In 1991, NBC came up with a new show called Sunday Best, which was designed to fill a time slot on Sunday evening and be very, very cheap. Hosted by Carl Reiner, it featured clips from other NBC shows — kind of a weekly "best of…: — intermingled with sketches and new lighthearted segments filed by correspondents. Among those involved in the new material were Jeff Cesario, Linda Elerbee, Harry Shearer and Merrill Markoe.

The show immediately ran into trouble because, if we are to believe various reports, Johnny Carson was then in the midst of one of his periodic feuds with network management. One of the main components of Sunday Best, as conceived, was to show some great moments from Johnny's show as well as David Letterman's, which then followed him. Carson, it is said, withheld permission and convinced Letterman to also refuse to participate. Sunday Best went on anyway, was largely panned and was quickly placed on "hiatus" for some major retooling. It was never seen again.

In one of the few episodes that aired, Merrill Markoe interviewed Hoyt Curtin, the man responsible for the most memorable theme songs on Hanna-Barbera's early shows. Here is that segment…

Randy thinks Andy is dandy…

Here's another Cirque du Soleil special. This should be entirely different from the one I embedded last week.

Incidentally: The Pandemic has put Cirque du Soleil in more danger than any of its performers ever were. They've closed all 44 of the shows they have around the globe, laying off some 4,700 employees. Bloomberg reports that the Montreal-based Cirque needs to deal with $900 million in high-interest debt and is in dire need of financing. Here's what they were like in palmier days…

I'm watching very little news and I think that's a wise thing. The one thing I have seen today with a quick run through the networks is men who have never studied medicine saying, in effect, "No, I'm not a doctor but since there are doctors in this world who disagree, my opinion is just as valid as theirs." I don't buy that and neither should anyone else with an I.Q. higher than their age.

I don't remember it being like this years ago, where people pushing some viewpoint would try so hard to diminish the view of experts. It's like they're saying that experts have an unfair advantage in an argument because they're experts and we need to remove that advantage.

I did watch Bill Maher and John Oliver…and I was going to type "who almost count as news" but I'm feeling Mr. Oliver is way past that. Great show. If you didn't catch it, at least watch this part of it online.

Bill Maher — working in his backyard without a live audience — reminded me of a young, beginning comedian I saw many years ago at the Improv. His name was Bill Maher and he showed much promise.

Unlike 80% of the newbies who traipsed across that stage, you could tell he was going places. But he had an annoying habit that made me recall something I once heard a seasoned comedy writer say to a new comic who didn't go on to be as successful as Bill Maher. He told the guy, "You have a choice. You can laugh at your jokes or we can laugh at your jokes but you can't have both."

Maher, who in those days performed like he'd studied Johnny Carson with a microscope, had one overriding trait that was not Johnny's It was this fake nervous laugh that accompanied almost every line. And he didn't even wait until the audience had not laughed to fill the void himself. Once he overcame that, he became one of the best stand-ups around. Even with intentionally-obvious canned laughter on his monologue Friday night, his "fills" were back…and the problem with doing that is that even as you do the joke, you're telling the listeners that you don't think it's all that funny.

I usually like a lot (never all) of what's on his shows, often for the interplay with the guests and Maher's own interplay with his studio audience. Minus those things, his show was awkward and flat…and I would guess they know that and are working on the problem now. It's tough, after inventing a successful format, to have to reinvent it on the fly.

Things are tolerable here in the Fortress. I've been writing and napping and eating when I feel like writing and napping and eating. Not that there aren't downsides to it — and there are some jobs where it's just not possible — but I like working at home.

I have everything I need here in ample supply and arranged for easy access. I don't have to drive anywhere and be concerned with the traffic getting home. If I hit a moment where it feels like it'll help me in a script, I can go stretch out on my bed or take a shower or in warmer times, go dive in the pool. And I can write at night and sleep during the day. As long as I get it done and someone somewhere is happy with it…

There's lots of speculation out there about how this Pandemic thing will change our lives and how things will be different when it's over. My theories are no more solid than anyone else's but mine do include a lot more people working at home, not because they have to but because they like it and their employers find it beneficial.

This is one of those "just trust me" videos you'll enjoy, though maybe not for the first part. But it's only four-and-a-half minutes and you have nowhere to be for the next month or so…so just click and watch it. This includes you, Scott Shaw!

