In 1972, Don Rickles starred (briefly) in a situation comedy called The Don Rickles Show.  CBS must not have liked the show much before it even aired because they gave it a certain-death time slot and very little promotion.  It was produced by Sheldon Leonard and he must not have been too wild about it because years later in his autobiography, he didn't mention it; not in the text and not even in a list of (supposedly) all the many shows with which he was involved.  It had a bit of the look-and-feel of The Dick Van Dyke Show but among its obvious flaws was that Don Rickles was not Dick Van Dyke.

I've mentioned it a few times on this blog because a bunch of my friends and I went to a filming of one episode and even from the crummy seats we had, we could feel how unhappy Mssrs. Leonard (who did the warm-up) and Rickles were that night.  According to Wikipedia, "The series aired on CBS from January 14 until May 26, 1972.  It ranked 56th out of 78 shows that season with an average 15.5 rating." Maybe Don should have tried dropping his pants and firing a rocket.

One of the thing someone did to try and promote it was to make Rickles the subject of an episode of Ralph Edwards' This Is Your Life, which was then in the midst of one of its several unsuccessful revivals.  But the half-hour is filled with comedians so here you are…

CNN, Politifact and Steve Benen are each tracking what Donald Whatshisname and his minions are saying about "genocide" against White farmers in South Africa. And they all conclude that what he says is happening ain't happening, at least not the way he frames it.

There's a vast industry out there of unscrupulous people who want to scam wanna-be writers out of their hopes, dreams and — most of all — money. I'm not sure if it's quite as large as the array of unscrupulous people who want to scam wanna-be performers out of the same three things but it's pretty large.

About once a week I get a call from someone who has found my name and contact info somewhere on the web linked to the name of some book that I worked on. The speech, which most of them read badly, extols the genius of that book…which they assume is a novel I wrote and own rather than, say, a collection of stories from Garfield comic books or a Shrek mini-series I wrote eons ago for Dark Horse. They say it's such a shame that "my" book did not sell in the zillions because it's so wonderful and would certainly dwarf that Rowling lady's sales if I'd had the right people advertising…

…which, ahem!, they are and they can elevate me to Best Seller Status supply for a price. Note that they're talking about me — not my publisher, not the copyright holder of the book but me — paying them money. I can also pay them to get anything I have that's unpublished published. There are other kinds of scam calls but these are the crooked offers I most often receive.

Now, I have this pal named Lee Goldberg who has written and published a very long list of successful books…the kind where the author gets paid, not the kind where the author pays some middle man. To me, these con jobs are an annoyance but to Lee, I think they're exciting adventures. They're also dishonest enterprises which he takes delight in exposing and warning others against. Here's a video of him talking to one of these scammers — a guy working the "pitch deck" swindle…

Glenn Kessler, the Fact-Checker on The Washington Post, was fact-checked by some Fact-Checkers on The New York Post and he's now fact-checking their fact-checking of him, mainly about the issue of how much Joe Biden's health decline was covered up.

Which raises the question: How many facts could a fact-checker check if a fact-checker could check facts?

Snopes verifies that Donald Trump Jr. did indeed post a message asking how Dr. Jill Biden could miss diagnosing her husband's cancer. Don Junior responds to those who pointed out the silliness of his post that "part of the mental disorder of leftism is an inability to understand sarcasm." I think that part of being really bad at comedy is blaming the audience when you don't get the reaction you want…especially when addressing a huge audience.

Finally for today: Trump is throwing around all sorts of huge numbers about investments he's allegedly arranged for other countries to make in ours. Fact-Check.org says the numbers don't add up, some of them were deals made by others, and many of them are quite "iffy."

Easiest casting decision in history: "Hey, we need a guy who's jovial, cheery, funny and adored by everyone who's ever met him!" "Okay, I'll call George Wendt!" Only met him briefly but long enough to know that's who he was. Wish it had been longer.

I have occasionally recommended (highly!) a show called Puppet Up! which is produced by the Henson Company. That's "Henson" as in "Jim Henson" and the operation and this show is run by his son, Brian — also a very brilliant worker of puppets. The show, which they do from time to time whenever the mood strikes them, is a largely-improvised presentation for adults and it features puppets who often say the "f" word and are not always decently clad. It's a lot of fun and since it's different every time, you can go again and again. They also replicate a few of the classic routines on which the First Generation of Muppets built their brand.

