On this day, many thoughts turn to home and family and parades and drumsticks. Some of us make a little room for the famous "Turkey's Away!" episode of the sitcom, WKRP in Cincinnati. It's remembered as a Thanksgiving episode but it actually aired on October 30, 1978, several weeks before Thanksgiving as the seventh episode of the series.

Do you know how unusual it is for any show to have its most memorable episode that early in its run? Not only that but they had theirs before the show was on the air. Folks in the audience were recruited to attend a taping of a new program they'd never seen or probably even heard of.

That fact is not clear in this brief interview with the show's creator and runner, Hugh Wilson. In it, he talks about that famous episode…

William Saletan blows a gaping hole in Trump's defense. His defenders have been pointing to two conversations he's been reported to have had, both stating that he wanted no quid pro quo for releasing the money to Ukraine. "See?" they say. "He told his associates the opposite of what you're charging him with wanting!" Okay…but as Saletan points out, those statements were both made after Trump learned that the Whistleblower had blown his whistle and reported Trump was demanding the quid pro quo. It's like Charlie Manson, after he learned he'd been fingered for the Tate-LaBianca killings, telling everyone, "I told Tex not to murder anyone in that house!"

This will matter a lot to the Trump backers who are willing to accept evidence he committed a crime. I'm guessing that in this great country of ours, there must be at least ten or eleven such people.

This revelation by the press of when Trump knew the jig was up and it was time to start lying about his orders would qualify as the latest Bad News for Donald Trump. I would guess our latest Donald Trump Outrage would be his new insistence that there's a plot among Liberals to rename Thanksgiving. Actually, there is such a plot but it's among Big Retail Companies to rechristen it "The Opening Day of Christmas Shopping."

Well, at least Trump can take comfort in one thing. He may not be in as much trouble as Rudy Giuliani. But then Rudy must need the money. Have you any idea what it costs these days to live under a bus?

Back in this message, we told you about a restaurant out in Canoga Park that was on the verge of closing but which was most deserving of being saved. We urged anyone who was in the vicinity to go there, dine there and show their support. Similar pleas went viral across the Internet and I heard from a number of you who went, loved the food there and told me that the place was packed. The Eater LA website is now reporting that plans to close the Grand Italiani have been suspended. Thanks to all of you who turned out.

That's the Grand Italiani at 21730 Sherman Way in Canoga Park, CA. Here's a link to their website with its menu, directions, hours, etc.

For a few years of my life in the late eighties/early nineties, I could often be found in Las Vegas. A hotel room there seemed like a better place to do binge writing when I had a lotta scripts to finish. I had a lady friend who was dancing there, usually in Lance Burton's show at the Hacienda, and I had a lot of "comps" for free hotel rooms and sometimes food because I was playing a lot of Blackjack.

With the aid of several different books, I taught myself how to count cards in that game. In over fifty trips to that city (and a few to Laughlin or Reno), I never once played Roulette or Keno or Poker and I honest-to-God still do not know how to play Craps. I pulled a few slot machine levers and would occasionally do a little Video Poker but 95% of my gambling was Blackjack because, thanks to card-counting, I could usually win.

I did not win a lot. Only once did a casino ever ask me to take my "action" elsewhere…and that was a time when I was winning due to sheer luck and not because I was counting. It was just one of those wonderful streaks that can and does happen to anyone occasionally. The dealer lady was just dealing good cards to me and bad cards to herself.

At the level I played, I was probably earning more-per-hour for the time I spent up in my room on the laptop than when I was in the casino. Counting cards was just something I did to see if I could do it and once I mastered the skill, I didn't have to do it anymore. I have been to Vegas a lot since then but I have not played Blackjack in this century. I doubt I could do it today without a lot of study and practice, practice, practice.

It's not easy. You have to do a lot of math in your head and not get distracted. My brain tends to roam wildly from topic to topic so I needed a lot of focus. You also have to look at everyone's cards without making it too obvious that you're looking at everyone's cards…and when the count goes way up and you raise your bets way up, you have to act very casual about it, like it's a whim and not a calculated strategy. Since I quit, I've had zero desire to subject myself to that anymore.