Here's Peter Biskind with what struck me as a pretty fair review of Woody Allen's autobiography, Apropos of Nothing, which you can order here. Some of the others I've seen have smelled of Agenda on the part of the reviewer but I think Mr. Biskind actually reviewed the book Mr. Allen wrote.

Yes, I finished it. I agree with Biskind that many of the ways in which Allen speaks of women he's known are curious if you're someone out to prove that you treat women with respect. I wish the book had a little less about the people Allen knew and more about behind-the-scenes or in-the-director's-head about his movies. And of course, I lost all respect for Woody on the page where he said he didn't like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Several of my friends who've read it take issue, as does Biskind, with Allen's assertion that he's never made a "truly great" movie. Based on things Allen said in the book and elsewhere, I suspect by the standards he's using, neither has any other filmmaker except Bergman, Truffaut and a couple of guys who directed the Marx Brothers. But the main thing I liked about the book was that it's funny. It's really very funny and I haven't felt that way about many books I've read in the last decade or three.

Hey, Christopher Geoffrey McPherson wants to know something…

Had an interesting dream last night that I won a contest with the prize being a guest-voice spot on The Simpsons. I'll glide past most of the details (including a ride in Dan Castellaneta's giant white pickup and that I woke up before we got into the studio) to ask you the following question: How long does a typical recording session last for an animated show? How much time elapses from when you arrive and high-five Paul Frees, June Foray and Stan Freberg to the moment when you flick off the lights and head out to the Musso and Frank Grill for lunch (or dinner or breakfast)?

Well, I only met Paul Frees over the phone so we didn't do any high-fiving but I did dine with both June and Stan at Musso & Frank, though not at the same time and not after a recording session. And that's not what you wanted to know, is it?

A cartoon recording session can take any length of time, especially if some actor is late or there's music to do. Generally speaking, if there's no singing and everyone's there, a half-hour cartoon should take 2-3 hours to record. That's allowing lots of time to rehearse and discuss and to do it in short chunks so the actors don't feel oppressed. I believe the current union rule is that for a scale session fee, you're allowed four hours before there must be overtime pay and they may still have the rule that says you get eight if it's the first episode of a series.

Once upon a time, you got eight hours all the time for that fee but almost no one was using eight. Four became the accepted max and most sessions finished in three. If you booked an actor to be there at 9 AM to record a half-hour cartoon, they would usually try to also get a booking to do another one at 1 PM or 2 PM. (Obviously, if you were booking and paying them to do two half-hour cartoons, that would change things. Occasionally, a very in-demand actor might do three or four cartoons in one workday, including perhaps an evening session.)

The problem with this was that there was one voice director who took all day to do a cartoon. I was never in one of his sessions but actors who were told me he just loved playing with them so much that he'd needlessly elongate the sessions, wasting a lot of time and doing every line at least ten times. It didn't lead to better work. He'd make an actor do a speech twenty times and then use the second take and folks ran out of energy before they ran out of script pages. I once was offered a voice directing job and the producer said, "Please accept because I don't want to have to hire him."

At some point in the late-seventies, the voice actors went on strike for better pay but also to shorten the official time of a session…from the eight hours in the contract to the four hours in reality. Some said that it was entirely because of this one director. And the contract was changed.

The time it takes can vary. Some actors take several tries and it's worth it because what you wind up with is very good. I did a show with Jonathan Harris, who many of you remember from the TV series, Lost in Space. His first take was good, his second was usually better, his third was even better…and he peaked at around the fourth or fifth.

There are also actors who are so quick and sharp, they nail it the first time. On Garfield and Friends, we could probably have used every "first" take that came out the mouth of Mr. Lorenzo Music. The rest of the cast was also so good that we often recorded a seven-minute cartoon in under fifteen minutes. One time, a guest star was in and out so swiftly, he thought he'd been fired and was being replaced.

And once when I was at Hanna-Barbera, I watched as Don Messick and Frank Welker did a seven-minute cartoon in one continuous take of about seven minutes with each of them doing five or six different characters. I doubt that in the history of animation, there has ever been an actor who could swap voices and be right on top of every cue better than Don Messick. He could sound like five different people having a conversation and even interrupting each other, all in real time.

