• The kind of things most of the Internet said about Jack Kirby yesterday…we should be saying those every day.

• I'm guessing that if you polled Democrats on if they'd like to see Al Franken be a candidate for President, he'd get a lot more support than Kirsten Gillibrand did.

I may have linked to this before but it's Jack Kirby Day so here it is again. This is slightly over an hour of people in the comic book field (starting with me) talking about Jack. There have been very few people in comics who did not talk this way about Jack…

The Quinnipiac poll, which is usually one of the better ones, gives Trump his worst numbers ever with even Pete Buttigieg beating him 49% to 40%. "Pete Buttigieg!!??" I'm thinking I could beat Pete Buttigieg…me, who'd have to live down 37 years of working on Groo the Wanderer comic books which any opponent could use against me.

Actually, I think Buttigieg would be a decent Chief Exec but I find it hard to imagine America lining up for him except in an "Anyone but Trump" sense.

So I'm thinking Trump's trapped in a vicious circle of his own making. Whenever he feels his stature as President/God slipping away from him, he gets nastier and more insulting and more disconnected from reality…but the reason his numbers are slipping is because people are seeing him as nastier and more insulting and more disconnected from reality. The skill at which he's most deficient is changing his act. In Trumpworld when you're losing, you double-down on everything…which is the reason he no longer has those casinos. It's the mistake every losing gambler makes.

Had he not left us when he did, Jack Kirby would be celebrating his 102nd birthday today. He also would be celebrating that he is increasingly getting the kind of recognition that was frustratingly denied him during his lifetime. Oh, a lot of people — darn near everyone in the comic book industry, near as I can tell — knew that he was more than a great artist; that he was also a writer and a creator and that so many brilliant ideas during the years he worked in comics sprang from his brilliant mind.

They all knew that but it was rarely said aloud by certain parties when it might have led to better contacts and compensation for Jack…and seeing his authorship and co-authorship properly acknowledged while he and his life-partner Roz were around to see it. I would also like it if Jack had lived to see his work — especially his "Fourth World" books for DC (New Gods, Forever People, Mister Miracle, some of Jimmy Olsen) — reprinted and reprinted and reprinted and reprinted constantly, often in high-ticket hardcovers, to fill a demand for work which, at the time it first came out, was dismissed by some as a failure.

Make no mistake about this: Jack knew it would happen. He didn't know when but he knew it would happen. With each passing year, I more appreciate his brilliance, his prescience and his basic decency as human being. I also more appreciate his work but I think that's true of most of us who read it. I don't need to tell anyone how good the stories and drawings he put on paper were. That, you can see for yourself. Just trust me on this: If you liked the work, you would have loved the man who did it. Perhaps you already do.

As I write this, Disney theme parks are festooned with the name of Kirby. Yes, of course, they're promoting a product — the upcoming film of The Eternals, based on a Kirby creation. Like it or not, that's how you get hailed in the world today…by association with something that is very, very popular and therefore very, very lucrative. Disney is also hailing him as a creator or co-creator of most of the Marvel Super-Heroes.

I understand there are those who think it is not enough. I also understand that there are those who think Disney is blurring the history a bit to make it seem like these were Disney creations, not Disney purchases. All I can say is that I believe Jack was severely wronged by folks who owned these characters in the past. They denied him the two things that mattered to him: Proper credit and meaningful compensation for the Kirby family. He has them now. I'm happy and I don't know anyone who actually knew Jack who is not delighted with how things have turned out.

We all have a great deal of trouble talking about what's come to pass without using phrases like "Oh, if only he were here to see it." But like I said, he knew. I don't know how he know but he knew. Happy birthday, Jack. I will never stop thanking you…for all you did for me and for all you did for everyone.

Here's Jack Lemmon on a 1975 episode of The Dick Cavett Show explaining how he got the role of Ensign Pulver in the movie of Mister Roberts…

A professional writer-person sent me this question and also said, "I think it'd be better if you didn't use my name if you choose to use this question on your site. There's a decent chance that one or more of my editors will read it." So here we go…

I was wondering if you could talk a bit about how you handle multitasking and time management in your career. Even after several years of freelancing, I still have trouble with these areas. I try to be realistic with myself about how much time a particular project will take, but I still often run into trouble. Things either take more time than I originally anticipated, or worse, I get overly-ambitious with a project but I don't fully realize how overly-ambitious I got until I'm in the middle of it.

You always seem to have a lot of different things going on: Writing for comics, writing for TV, voice directing. How do you manage it all, particularly when your various deadlines are converging? Do you have set hours for each project? Do you only work on certain things on certain days, or what? Any tips you could provide would be helpful.

My answer — and I know this won't help you a lot — is that you just do it. You stay up later, you cancel social engagements you wish you didn't have to cancel, you work harder, you get someone else to run errands for you so you can stay at the keyboard, you do what you have to do but you do it. I have rarely found it to be that difficult but when it is, it helps to not agonize over how difficult it is. Agonizing won't get the pages written. Writing will.

It has helped that I have worked in a number of situations where I absolutely had to finish something by a certain, no-getting-out-of-it deadline. On TV shows, we would sometimes need to rewrite a scene while the actors were waiting for it…or it had to be done by 5 AM so it could be retyped and copied and waiting for the cast when they arrived at 9 AM.

