kirby was any more valuable than anyone else drawing for the company or even the next kid who walked in the door with samples.

Carmine Infantino, when he was in charge at DC, was a rare exception. I do not think he or his company utilized Jack well but at least Infantino understood that Kirby was more than a guy who could draw neat-looking pages.

The Western Publishing I worked for was as resistant to outside studios as any company then in existence. They made a kind of halfway-exception for only one comic that I can think of. They briefly had a comic called The Little Stooges (Larry, Moe and Curly Joe as kids, basically) that was largely put together and drawn by Norman Maurer…but Norman controlled the rights to the Stooges and had a long history of working with Western. Western also wasn't going to pay anyone, including Jack, anything near what DC or Marvel paid Jack.

When he left Marvel in 1970 (not '69), it was because he felt he couldn't work there any longer and DC had made what seemed like a real good offer. When he left DC in '75, Western was a failing company with serious distribution problems. I knew the folks there and they had no interest in spending what it would have cost to get Kirby and launch a whole new line. In fact, they were even more timid than DC was about investing in anything different.

Jack had actually approached Western Publishing once, back when they were doing comics for Dell. This was in late 1958 or early 1959, a time when many comic book companies were going outta business or at least cutting back. Almost all of them were turning away writers and artists because they had more than enough freelancers to fill all their comics. Jack went up to their New York offices and was told that. The editor he met there — name unknown to me and probably not anyone we ever heard of — scolded him because of what horror and crime comics had done to the comic book industry. Wally Wood told me a very similar story but later on, he did do some work for Western.

I don't think Jack ever thought the door was open there and it probably wasn't. Sadly, from about 1957 until the end of his career, he was pretty much trapped into working for DC or Marvel…and I don't think either one treated him as well as he deserved. If either had, I believe that company would have been way more successful.   But thanks for the question, Gene, and here's that box again…

I'm a big fan of Saturday Night Live. No, let me rephrase that: I'm a big fan of the overall concept and tradition of Saturday Night Live. Like you (probably) I've found it unwatchable during certain seasons including the recent ones. I no longer have my DVR snag every episode. When I watch, I watch the parts they put up on YouTube which seem to be mostly those featuring big guest stars. Ergo, I don't really recognize the names of most of the current cast.

Here's the trailer for an upcoming documentary on Peacock about the series…one that seems a little light on the early years.  I assume the finished doc won't be but, seeing as how this is an important and valuable franchise for NBC, it's likely to oversell the notion that SNL is forever and always as great as it's ever been…

Whenever we come across a new staging of this song, we love to feature it here. The song is "The Rhythm of Life" from the musical, Sweet Charity. And the performers are from the BBC series, Strictly Come Dancing…

My old pal Andrew Paquette sent me a couple of questions about Jack Kirby. Here's the first one…

Did Kirby ever express a preference for his Marvel, DC, or earlier work? I ask because they are so different from each other. Lately, I've been buying copies of Popular Romance and Justice traps the Guilty. The stories and art are very interesting, but so different from the superhero comics that it is difficult to compare the two.

It made me wonder if the non-fiction nature of many of those titles (Headline Comics is another) was Joe Simon's influence, and Kirby didn't care what he was drawing, or if he did have a preference and was later disappointed that the non-superhero genres died out after Marvel hit the scene with his superhero creations.

First, I assume you mean Young Romance. One of the many fascinating things about Jack was that he loved all genres and among the zillions of comics he did, there weren't many he did not enjoy because of the content. How he was treated by the publishers and editors was another matter but I don't think you're asking about that kind of thing.

What I think he was happiest doing was the work where he could write and pencil and have the stories come out the way he wanted them. He really did not like a brief period in the seventies when DC had him drawing scripts by others, especially on Sandman, which he thought was a terrible comic.

Because of his background, he had a slight preference for war comics but beyond that, he was fine with anything as long as it came out roughly the way he wanted it to. Science-fiction, western, humor, romance, ghost comics, super-heroes…they were all pretty much enjoyable to him. Some were preferable at certain times because he thought one kind was more commercial and it made him happy to do a comic that sold well.

He was proud of the Marvel books of the sixties because he considered them so much his creation, albeit work that sometimes frustrated him because of things Stan Lee did. When I met him, I asked if he had a favorite story and he named "Mother Delilah," a story he'd done for Boys Ranch. Later on, his answer to that question was "The Pact," a story for New Gods. Here's the other question from Andrew…

This leads to another question: what was the difference between running his own studio at Prize and Crestwood compared to Marvel? From what I've read, I'm surprised he went to Marvel at all, though I'm glad he had the opportunity to create that stable of characters.

Jack did not go back to Marvel in the fifties because he wanted to. He went back there because it was the only place he could find that was then willing to buy work from him. He would have much preferred to have his own studio or be part of something like the Simon-Kirby operation but by that time, publishers weren't willing to do business on that basis. They all wanted the work created by writers and artists working directly for them under the supervision of in-house editors.

When I went to work for Jack in 1970, he had a fantasy — and he kinda knew it was a fantasy — that DC would let him produce his work for them on that basis. As it turned out, they wouldn't even let him control the coloring in California and they fought for the longest time having someone like Mike Royer letter and ink the work out here. They clung to the idea that the office created the comics and I think (and Jack thought) that was one of the reason sales kept going down, down, down.

Thanks for the questions, Andrew. If anyone else has any, read the box below…

Here are old clips of Jon Stewart talking to Robin Williams, Norm MacDonald and Richard Lewis. And come to think of it, these would have to be old clips, right?

I currently have a couple of friends who are hospitalized and that's led to a lot of calls and texts from mutual acquaintances asking, "How is he? What have you heard?" It's understandable and in most cases commendable for one person to care about about the health of another but there's also a certain…I'm not sure what to call it. Etiquette? Protocol? It's something in those categories.

The H.P. (Hospitalized Person) and/or their family may want to control the flow of information. You don't have a right to know what they don't want you to know…or don't want you to know now, nor do they owe you an explanation for not telling you everything. And one good reason why they might not is that the current diagnosis may be tentative and subject to change.

Or the patient may just want his privacy and/or not want to deal with keeping others informed or answering their questions. He might want visitors, he might not. The few times I've been hospitalized, I didn't want them right away…and then when I did, I didn't want certain people coming around.

As readers of this site know, I busted my ankle on January 21 and spent more than a month in a hospital and then in a rehab center. If I didn't tell you at the time, it's not that I didn't or don't like you. It's just that once I was injured, my own needs became such a major issue in my life that I didn't have room for a lot of other people. That's why I didn't post anything about it here until I returned home on February 28th.

When you hear someone is in the hospital, I think the proper response is to let them know, by whatever routes they have allowed to be open, that you care about them and that you're willing to help out in any way if you can…but it's up to them. Let them be and don't try to take whatever limited ninth-hand info you may have heard about and try to formulate a diagnosis or assumption about what's going on with them. You may not know as much as you think you do.