The Simpsons, by the way, is a special case. They do that more like a live-action situation comedy with table reads and rehearsals, and most or all of the regular actors are paid on a different basis and aren't scurrying off to other sessions afterwards so a session can be much longer. But the Jay Ward cartoons with Paul Frees and June Foray were all recorded at a frantic pace in something approaching real time. You can do that when you have real professionals who are used to working together. And it's a joy to watch in person.

I just ordered some Zankou Chicken to be delivered. Zankou is a small chain in Southern California that makes the best rotisserie chicken I've ever eaten. Some folks slather it with the garlic sauce that comes with it but I take my Zankou without it.

I'm not sure what they marinate it with or what makes it so wonderful…and I really don't understand the pricing.  Only twenty cents more for the other half of the chicken?  Okay…

James Corden more or less became a star with his performance in the comedy hit play, One Man, Two Guvnors. For a limited time only — don't delay! — you can watch it over on YouTube or, better still, below…

Michael Feinstein has been doing a series of videos for Broadway World, giving tours of his collection and playing some of the songs he discusses. If you're interested in musical theater, they're quite wonderful. But there's something not wonderful about the website's encoding and I am unable to embed them on my page.

So I'll have to send you over there to see them. Here's a link to a talk about Harry Warren, who wrote the songs for 42nd Street, as well as loads of other great movies. Here's a link to a discussion of songs that were written for and not used in the movie of The Wizard of Oz. Here's a link to a talk about David Raksin, who wrote the title song for the movie Laura and the scores for hundreds of other films. And there are some other ones over there if you want to hunt around.

Someone who calls himself "Norm" wrote to ask me…

I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio. When I walk into a store in Cincinnati and see someone wearing a mask, I wonder: "Where did that get that mask?"

Stores are all out. Online stores are out. Where they are taking orders, like Amazon, shipping time is mid-May to June.

What's more, health workers are having to reuse masks and ppe and officials are stating that they need them more than the public. So where did you get your mask, Mark?

I went up and robbed Clayton Moore's grave. No, really, mine came from under my bathroom sink. About ten years ago when I was having some work done on my house, I bought a box of masks because I didn't want to inhale sawdust or dirt or other things that got kicked up into the air by the workers. When the current panic commenced and I realized I should have a mask for visits out of my house, I dug under the sink and found the box with two left in it and it said they were good for stopping germs and things of that nature.

The bands on them were kind of flimsy and didn't make the tightest seals so I replaced the rubber ones with cloth strips with Velcro® so I could adjust the fit. I wore one to my doctor's office and he inspected it and said it was fine. Sometimes, you get lucky. I also found four full-sized bottles of hand sanitizer under there and three pocket-sized ones which I was given at various comic conventions where I was a guest. I have shared these with a couple of neighbors.

Things are peaceful here in the Fortress of Solitude. I'm behind in watching Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert and last night's Bill Maher because, while I very much admire what those gents are doing at this time, I find I'm happier when I don't think that much about Donald "I get all the credit for everything good that happens on my watch and everything bad that happens is someone else's fault" Trump.

Last night, I got a food delivery from a local restaurant I've always wanted to try and never will again.

The cats are fine. Here are Lydia and Murphy sleeping almost side by side, oblivious to what's going on all around them…

Must be nice. Actually, I have nothing to complain about apart from all these people getting sick and dying in far greater numbers than could have happened under competent leadership. When I accidentally caught a smidgen of news, Lindsey Graham seemed to be arguing that the last thing we should do is to have committees investigate what went wrong here. He probably wants to instead look into Hunter Biden's finances or at least hold the twenty-ninth round of hearings on Benghazi because, you know, four Americans died in that attack.

And that's as snarky/political as I'm going to get right now. The less I stew over that stuff, the better I am right now. I think I'll link to a lot of fun stuff this weekend. We could all use a lot of fun stuff.

Penn & Teller and a lot of their friends around the world show us The Ambitious Card…

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber has decided to make a number of his musicals available on YouTube…but here's the catch: Only for 48 hours and as I post this, eleven of them have already passed.