And like I said, I don't fully remember how to do it. Ah, but I just came across this video which in five-and-a-half minutes, explains the basics of the particular counting system I employed. There are others but the way this guy does it is pretty much the way I did it, except that back then, I could usually find a good double-deck game, meaning that the dealer dealt from a double-deck (104 cards) instead of like today when they employ a five or six-deck shoe — 260 cards or 312. Counting is more effective with the smaller number, especially when you could find — as you can't anymore — dealers who dealt almost all the way down, close to the end of the deck before they shuffled.

You may not be able to follow this and there's much more to learn than this, but here's the method that worked best for me…

Jess Wainwright wrote to ask me this:

I can't find it on your blog now but I know I read it somewhere that one should never judge a comedian by five minutes on some talk show. You said you need to see them live and in person doing a long set. Can you tell us some of the comedians you've been impressed with seeing them live like that and maybe some who were less than impressive?

Sure. I can't find where I said that either just now but the example I probably gave was Sam Kinison. I thought he was awful on TV, even on HBO where he could cuss as much as he liked. A couple times though, my buddy Len Wein and I went to see Sam at the Comedy Store. He had an impact live that simply did not come through over television and he needed to take his time and not try to get a laugh every thirty seconds. He would tell these long, rambling stories that were always worth the wait to get to the part where he was riotously funny.

But it always had to be in something of an intimate room. The last time I saw him in person was in the big showroom at Bally's. The room was too big for him and the crowd was too drunk. A lot of his on-time stage was taken up with the crowd imitating his famous screams and Sam screaming back at them. It made me think of one time when Steve Martin was asked why he'd given up performing stand-up. He said something like — this is not an exact quote — "My act turned into forty minutes of the audience yelling my catch-phrases at me!"

I never saw Martin perform on a stage but here's a partial list of comics I have seen in long, live sets: Jay Leno, George Carlin, Robert Klein, Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Jim Jefferies, Lewis Black, Ricky Gervais, Paula Poundstone, Bill Maher, Marc Maron, Richard Lewis, Richard Jeni, Dennis Miller, Jackie Mason, Rita Rudner, Bill Kirchenbauer, Jeff Altman, Louis Anderson, Mike Birbiglia, Roseanne Barr, Louis C.K., Robin Williams, Paul Rodriguez, Paul Mooney, Gallagher, Don Rickles, Shelley Berman, Bob Newhart, David Spade, Richard Belzer and at least another twenty I'm forgetting.

Less than impressive? Roseanne Barr didn't get a laugh the time I saw her and it was, of course, all our fault. Dennis Miller (and this was before he got political) rattled off a lot of old hunks I knew from his HBO specials with the attitude of "Can I get my check and get outta here?" Jackie Mason was brilliantly funny the first time I saw him. He was dreadful — and filled with a lot of hate for certain people he talked about — the second time.

Rickles was awful the first time I saw him. It was during a period of his life when he was trying to put insult comedy behind him and to do mostly song and dance. He also spent much of his time on stage scolding us like children for not understanding that Frank Sinatra was the greatest human being who ever walked the Earth with Jesus Christ a distant second. The second time I saw him, he was back to Classic Rickles and it was much better but still not quite up to the legend.

Mr. Belzer left me untickled, as did Mr. Spade. Maybe those were just off nights. I saw Maher being not too impressive when he was new and I saw him be much, much better later.

My two favorites who are touring these days are Jim Jefferies and Lewis Black. And I didn't put him on the list above but the most I ever laughed in my life was one night in the mid-seventies at (I think) the Troubadour over on Santa Monica Boulevard. It was one of the last times Albert Brooks ever did stand-up and I can still make myself laugh by repeating a few well-remembered lines from that show to myself. If I think of some more, I'll post a follow-up to this answer.

• If God had really appointed our current president, He would have made certain by getting him more votes than Hillary.

From 1979, Dick Cavett chats with John Cleese, mostly about religion and Life of Brian…

• I don't quite get all the talk about Mike Bloomberg's candidacy. At the moment, he's at 2% in polls that have a 3 point margin-of-error. So he's pretty much tied with all of us.

In the midst of the current impeachment activity, it might be helpful to keep in mind a past one…the Watergate one which drove Richard M. Nixon from the White House. Dylan Matthews has prepared a little summary which may help those of you who are so old your memories of it have faded…or so young that you never had any in the first place.

Rod Hull was this funny man I got to know and work with in the eighties. I wrote about him here in one of the most-read articles on this blog. I described a hilarious appearance he made on The Tonight Show back when it was hosted by someone named Johnny Carson and more recently, I put up this piece via which you can view most of that Tonight Show appearance.

