Speaking as we were of people doing well on The Tonight Show, here's a clip of the guy I'm interviewing tonight at 7 PM Pacific Time…

Before most of us locked ourselves into The Isolation Booths That Are All Our Lives Now, I used to get a lot of spam phone calls. A lot of spam phone calls. Tons of spam phone calls. Vast quantities of spam phone calls, many of the robotic variety. Others were live human beings who were, you kind of assume, unable to find real jobs.

Simultaneously with me confining myself to my quarters, the calls largely stopped. Both kinds. Instead of getting seven every one day, I was getting one every seven days or thereabouts. I was curious to know why and I still am.

Pondering the matter, I decided that it probably had nothing to do with the fact that most folks in this country were isolating. You'd think if anything, the opposite would true. You'd think those evil, evil people who sic their spammers on us would say, "Hey! Everyone's home and a lot of them are bored and lonely! Good time to bombard them with sales pitches!"

And then there's the fact that so many folks' incomes suddenly stopped and unemployment soared. You'd think a lot more people would need the income they'd think (wrongly) they could make from those ads that engage them to make calls on commission. But no. I didn't get a single call from someone who wanted to install solar panels all over me and my house.

My theory — and I don't have any certainty in this — was that phone companies had instituted some controls and technology to suppress spam calls and the latest move just happened to coincide with us all deciding to let GrubHub feed us. But lately, the spam calls have been creeping back — I got two this morning — so I'm now less certain of that theory of which I was not certain at all. Anyone got a better theory?

And maybe I'll even figure out when I'm on the air…

Jeff Ash was not the 20th person to figure out the date of the previous clip. He was actually the first of about nine people…

Probably the 20th person to weigh in on this bit of trivia, but I think this clip is from May 14, 1980. Don Adams had been married for 3 years, which he says on air. Per IMDb, it was the last of his 32 appearances on the show over 18 years.

IMDB says Adams married in 1947, 1960 and 1977…so yeah, that makes sense. It's interesting, if true, that this was his last time on with Johnny because as you can see, he did very well and Carson looks delighted with his performance. (Why it might not be true: I don't think IMDb has the complete listings of Carson's shows and their guest lists.)

But Johnny could be very mercurial about guests. Someone could be in favor and appear often with for years…and then one day, some little thing banned them from the king's presence. Wonder what happened here.

Here's Don Adams in I-don't-know-what-year visiting with Johnny Carson. If you had ever been in Johnny's guest chair, you couldn't score any better than to tell two anecdotes like the ones Mr. Adams told. In fact, if I was producing a talk show, I think I'd show this clip to guests and tell them, "This is what we want you to do"…

Welcome to the half-century mark of my isolation and possibly yours. We had a great tune-in last night for me interviewing Sergio and the whole thing is being watched in replay today. If you missed it, all you have to do is scroll down and it's on this page not far below.

Note all the friends of Sergio and/or me who were watching and commenting like MAD writer Dick DeBartolo, actress Jewel Shepard, voice artist Gregg Berger, Disney Legend Floyd Norman and the other two members of the Groo Crew, Stan Sakai and Tom Luth. See? We can still gather with our buddies. We just can't do it in person.

Tonight at 7 PM my time, I'll be conversing with the amazing Shelly Goldstein, not be confused with any non-amazing Shelly Goldsteins there are in this world. This one writes funny scripts and funny songs and sings the latter and also occasionally some serious ones. She won't be singing tonight but she'll be telling you amazing show business exploits. Tomorrow night, another pal…Bill Kirchenbauer. Then on Saturday at 1 PM (again, my time), we try to do one of our Cartoon Voices panels online. You should be able to watch replays later but I'll bet it's more fun if you watch live.

I've been having trouble posting the interview I did with Paul Harris on Tuesday evening. Somewhere along a slightly-complicated recording process, things got a bit outta-sync and Paul and I both look like a redubbed foreign movie. I'll figure out how to fix that and put it online as soon as I figure out how to fix that and put it online.

I still don't know how much more I'm going to do in the field of webcasting. I appreciate the requests for more but they're not yet coming from within me. This is not me being coy. I just find that at certain intervals of my life, I find it wise to sit down and discuss with myself why I'm doing something I'm doing. I occasionally decide that I don't have a good enough reason. I'm going to webcast a little more and then try to determine what, if anything, I want to do with this technology.

And yes, I know there's going to be a lot more of it in everyone's future, either as a producer or patron of content. If you think toilet paper's hard to find these days, go online and try to purchase a webcam. Scarcer than hand sanitizer.

In the unlikely case that I configured things correctly, the box below should contain the live feed of today's Stu's Show on which Stu Shostak is interviewing Ruth Clampett, the delightful daughter-person of the great cartoon director/producer Bob Clampett. Depending on what browser you're using, you may need to turn on the audio to hear what they're saying. The program starts at 4 PM (my time) and they have no idea when it will end but there's enough to say about Bob that "sometime next Tuesday" is not impossible.

If by some miracle they finish by 7 PM, come back and watch me interview my friend/partner Sergio Aragonés…

Let's note the passing of the very fine director, Peter Hunt, who helmed not only the original Broadway production of 1776 but also the film version, as well. It's hard to think of a show that was more faithfully transferred to the screen. There must have been great temptation to "open up" the story and set more scenes outside the constitutional hall in which 90% (+) of the stage version takes place. Someone, and it was probably Peter Hunt, realized that the story was about what happened in The Room Where It Happened so most of the film just had to be in that room.

