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.

And could the impeachment hearings be complete without an appearance by Randy Rainbow? Of course not…

A couple of times on this site, I've suggested that Trump might not make it to the final presidential ballot. That's not a real prediction on my part but doesn't it seem a wee bit more possible this week? This whole business with Ukraine won't knock him off but a few more of these scandals could do it. So could a total meltdown/breakdown that convinces much of America he's mentally unstable and he seems to be getting ever-closer to that. So could a lot of things.

The most interesting revelation for me this week was not that Trump ordered the deal to release the funds in exchange for an investigation of the Bidens. We all knew that…or thought we did. I was surprised it was proven as decisively as it was, leaving his defenders with precious little wiggle room to insist it had never happened. I was also surprised that it came out that what Trump wanted was not the investigation so much as an announcement that they'd launch an investigation. It wasn't necessary for them to actually investigate. He knew they'd never find anything. What he wanted was to be able to refer to "the corrupt Joe Biden whose whole family is under investigation." And then he'd allude to damning dirt he'd seen that was being uncovered but we'd never see it. As this article reminds us…

During the height of Donald Trump's relentless birtherism in 2011, the reality TV star claimed he had personally sent investigators to Hawaii to uncover information about President Barack Obama's birthplace and boasted that they couldn't "believe what they're finding."

Of course, we never saw all the dirt they found. We never even saw evidence that Trump has ever sent anyone to investigate…but that's his playbook. Ukraine would have investigated the Bidens the same way. It would be great irony if Trump got himself impeached trying to destroy Biden…and then Biden wound up not being his opponent and he had to start ginning up stories about the corrupt Elizabeth Warren, the corrupt Bernie Sanders, the corrupt Pete Buttigieg…

In case you've forgotten, we love unusual interpretations of the song "The Rhythm of Life" from the Broadway show, Sweet Charity. Here's one from a BBC show called Strictly Come Dancing. It looks to me like they got these costumes by raiding my closet…

I forget who it was but I remember a day not that long ago when someone who wrote or drew comic books passed away and that passing was noted with an actual obit in The New York Times. I was at some comic convention and a bunch of us got to naming other, more important comic creators who'd died with no mention whatsoever in the Times or other mainstream papers. I don't think the deaths of Syd Shores or Bill Everett got much or any attention there. When someone finally did eulogize a comic book guy — and not for his hand in a character like Superman or Batman, known from another medium — it was an important marker. It said that comic books were no longer a fringe art form and were being recognized as a significant one.

That's all a lead up to my observation that another marker may be coverage of the death of someone who didn't write comic books but wrote about them. I can't think of anyone else that was true of before this nice obit for our friend Tom Spurgeon in The New York Times. And yes, its author George Gene Gustines is well-versed and already knew all about Tom. I'm just saying it matters that the loss of someone like Tom now belongs in the obit section of the Times. I'd like to think Tom would have noted the new attitude.

And speaking of Tom, his blog The Comics Reporter now has up a lengthy, well-researched piece about him written by Douglas Wolk. The piece notes that Tom's website will be preserved online in several venues but don't take a chance. Go read Wolk's piece there now.