Here's our second-favorite video to post each Christmas…

Dave S Humphreys wrote with reference to my post on Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle…

I've been reading your column for a while and it's become a part of my daily routine. I'm a little troubled by some phrasing in your post, namely …"because he raped some woman"…

The use of the word "some" sounds dismissive, like she was not someone worth of any consideration — just another anonymous bimbo. "A" woman would sound much better. Or mentioning her name (Virginia Rappe) would humanize her more. I don't believe he was guilty, myself, though I won't contest your saying that he raped a woman. That is your opinion.

I am not a feminist, but I was struck by the sad ending for this poor woman when I first read of it 40 years ago.

Thanks for all of the great content over the years.

I think I've been misinterpreted here. Maybe it was my fault. I don't think Arbuckle was guilty and I don't think the woman he was accused of harming was unworthy of any consideration. The lines that bothered you read…

…you've probably heard that his career ended because he raped some woman in a hotel room and she died. You may not have heard that he was totally exonerated of the crime but nonetheless banned from the silver screen.

Was he guilty? He went through three trials. The first two resulted in hung juries. The last one not only found him Not Guilty but also issued a statement that said that "…there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime." That's good enough for me to reach the conclusion that, like I said, he was totally exonerated. How could you have thought I thought he was guilty?

But most people haven't heard that part. They just heard he raped a woman and they don't know her name or care about it. With the word "some," I was not demeaning her…just saying that's how little most people knew of the case. (An awful lot of people also seem to think he raped her with a Coke bottle, though that does not seem to have been alleged or even mentioned by any prosecutor of the time. I believe it was a speculation in some newspaper and it caught the worst part of some folks' imagination, as did the whole wretched story.)

About three decades ago, I did a lot of research about Arbuckle for a project that never went the distance. I don't recall it all now…and since then, there have been a number of books so I probably need to brush up and update. But I do remember deciding that his banishment was inexcusable but understandable. Movies were still new and there were religious leaders benefiting from decrying Hollywood Decadence, to say nothing of the yellow journalism of the day that knew how to sell newspapers filled with lurid scandal.

Arbuckle was almost certainly innocent of what happened to Virginia Rappe but he did host what to much of America seemed like a "wild party" that flaunted conventional morality: Unescorted women, illegal drinking (during Prohibition), etc. The Hearst newspapers covering the trials made sure America heard that Ms. Rappe had a bad reputation. Whether he'd harmed her or not, Arbuckle was carousing with one of those "bad girls"…and of course, his weight and baby face made him a colorful player in the sinful drama.

Silent film producer Hal Roach told me the moguls of his business had sacrificed "Fatty" as a kind of appeasement to those who thought Hollywood was Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one. It was like, "See? We got rid of the cancer!" He said they were afraid that "the public" would look too closely at the way they — the studio owners, that is — were living and partying and whoring and drinking. And I guess it worked…for them.

Getting back to why you wrote, Dave: I'm sorry you thought I thought Arbuckle was guilty or that Virginia Rappe was just "some woman." I never thought either for a minute. But it's the way a lot of people then saw it, making it another one of those "lessons for our time" from which very few people learn.

Okay, let's start the countdown! Here's our third-favorite video to post each Christmas…

Among left-wing pundits who criticize the media, one sees a fascinating debate these days. We have all these leaks from the White House — Trump said this, Trump asked about that — that include some pretty shocking musings if he's really and truly serious about them. But it's clear from the man's track record that when Trump says even as a formal announcement he's going to do something, that doesn't mean he's ever going to do that thing. He was going to release his taxes. He was going to release a great new health plan to replace Obamacare with something that would be better and cheaper. He was going to make Mexico pay for The Wall.

(I suspect what he meant with that last one was he was going to get Mexico to buy Chris Hardwick's game show but I don't think he ever spent ten seconds on that.)