Here for a limited time only is the 2000 revival of his 1991 show, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat starring Donny Osmond, Maria Friedman, Richard Attenborough and Joan Collins. Next week, we get the 2012 rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar featuring Tim Minchin, the Melanie C (of the Spice Girls) and Chris Moyles…

Here's my buddy Bob Bergen critiquing other folks attempting to do the cartoon voices he does, most of which are Bob channeling Mel Blanc.  We had Bob on The Garfield Show a couple times and he was quite good at inventing brand-new voices on demand, as well.  The thing to remember about Bob and someone like him who does "second generation" performances of pre-existing characters is that it's not about mimicry.  The good ones — the ones who do major characters — are actors first and impersonators second.

Bob is also one of the best teachers of his art, which is why his classes have waiting lists longer than the lines outside Costco to purchase toilet paper. You can see in this video how well he has mastered the art of saying something constructive and encouraging about performances of varying quality.

I wonder how many of those demonstrating their talents here are aspiring to actually someday get hired to do Porky or Tweety professionally or if they're just out to imitate the voices to amuse their friends and show-off. There's a big difference. I've met lots of folks who could do a great Bugs Bunny when all it meant was repeating a few lines they heard Mel do in some cartoon. That's fine but the guy they hire to do the wabbit professionally needs to be able to, first of all, do Bugs speaking lines that Mr. Blanc never uttered. My friend Greg Burson was Bugs for a while and he was called upon to do Bugs with an Irish accent, Bugs with a Swedish accent, Bugs with a German accent…

And also, a pro has to be able to sustain the voice over many hours at what could be a very long recording session. I'm really good at juggling three balls for around ten seconds…enough to entertain my friends, not enough to be a professional juggler.

If you're interested in getting into doing voices for animation, there's a lot to be learned from this video. You might also see if you can get into Bob's class one of these years. The wait is so long that by the time you're accepted, you may actually be able to leave your house…

We reported that the great delicatessen in Beverly Hills, Nate 'n Al's, had closed. This is true but it may still have a future. The owners have released this statement. I didn't correct the odd sentence that's missing a word or two…

The media has incorrectly reported that Nate 'n Al's is "gone forever." As we originally stated, we couldn't fully guarantee the safety of both our customers and employees for take-out and delivery during this pandemic we have chosen to cease that service. Our current lease is expiring shortly and we have encountered major difficulties with the city of Beverly Hills who would have been our new landlord on Canon Drive. It is the intention of the current ownership to get through this crisis like every other restaurant and make the right decisions at the right time. Our goal is to keep the Nate 'n Al's tradition alive.

I hope it returns in some form and that that form is close to what it was. I'll settle for the same potato salad.

But I'm skeptical. Restaurants I like have a way of closing, promising to return soon and then never being seen again. And once in a while when they do return, it's in name only. Cassell's Hamburgers went away and came back as a place called Cassell's that serves burgers and is decorated with its old signage…but it's as much like the old place as the new Hawaii Five-O resembled the original Hawaii Five-O. A restaurant is more than the name and a few of its recipes.

What unfortunately will never come back even if Nate 'n Al's does is something that had already gone away. You used to be able to go to breakfast there and see Doris Day at one table, Jan Murray at another, George Burns at a third. People like that. Larry King was there every day for years and when he became a partner in another deli in Beverly Hills, he still sometimes showed up at Nate 'n Al's.

My two favorite Nate 'n Al's moments…one came when Sergio Aragonés and I had lunch there with a notable film actor who wanted to acquire the rights to Groo the Wanderer for a live-action movie he would direct. It was one of those great meetings that led to nothing, as so many meetings do, but it was memorable because Harvey Korman was dining alone in the booth right next to us.

I knew Harvey a bit and he joined in on our meeting without being invited to do so or even changing seats. He just leaned across the little divider between his table and ours and began listening to what was being said and offering unsolicited ridiculous suggestions about a story about which he knew nothing. ("You should put a duck in it. People love ducks. And every movie needs to have a scene where somebody says, 'You can't talk to me like that!'")

The agent of the actor-director was also sitting with us and she politely asked Mr. Korman to leave us alone. Mr. Korman replied that he would gladly leave us alone if we promised him a part in the movie. We promised him a part in the movie and he said, "Fine" and went back to his pastrami sandwich. I guarantee you that if that movie had been made in his lifetime, Harvey Korman would have been in it somewhere.

The other favorite moment was when I had brunch there with a man I consider one of the five-or-so greatest comic actors who ever lived…maybe one of the three-or-so. His name was Phil Silvers and I think I'll save that story for another post in the coming week.