For several years now, the show has been presented in a soundstage on the Henson Studios Lot in Hollywood. The fact that that complex has been sold is probably the reason that they're moving. Tickets are either now on sale or about to go on sale for performances from Wednesday, July 16 through Sunday, July 20 at the Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City. If you're going to be anywhere near there on those dates, go. You can find out more about the show here and order tickets here.

It's Randy Rainbow. Yes, it's Randy Rainbow…definitely Randy Rainbow…

Here's a really odd video…a 1994 roast of Morey Amsterdam — about two years before he passed away. It was taped at a place called The Ventura Club that was out in Sherman Oaks in a building that's now a Poquito Mas fast food joint and a Pilates studio. The video runs an hour and forty-seven minutes and I haven't watched all of it just as you won't watch all of it.

But one of my favorite stand-up comedians of a bygone era, Dave Barry, is one of the hosts and among the speakers are Gene Barry, Rose Marie, Paul Winchell and Foster Brooks. I don't want to cast any aspersions on the character of the departed but I have the feeling Foster Brooks had a few drinks. Rose Marie is probably the best one and her speech starts around an hour and seven minutes in.

Thanks to Brian Dreger for telling me about this. If you fast-forward and skip ahead a lot, you might enjoy some of this…

This is going back maybe twenty-five years. I did some work for a TV producer who was obsessed with specificity. I didn't do a lot for him because, like I said, he was obsessed with specificity. He judged everything I said to him and everything I wrote not based on whether it was clever or funny or exciting or anything like that. The only question he seemed to ask himself about anything was "Is it specific enough?" And almost nothing was.

The first time I encountered his odd demands came when we started talking about a then-recent special I'd done for Dick Clark. He asked "How many months did you work on it?" and I replied, "About six weeks," which you'd think was a perfectly responsive response, right? But in his eyes, I'd made two mistakes, the first being the "about" part. Not specific enough.

And you know what the other mistake was? "I asked you how many months, not weeks!"

The correct answer to his question was something like "1.35 months" — and that number had to be exact. After a couple of other matters like that, he lectured me, "People in this world are too vague. They say 'That brand of cheese is three dollars a pound' when the actual price is $2.98! I prefer to deal in precision."

I said, "I'll try to be more accurate" and I did but in everything I wrote for him, he kept asking questions and demanding that I insert more specificity into the script he was paying me to write. I no longer have my early drafts of that script and it never got past the development stage but I would write something like this…

Our hero BLAINE enters the bar just as the sun can be seen setting behind him. He stops in the doorway and gives the room the once-over, registering a bit of disgust with the motley patrons who are downing drinks and pretending not to notice him.

To make this producer happy, I would have to rewrite it more like this…

Our hero John Foster BLAINE enters Guido's Tavern at 6:45 PM just as the sun is setting behind him. Much CHATTER can be heard from the patrons within as Blaine — 6'2" and 35 years of age enters wearing a dark brown, wrinkled overcoat and a hat pulled partway down his piercing brown eyes. As he moves among the patrons, the chatter dissipates and ANNIE (45 years old and Caucasian with bleached blonde hair and a cheap green cocktail dress) turns away to avoid making eye contact as does her companion HARRY, a black 30-year-old off-duty U.P.S. driver still clad in his uniform and sitting there quaffing a beer with a thick head of foam that suggests Guido's in the kind of place that doesn't fill its drinks up all the way.

"You need to give anyone who reads the script a complete picture," the producer said to me.

I tried to give him what he wanted. Oh, how I tried to give him what he wanted but he'd read something like the above and complain, "You didn't describe the bartender. If it's a bar, there must be a bartender. And how attractive is Annie? And what's Harry's last name? Blaine is coming in from the sundown. Is he wearing tinted glasses?"

It went like that for a couple of drafts of a couple of scenes — forgive my lack of specificity as to how many of each — and I finally decided to ask off the project even if it meant not being paid a cent for what I'd done. Before I could, the producer called my agent and announced that he had lost his source of funding and would have to freeze the project for the time being. My agent said, "That's up to you but you still owe my client the full amount." They haggled a bit and argued but the producer finally agreed to pay me the full amount within thirty days.

The check arrived three-and-a-half months later and it was $150 short. Specificity, it turns out, has its limits.