So the debate comes down to this: When someone tells someone that Trump is asking someone something about declaring Martial Law or issuing pardons to every Republican who has ever served him without betraying him…should that be headline news? Or do we ignore these unsourced (usually) vague "Trump asked about this in a meeting" reports as the daydreaming of a guy who only occasionally does what he says he's going to do?

I have no answer for this but a lot of people of varied political affiliations are worried he's going to do something CA-RAZY before he either vacates or is dragged kicking and screaming from the Oval Office. And I assume all presidents in private ask about or discuss actions that they have no intention of actually doing.

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Sad to hear of the death at age 59 of Broadway star Rebecca Luker who was so lovely and perfect in the 2000 revival of The Music Man (which I saw) and a local production of She Loves Me (which I saw) and lots of other shows (which I didn't see). And how did I not know that she was married to Danny Burstein? Condolences to him and to us all.

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On my "to do" list is sending out "thank you" e-mails to all those who've sent cash-type donations to this blog to note its twentieth anniversary. I hope to get them out before the twenty-first anniversary. I can't do that for those of you who've been using my Amazon link for your holiday shopping because I don't know who you are. But that is also appreciated.

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. If you've ever heard of this great film comedian — mainly of the silent era — you've probably heard that his career ended because he raped some woman in a hotel room and she died. You may not have heard that he was totally exonerated of the crime but nonetheless banned from the silver screen.

And you may not have heard that as a performer, he was right up there with Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, two of whom claimed Arbuckle as a friend and mentor. There is more to learn about him in this mini-documentary, including the frustrating fact that his films are hard to come by these days. Several are lost. Others exist but have not had the extensive restoration work that has preserved the legacy of other great movie clowns. It is perhaps telling that even this overview of his life had to reuse some clips several times to fill eighteen and a half minutes.

I've sought his films out over the years and the more I see of Arbuckle, the more I see where other comics — Keaton, especially — picked up the tricks and styles they picked up. Watch this short but fine overview of his life by Joe Ramoni and see what I mean…

• I have now sanitized my hands so much, I no longer have fingerprints.

• The more Trump fights to stay in office, the more I wonder what kind of prosecutions he's expecting.

When Stephen Colbert talks to guests via ZOOM (or whatever platform they use), he has to have his guests do a "slate." Here's a collection of them…

Yesterday when we left me on my Saturday walk, I decided not to waste time/effort/breath on a lady who insisted on wearing no mask because of the "hoax." I don't get why such people are so willing — almost eager — to risk their lives and the lives of those around them on the premise that something like 99% of all doctors who specialize in communicable diseases, as well as a solid majority of Americans, are wrong about this virus thing.

You have your conspiracy nuts who think the whole thing is a sham, there's no coronavirus and all those reported deaths are because some all-powerful cabal is wildly exaggerating the number of people who die from everyday causes and they're passing it off a pandemic. These conspiracy nuts should not be confused with the conspiracy nuts who've decided that the virus is real but it was man-made — probably by Bill Gates and George Soros pooling their spare change — to control us all and force us to submit to Socialism, Fascism and High Fructose Corn Syrup.

I got an e-mail a month or three ago from one guy who's in both camps: There is a virus, it is killing people, it was man-made…and it also doesn't really exist. But hey, why miss out on any reason to line one's chapeau with Reynolds Wrap?

When I moved on from the maskless lady on the corner, I noticed a sign on the front of a department store near me that used to be a KMart. I wrote back here about its spectacular — junk you don't want at prices you can't afford to turn down — sale. Then for several months, it was an empty, unlisted building…

Then suddenly one day, it was mysteriously painted purple or violet or magenta or pink or whatever you want to call this color…

What it was being turned-into was a pop-up museum called The Zone, aka The Britney Spears Zone. It was a touristy attraction for fans of Ms. Spears, filled with sets and costumes and re-creations of scenes from her most famous music videos. One could tour it for an admission price I don't recall but it was more than my curiosity wanted to pay — i.e., more than a dime. I'm not certain when it opened or how many people went through it before it was shut tight by The Pandemic. I suspect someone lost an awful lot of money.