I got to meet Mr. Hunt once briefly at a screening of the film so I got to thank him for both versions, which I like tremendously. At that screening, everyone thanked him for both versions and many thanked him for the other fine work he did on stage and screen. This obit will tell you more about his impressive career. He was 81 years of age.

Please spread the word wherever you can.

Well, apart from not being able to figure out when we were "on the air," my first webcast interview didn't go too wrong. This was because I was wise enough to pick as my first guest, my pal Paul Harris, who has 40 years of experience in radio — which this almost is — so he's seen things go a lot wronger than anything I could do in front of about eighty people. Eighty people you can't see or hear is a comfortable audience size when you don't know what the hell you're doing.

More of you can watch it when it's posted later today to YouTube and I'll embed it here. We're going to have a lot of video embeds on the blog today.

The first time I was asked to speak in front of human beings — as most of them appeared to be — at the first Comic-Con in San Diego, I froze up. Even though someone had told me what to say, I suddenly didn't know what to say. Fortunately, someone else thought he was supposed to do what I was supposed to do and that person got up and did what, at that very moment, I didn't know how to do. (If that sounds convoluted, I told the story in slightly greater detail here.)

I was asked to do nothing on the program at the second Comic-Con in San Diego and then at the third, I was asked to moderate my first panel. I might have been scared but I'd seen the room and it only held about fifty people. Even if we'd filled it, which we didn't, you know that even if you make a total fool of yourself, not many people will see it. So I did make a total fool of myself, not many people saw it and in years after, I was asked to speak in increasingly larger rooms. So you work your way up.

Tonight, I expect a larger turnout as I ruthlessly interrogate my partner (and friend for 50+ years), Sergio Aragonés. We start at 7 PM my time, which is Pacific Time. Last night went almost exactly 90 minutes. I have no idea how long tonight's will go. I'm going to try and embed it live here but if it doesn't work — or if you want to type in questions or comments — go over to my YouTube page at the proper time. And you can always reach it via the NFM TV icon in the right-hand column here.

Sergio is tonight. Tomorrow night, I'll be talking with Shelly Goldstein, who has done amazing things as a comedy writer in this town and amazing things as a singer-performer in Los Angeles, Chicago, London and other cities that are now not allowing performers on stage. That is not because of her since she is very good at it.

Friday night, I'll be talking with Bill Kirchenbauer, a comic I've known since before he got on The Tonight Show and the guy behind the desk (someone named Johnny Carson) thought he was hilarious. I'll be asking Bill about how that moment changed his life…and believe me, it changed his life. Soon, Bill was everywhere, including two hit sitcoms. And yes, I'll be asking him about portraying lounge singer Tony Roletti on Fernwood Tonight — the first of many, many comics to "do" lounge singer characters.

Then Saturday, we have the Cartoon Voices Panel at 1 PM and after that, I'm going to give this whole webcasting thing a good think. I hope those of you who are tuning in to these webcasts are enjoying yourselves as I try to learn my new toy and figure out what I want to do with it in the future. If you figure it out before I do, lemme know.

I still find it kinda hard to believe that I got to meet and know and in many cases work with so many people responsible for what entertained me for the first 1.8 decades of my life. In the Top Five of that list would have to be Bob Clampett, who directed so many of the best Warner Brothers cartoons and who later gave us the Beany and Cecil cartoons of the early sixties.

In between those two grand achievements, he also gave the world the Time for Beany puppet show on TV starring (initially) Daws Butler and Stan Freberg as Beany-Boy and Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent. I was too young to watch that show when it was on but it may still have been important to making me whatever I am today. A few months before she died, I introduced my mother to Mr. Freberg and she told him, "I watched that show every day when I was pregnant with Mark and I think he somehow absorbed its sense of humor in the womb."

So I was pleased to get to know Bob and most of his wonderful family and to visit their home, often at his invite to come up and watch old cartoons with a bunch of young (compared to him) cartoon buffs and to talk about them. He was stunningly generous with his time. I think you could have phoned Bob at 4 AM to wake him up and ask about some obscure animator who was in his unit in 1938 and Bob would remember the guy, tell you all about him and not scream at you for waking him up. I am not entirely sure about that last part.

Bob left us in 1984. His kids have carried on his legacy, preserving and promoting, and guess what! His lovely daughter Ruth is the guest tomorrow afternoon on Stu Shostak's video/radio chat show. She'll be talking about her father's life and work and yes, there will be clips. She'll also be talking about her own work as a V.I.P. in the field of producing and selling collectible animation cels and other memorabilia and maybe she'll talk about the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award, which is presented each year at Comic-Con International. (I'm told it will be presented this year even though there will be no Comic-Con International.)

You can watch or listen to Stu's Show many ways and they're listed show over on the Stu's Show website. If you have a Roku-enabled TV set, you can watch it there if you do what that site tells you. There will also be a live feed on that page and also on this page during the show, which starts at 4 PM Pacific Time and runs for way longer than Stu expects. It oughta be great if only because Bob was.