Rod died in a bizarre accident in 1997. So where has his pet/partner/puppet Emu been all this time? Apparently in storage but he's about to go on the auction block where he's expected to fetch between £8,000 and £10,000. I briefly got to operate Emu for a sketch on the show where I worked with Rod but the sketch never got on the air. Despite that, I still will not be bidding. That bird can be real mean.

This afternoon, the lovely Shelly Goldstein and I were in the front row for a memorial in North Hollywood for the late/looney Rip Taylor. I took the photos that adorn this posting and I would have written the text but my buddy Steve Stoliar beat me to it. That is, I logged into Facebook, read Steve's account of the event and realized he'd written just about all the same stuff I was going to write. So with his permission, I'm quoting him and then I'll be back to add a few more points. Take it away, Steve…

Just came from a very affectionate and entertaining memorial for Rip Taylor at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood. It was produced by Rip's longtime publicist and friend, B Harlan Boll who, by astonishing coincidence, was the publicist for the original hardcover edition of Raised Eyebrows, way back when. He did a superlative job of juggling the venue, the speakers, and the video clips.

The stage was festooned with numerous sparkly costumes from Rip's career, plus one of his wigs — and an urn containing the remains of Mr. Taylor himself! Among those sharing their funny and touching memories were wicked wit Bruce Vilanch, Marty Krofft, Julie Newmar, Johnny Whitaker, Jo Anne Worley, Kathy Griffin, and Alison Arngrin. Many of the clips were deliciously non-PC by today's restrictive, unreasonable standards, and there were also clips from Rip's one-man show where he got into some of the darker elements of his life, which added a lot of texture to the clip reel. At the conclusion, we all sang Rip's theme song — "Happy Days Are Here Again" — and — big surprise — much confetti was unleashed upon the audience.

Also in attendance were my pals Mark Evanier, Shelly Goldstein, Jeff Abraham, Kerry Ross, Hank Garrett, Geoffrey Mark and Jeremy Vernon, plus Lee Meriwether (two Catwomen under one roof, ladies and gentlemen!), George Chakiris, Charlie Brill & Mitzi McCall, Judy Tenuta — and Ann-Margret!

Afterwards, I chatted with Johnny Whitaker about The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and when Harlan introduced me to Julie Newmar as someone who worked for Groucho, the first thing she mentioned was The Mikado, of all things! She was very impressed with that — and I was very impressed that she mentioned it. Although she now has trouble getting around, she looked remarkably well for eighty-six!

A lovely afternoon.

I agree with my friend Steve…and I should mention that the book he mentions, Raised Eyebrows, is his account of the time he spent working in the home of one Groucho Marx and it's a must-read if you want to know about Groucho's last days and the controversial Erin Fleming who, for good or ill — actually, a little of the former and a lot of the latter, in my view — managed his life in those years. You can order a copy of the new, updated paperback here and I suggest you do. I also suggest this book that Steve wrote in tandem with the fine comedian and director of funny television, Howard Storm.

Getting back to Rip: There were a lot of memories shared of a man who could perhaps be described as mercurial but memorable. Rip was a born entertainer — one of those guys who could never have been happy in any other profession. He was much-loved by the folks who turned out this afternoon and, of course, by the many who loved him on television or night clubs. Oh — and I just realized I took another photo I should share with you…

This table was on stage during the ceremony.  At left, you see one of Rip's old wigs.  At right is a photo of him, possibly wearing the same wig.  And in the center, there was that blue urn containing Rip's ashes which will soon be scattered at sea, much like confetti.

As Steve mentioned, much confetti was strewn about the El Portal, most of it on those of us in the first row.  Some people had to dig Ann-Margret out of it.  I came home with a lot of it in the pockets of my sport coat. I've decided to leave it there and the next time I'm at some social engagement wearing that coat, I'll just pull out a few wads of it and toss them in the air…in honor of Rip.

• Every time Lindsey Graham defends Trump, he acts like a man who knows that if certain photos get out, he'll have to do hard time and then register as a sex offender.

• It's beginning to look like the defining issue of the 2020 elections will be "Medicare for All" versus "Medicare for Almost Nobody."

Groucho Marx had a long-running hit with this game show, You Bet Your Life, which was loved by the public. Actually, it was probably even more loved by its sponsors and whichever network had it at the moment. It was very high in ratings and quite low in production costs.