Quietly and without notice, it was recently repainted to green and converted into what looks to me like a seasonal (only) department store. In its new identity, it cried out to be photographed and posted here because it so well represents what makes this Christmas different from all past Christmases and, we fervently hope, all future ones…

And below, there was a smaller sign announcing that Santa was away at the North Pole and would be back on duty soon.

If you go to the web address on the banner, you can read how they've achieved what they say is "the only safe photo with Santa in Los Angeles." It includes…

• The Magic Santa Shield is an acrylic barrier in place between Santa and families at all times.
• All surfaces are cleaned and sanitized between each visit.
• All team members wear face coverings. Customer requirements are based on local guidelines.
• Families standby in a designated area away from other shoppers.

…and that's how they offer a "contactless Claus." If it wasn't $45, I might have gone in and done the old "grin grin, wink wink, snap snap," just to see if they had elves scurrying around with bottles of Purell®. It seemed kinda…creepy to me, this whole idea of taking kids to see Santa but he's been sanitized for their protection.

But the more I thought about it, the more I thought this: Going to see Santa Claus at a department store has always been kinda creepy. You go there, you wait in line, you sit on his knee like dozens, maybe hundreds of other kids have. You tell him what you want for Christmas and face some sort of friendly interrogation from this stranger about whether you've been a good little boy or a bad little boy…

And you suspect this is not the real Santa. On the way in, you spotted Santa outside the store ringing a bell for Salvation Army donations. Somehow, this guy can give free toys and gifts to every little good boy or girl who hasn't been naughty. His elves can even somehow make the Wham-O, Hasbro, Ideal or Mattel toys you want for Christmas — or the toys of any other privately-held company…but he has to beg for loose change outside every department store in town and somehow, also appear inside every one so kids can visit him.

You begin to suspect the knee you're on might actually belong to some outta-work wino who somehow sobered up enough to land a job for the holidays. I thought back to when my folks took me to see Santa. I don't know what age I was but this a real, honest-to-God photo of me meeting The Man or a reasonable facsimile…

Does that kid on the right look happy to you? Does he look like he wants to sit on that old guy's knee? Wouldn't he prefer to not be there or at least to have a Magic Santa Shield between him and the guy from the temp agency wearing the fake beard?

Someday, the coronavirus will be gone and we will all get back to something that will resemble normality. That will be wonderful but I'd like to suggest that if we have to have Santa Claus Performance Artists in stores at Christmas, we keep them all behind acrylic barriers and douse them liberally with pine-scented Lysol.  COVID-19 isn't the only thing we have to worry about.

Stephen Colbert answers a lot of questions while drinking whiskey…

• Apparently, one way you can get to the head of the line for the COVID-19 vaccine is to have helped convince a lot of Americans that they didn't have to wear masks or avoid large groups of the similarly-unmasked.

• Today's potatoes are from Mullen Farms, Pasco WA. And they sure taste like it.

You'll never guess where I wound up on today's walk.

My knees have been threatening to boycott me unless I take them for more walks so yesterday, I donned the old mask and took a long hike. It included a breeze-through of Farmers Market, the local tourist attraction that is most famous as the scene of the Mel Tormé story I reposted here recently.

The events of that story occurred around 1991 and yesterday, I received a puzzling e-mail from someone asking me if I thought it could happen today. Well, not without its most important element (Mel Tormé) it couldn't. I wrote the article upon his passing in 1999 and as much as some of us might like it, I don't think he's coming back.

My correspondent must have known that so, putting that little detail aside, I wondered what could have changed that would make the incident impossible? And when I got to Farmers Market, I got my answer: They've taken all the tables and chairs away. You can buy prepared food there — which people were doing so in such volume that I'm pretty sure all those vendors are doing as well as they ever do, financially. But a new Mel Tormé could not have just been sitting there as per my tale.

And even if he could, he'd be wearing a mask that would probably have made him unrecognizable. Also, there were no young carolers in Victorian garb strolling around to sing songs of the season, masked or otherwise. So I guess it couldn't happen today.