Let's spend some time with Jasmine Amy Rogers, star of Boop! The Musical. She and it are still playing on Broadway and I hope they still are when next I'm in the vicinity…

Charles Strouse died on Wednesday…an important figure in the annals of musical comedy. He wrote the music for a great many shows including Bye Bye Birdie, Applause and Annie. He also wrote scores for motion pictures including one of my favorites — The Night They Raided Minsky's — and unmentioned in most of the obits was his work with his frequent lyricist Lee Adams on one of the best things that ever came out of the Hanna-Barbera studio.

I speak, of course, of the 1966 animated special, Alice in Wonderland (or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?) But obits like this one will tell you some of the other things he did, including the Superman Broadway musical and the opening theme for the TV show, All in the Family.

Here's a video from a few years back with Mr. Strouse (he's the one at the piano) talking with his collaborator Martin Charnin about Annie…

Glenn Kessler shows us how Presidential Administrations — and not just the current ones — play fast 'n' loose with financial estimates.

And Politifact shows us how even Bernie Sanders can sometimes make economic projections that seem a bit deceptive. Some folks at FactCheck.org say much the same thing.

YouTube is crawling with video clips from the recent appearance before Congress by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. If someone was bribing this man to convince people he was unqualified and largely unable to answer questions he should be able to answer, he couldn't have done a better job. Other folks at FactCheck.org discuss one of the many things he said that was, at best, misleading.

And still others at FactCheck.org point out that Donald Trump doesn't seem to understand what the word "genocide" means.

Donald Benson wrote to inquire, with reference to animation studios…

How closely did various studios monitor comic books of their characters? I'm guessing the non-superheroes didn't bother too much about continuity, being based on theatrical cartoons or short TV episodes that rarely bothered at all. But presumably somebody was there to say Yogi has to be a real bear in Jellystone Park, or Mickey can't have a different girlfriend than Minnie, etc.

Most of the comic books based on animated properties over the years were produced out of the Los Angeles office of Western Publishing Company, first under the Dell Comics imprint and later as Gold Key and/or Whitman comics. The staff at Western then enjoyed very close relationships with the cartoon studios whose properties they were turning into comics. For one thing, they employed a lot of the same talent. Most of the writers and artists who worked on those comics also worked for the studios.

The Western Publishing Company office in L.A. did plenty of business and had much interaction with the cartoon studios in Los Angeles: Disney, Warner Brothers, Walter Lantz, Hanna-Barbera, etc. My editor at Western, Chase Craig, told me a number of stories of lunching with or visiting Walt Disney. Del Connell, who was also an editor there, did a lot of moonlighting for Western. (And Western Publishing was also an earlier investor in Disneyland.) When I met Walter Lantz and told him I'd written Woody Woodpecker comics for Chase, he told me how much he loved Chase and his whole long history with Western.

So the studios didn't worry about Western doing wrong with their properties. Hanna-Barbera did hate most of what Charlton Comics did with their characters and eventually canceled that deal. Charlton was on the other side of the country, employing no one who'd ever worked for the studio and paying them just about the lowest wages in this business. That was a problem. But it all comes down to good working relationships. When you have them, things work out fine.

That Trump guy keeps claiming that the United States is the only country that offers birthright citizenship. He is, of course, wrong — as the Associated Press reports.

And that same Trump guy keeps claiming to be an unwavering supporter of law enforcement officials. Steve Benen explains why that is not so…as if pardoning the January 6 criminals who attacked police officers wasn't evidence enough.

As I've mentioned here, I sometimes like to watch "how to cook" videos on YouTube for two reasons. One is that it's interesting to me to see how foods I eat are made. And the other reason is that most of these videos disabuse me of the silly idea that I could do what these expert chefs do. I do not have the patience to be a good cook and I will never have the time to learn how to do these things right.

The video today shows me some of the things I've done wrong when I've tried to prepare a steak at home. They've always come out lousy and I'm not trying again because I know I could never be anywhere near as competent as Brian Lagerstrom, who logged years and years learning his craft in restaurants and now makes videos like this one.

If you're a skilled cook, I envy you and you might learn something from this lesson. If you're like me, it's like watching Simone Biles or Elly De La Cruz. I see folks like them perform and I think "I'll never be able to do what they do" — and I'm right…