You Bet Your Life started as a radio program on ABC in October of 1947. Two years later, it moved to CBS Radio and the following year, it went to NBC as a simulcast, broadcast on both radio (until 1960) and TV (until 1961). For its last season, the name was changed to The Groucho Show. By then, reruns of it were already popular in TV syndication under the name, The Best of Groucho. So it had three titles and it ran on three networks plus local stations for a long time.

The minute the show was dropped by NBC — and maybe even before that — Groucho and the same production team made a pilot for a new series called What Do You Want? They kept Groucho's longtime announcer George Fenneman and altered the You Bet Your Life format to make it a bit less of a game show and a little more of a talk show. The new premise was to have the contestants be more colorful and to allow them to demonstrate unusual jobs or hobbies. Actually, they seem to have made at least two pilot episodes, If you can somehow sit through the entire one below, it includes preview clips from another episode…

Not very good, wouldn't you say? We can probably assume potential sponsors and/or the network or someone else felt the same way. Very quickly, the same behind-the-scenes folks retooled it into a slightly different show which debuted on CBS on January 11, 1962…less than four months after NBC broadcast the final The Groucho Show.

For the new series, Mr. Fenneman was replaced by a pair of young, attractive kids — Jack Wheeler and Patty Harmon who had appeared as contestants on You Bet Your Life. Harmon was then the youngest person to ever scale the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps. Joy Patricia Harmon was an up-and-coming actress who later, as Joy Harmon, had a pretty nice career. She is probably best-remembered as the car-washing blonde in the film, Cool Hand Luke.

Groucho's first game show ran one month shy of fourteen years. His second, Tell it to Groucho, fell a bit short of that. It was on for a little less than five months. (George Fenneman fared only slightly better. He went off and hosted a daytime game show, also for CBS, Your Surprise Package. It ran for eleven months.)

Here's the pilot for Tell It to Groucho. It will be of special interest to anyone who has had a burning desire to see Groucho Marx not being very funny…

Most folks reading this will be surprised to learn that that was not the end of Groucho's days as a game show host. In 1965, he spent a few months overseas doing a You Bet Your Life clone called simply Groucho with Keith Fordyce, a British TV "presenter" and host as his Fenneman. This one ran eleven episodes and this is the only one I've ever seen…

After that, Groucho gave up on the world of game shows…or maybe it was the other way around. There were apparently moments in the sixties when there were rumblings about him having his own, gameless talk show. He hosted The Tonight Show for the week of 8/20/62 between the time Jack Paar left it and Johnny Carson took it over and then also appeared on Johnny's first episode. Despite the fact that Tell it to Groucho had just flopped, he apparently had some reason to believe he'd be offered the job if Carson hadn't done well with it.

That of course didn't happen. It's too bad that he never got the chance to really show what he could do with that format.

Headaches seem to be gone.  Catching up on work.  And my e-mail suggests I need to say this again…

This blog is often noted for its obituaries for folks in comics and/or show business. I never wanted it to be that way but when someone in those fields dies and I (a) knew them and/or (b) knew a lot of things about them that are not common knowledge, I feel I should write about them. Often, the news has reached me and not reached many others yet. Sometimes, it's someone who worked in relative obscurity and I think that if I don't write about them, no one will.

When I don't write about someone who's left us, it doesn't mean that I didn't hear they'd died. It doesn't mean I didn't like the person or don't care. It might just mean that I really didn't know them and that others who did are doing more than an adequate job of noting their passing. It's no reflection on them if I don't think I have anything interesting to say about them. Gahan Wilson, who died the other day at the age of 89, was a brilliant writer and cartoonist…and if you knew his work, you don't need me to tell you how good he was.

Sticking with this morbid subject: I said the other day here that the passing of our friend Tom Spurgeon has made me reflect on something. It was how, not all that long ago, a mainstream newspaper like The New York Times didn't note the death of almost anyone who'd written or drawn comic books, let alone someone like Tom who wrote about them. I said I couldn't think of anyone else in his category who'd been so recognized and then I got a message from Gary Groth reminding me the Times had noted the passing of comic strip collector/historian Bill Blackbeard in 2011, followed by a message from Dave Bryant reminding me that the paper had run an obit for Bhob Stewart in 2014. So I stand, as we all should stand at times, corrected.