Almost everyone I saw was masked, though about 5% seemed to not grasp the necessity of covering both nose and mouth. And one man seemed to think you're allowed to have it completely off your face, dangling around your neck, when you're walking around eating a slice of pizza.

I didn't engage with him. Later on a street corner, I found myself standing next to an older woman who had no mask on at all. I wasn't aware I was looking oddly at her but she asked me, "Why are you staring at me like that?" and I muttered something about how I wanted to remember her as she was before she caught COVID-19. She winced and started ranting loudly that it's all a hoax.

Coherence was not this among this lady's skill set so I wasn't sure just what was, in her mind, a hoax. Is it that the coronavirus is a hoax? Or if it's real, is the hoax the claim that wearing masks helps protect you and/or those around you? Or that it's a hoax that we can survive the thing so we might as well stop wearing masks? Or something else?

The movie The Night They Raided Minsky's provided me with a surprising number of lines that have crept into my own speech. One comes from when the Orthodox Jewish Father complains that his son never obeys him. He says, "You see that chair? Tell it to dance. See if it listens." Sometimes, you're in the mood to waste your breath with these people and sometimes you aren't.

When I decided I wasn't and moved on, I noticed something else that spoke loudly of the time in which we live. I'll tell you about it here tomorrow.

Some person or persons in the employ of HBO Max picked what they consider The Top 10 Bugs Bunny moments. Or maybe it's the "definitive ranking" of Bugs Bunny cartoons. It's labeled as both.

Yes, yes…we would all make different selections and some of us might not have picked nine out of ten from cartoons directed by Chuck Jones. ("Baseball Bugs" was directed by Friz Freleng.) Some of us might also have edited the clips so they didn't end just before the real funny parts. Some of us even think Warner Brothers and Chuck Jones made better cartoons than "What's Opera, Doc?"

But your list and mine would both be greeted with cries of "That's just that person's opinion" and "What does that person know?" You could sooner get Trump supporters and Biden backers on the same page on, say, any issue than you could get cartoon buffs to agree on The Best. So just enjoy this list for what it is: Not the "definitive" ranking of Bugs Bunny cartoons. As if there could be such a thing…

This is the most popular thing I've ever posted on this weblog. In fact, it's so popular that proprietors of other sites have thought nothing of just copying the whole thing and posting it on their pages, often with no mention of me and with the implication that they are the "I" in this tale. Please don't do that — to me or anyone. By all means, post a link to it but don't just appropriate it and especially don't let people think it's your work. This is the season for giving, not taking.

Yes, it's true…and I was very happy to learn from two of Mel Tormé's kids that their father had happily told them of the incident. Hearing that was my present…

I want to tell you a story…

The scene is Farmers Market — the famed tourist mecca of Los Angeles. It's located but yards from the facility they call, "CBS Television City in Hollywood"…which, of course, is not in Hollywood but at least is very close.

Farmers Market is a quaint collection of bungalow stores, produce stalls and little stands where one can buy darn near anything edible one wishes to devour. You buy your pizza slice or sandwich or Chinese food or whatever at one of umpteen counters, then carry it on a tray to an open-air table for consumption.

During the Summer or on weekends, the place is full of families and tourists and Japanese tour groups. But this was a winter weekday, not long before Christmas, and the crowd was mostly older folks, dawdling over coffee and danish. For most of them, it's a good place to get a donut or a taco, to sit and read the paper.

For me, it's a good place to get out of the house and grab something to eat. I arrived, headed for my favorite barbecue stand and, en route, noticed that Mel Tormé was seated at one of the tables.

Mel Tormé. My favorite singer. Just sitting there, sipping a cup of coffee, munching on an English Muffin, reading The New York Times. Mel Tormé.

I had never met Mel Tormé. Alas, I still haven't and now I never will. He looked like he was engrossed in the paper that day so I didn't stop and say, "Excuse me, I just wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed all your records." I wish I had.

Instead, I continued over to the BBQ place, got myself a chicken sandwich and settled down at a table to consume it. I was about halfway through when four Christmas carolers strolled by, singing "Let It Snow," a cappella.

They were young adults with strong, fine voices and they were all clad in splendid Victorian garb. The Market had hired them (I assume) to stroll about and sing for the diners — a little touch of the holidays.

"Let It Snow" concluded not far from me to polite applause from all within earshot. I waved the leader of the chorale over and directed his attention to Mr. Tormé, seated about twenty yards from me.

"That's Mel Tormé down there. Do you know who he is?"

The singer was about 25 so it didn't horrify me that he said, "No."

I asked, "Do you know 'The Christmas Song?'"

Again, a "No."

I said, "That's the one that starts, 'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…'"

"Oh, yes," the caroler chirped. "Is that what it's called? 'The Christmas Song?'"

"That's the name," I explained. "And that man wrote it." The singer thanked me, returned to his group for a brief huddle…and then they strolled down towards Mel Tormé. I ditched the rest of my sandwich and followed, a few steps behind. As they reached their quarry, they began singing, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…" directly to him.

A big smile formed on Mel Tormé's face — and it wasn't the only one around. Most of those sitting at nearby tables knew who he was and many seemed aware of the significance of singing that song to him. For those who didn't, there was a sudden flurry of whispers: "That's Mel Tormé…he wrote that…"

As the choir reached the last chorus or two of the song, Mel got to his feet and made a little gesture that meant, "Let me sing one chorus solo." The carolers — all still apparently unaware they were in the presence of one of the world's great singers — looked a bit uncomfortable. I'd bet at least a couple were thinking, "Oh, no…the little fat guy wants to sing."

But they stopped and the little fat guy started to sing…and, of course, out came this beautiful, melodic, perfectly-on-pitch voice. The look on the face of the singer I'd briefed was amazed at first…then properly impressed.

On Mr. Tormé's signal, they all joined in on the final lines: "Although it's been said, many times, many ways…Merry Christmas to you…" Big smiles all around.

And not just from them. I looked and at all the tables surrounding the impromptu performance, I saw huge grins of delight…which segued, as the song ended, into a huge burst of applause. The whole tune only lasted about two minutes but I doubt anyone who was there will ever forget it.

I have witnessed a number of thrilling "show business" moments — those incidents, far and few between, where all the little hairs on your epidermis snap to attention and tingle with joy. Usually, these occur on a screen or stage. I hadn't expected to experience one next to a falafel stand — but I did.

Tormé thanked the harmonizers for the serenade and one of the women said, "You really wrote that?"

He nodded. "A wonderful songwriter named Bob Wells and I wrote that…and, get this — we did it on the hottest day of the year in July. It was a way to cool down."

Then the gent I'd briefed said, "You know, you're not a bad singer." He actually said that to Mel Tormé.

Mel chuckled. He realized that these four young folks hadn't the velvet-foggiest notion who he was, above and beyond the fact that he'd worked on that classic carol. "Well," he said. "I've actually made a few records in my day…"

"Really?" the other man asked. "How many?"

Tormé smiled and said, "Ninety."

I probably own about half of them on vinyl and/or CD. For some reason, they sound better on vinyl. (My favorite was the album he made with Buddy Rich. Go ahead. Find me a better parlay of singer and drummer. I'll wait.)

Today, as I'm reading obits, I'm reminded of that moment. And I'm impressed to remember that Mel Tormé was also an accomplished author and actor. Mostly though, I'm recalling that pre-Christmas afternoon.

I love people who do something so well that you can't conceive of it being done better. Doesn't even have to be something important: Singing, dancing, plate-spinning, mooning your neighbor's cat, whatever. There is a certain beauty to doing almost anything to perfection.

No recording exists of that chorus that Mel Tormé sang for the other diners at Farmers Market but if you never believe another word I write, trust me on this. It was perfect. Absolutely perfect.