Once on a live TV telecast, I had twenty minutes to rewrite a speech before Lorne Greene would be delivering it before all of America…so I really had about ten minutes because I had to write it and then go over it with Mr. Greene. I would have had even less time but I decided to write it on the cue cards. This was probably a violation of some union regulation but no one was looking so I sat down at the cue card guy's work table, grabbed his big black marker and a stack of blank cards and wrote the speech out on the cards. Fortunately, I have really good lettering skills and I got it done in time.

If you have a few experiences like that, it makes you less panicky when you promised the script to your editor in New York five days from now. The trick then is to approach the work with the same single-minded devotion to getting it written even when Lorne Greene isn't waiting to go over it with you before going on live television. Once in a while on a project when I feel like knocking off for a while, I'll imagine Lorne glaring at me, waiting for it.

So that's kind of my answer — shut up and write! — but I have a few tips to add. By the numbers…

1. Assume everything will take much longer (at least double) what you expect. Leaving things to the last minute is just asking to get into a bind. I know guys who'll get an assignment and figure, perhaps correctly, "That'll just take me a day." So they wait until the day before it's due to tackle it and…well, that's just brain-dead stupid. You deserve to be fired or unhired if you do that…because you might be sick that day or have to drive a loved one to the hospital or your computer could break or your power could go out…or it could even take way longer than your estimate.
2. If you keep finding yourself in deadline dilemmas, maybe you need to take on less work. Yes, yes…I know how it is when you're booked solid and then someone offers you a dream project and/or a dream paycheck. But sometimes, you have to remember you're a finite resource and say no…and there's a great argument for not waiting until the last second.  Maybe you could have done that dream job if you hadn't.
3. If you're juggling a number of projects, compartmentalize.  When you're working on Job A, give it your all.  Don't let your mind keep wandering to Job B or Job C.  The best way to get to Job C is to get Jobs A and B out of the way first.  Usually.
4. Staying up late may feel heroic and there are times when you just have to do it. But when you reach the point of writing ten words an hour, maybe you'd be better off going to bed and waking up to resume writing at a brisker pace in the morning. This is assuming the script isn't due first thing in the morning.
5. Here's one I learned the hard way in the comic book business.  An editor offers you a job but says, "I absolutely have to have it by next Monday."  You say fine, yes, sure, you can get it done by Monday…but it's an assignment you can't finish or maybe even start on until that editor sends you certain materials you need.  When you will receive them is out of your control so don't commit to a deadline that isn't on a sliding scale.  In this case, I would say, "I will finish it X days after I receive the materials from you."  Otherwise, they'll get them to you late but still expect you to meet that Monday deadline.

I used to like juggling lots of assignments, especially if they were very different from one another.  I was never happier as a writer than I was during a few periods when I was simultaneously writing animation scripts, live-action scripts and comic book scripts — and often, more than one in each category. At one point for instance, I recall working at the same time on Blackhawk for DC, DNAgents for Eclipse and Groo for whatever publisher we hadn't put out of business at that moment — three very different comics for three different publishers and drawn by three different artists who required different kinds and formats of input from me.

I got something out of each kind of writing — animation, live-action and comics — that I didn't get out of the other two.  I still do all three but rarely all at the same time and not in such multiples.  I'm not sure I have the energy these days to keep that many balls in the air concurrently.  So I guess there's a sixth one…

6. Learn how to pace yourself.  And that may require being brutally honest with yourself about your health, how much sleep you really need, family obligations and many other things that do not relate directly to writing. You may even have to steel your guts and admit you're not as young as you used to be.

It also might help not to start a blog but so far, I haven't found that to be as much of an impediment as one might think.

As I mentioned here, the Arclight Cinerama Dome here in Hollywood is showing It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — the movie that theater was built to show — on September 29. Tickets are still available here. I already bought a bunch of 'em.

One of the many things I love about this film is that it's kind of a "Who's Who" of comedy as it stood in 1963 with guys like Sid Caesar, Milton Berle and Jonathan Winters. At the time, the least-known of the major players was Dick Shawn, who was so wonderful in it. Shawn was then a new comedian and I'll bet a lot of you never saw him perform as a stand-up comic. We can change that now.

Shawn made what he considered his television debut on a Max Liebman Presents special called "Sunday in Town" that aired on October 10, 1954 and which was hosted by Steve Allen. Given that he was a newcomer, they gave him a surprising amount of time — more than ten minutes. This is that spot and I think you can already see the makings of a great comic performer. If you start watching, stick with it until the end…

Joe Walsh, a right-wing talk-radio host and former Tea Party congressman, has announced he's challenging Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. I gather he doesn't think he has a chance of winning but it's kinda nice to see someone who can't be dismissed as a "libtard" saying that Trump is a child, Trump is a disaster, Trump is destroying the economy, Trump lies every time he opens his mouth, etc. The problem is that Joe Walsh has long had all those qualities apart from the ones that require presidential power.

I've seen three or four interviews with him and he keeps saying he needs to look back on his old tweets and statements and "own" them. In the parlance of today, I take that to mean you have to admit you made them and to say you wish you hadn't…and that's about it. You don't have to, for example, retract them or apologize to those who may have been harmed. You certainly don't have to admit that you engaged in the kind of thing that you now call blatant lies when Donald Trump says them.

There has long been money to be made by bashing Trump. It's why people put out anti-Trump shirts, tell anti-Trump jokes on talk shows, publish anti-Trump books, etc. I'm not saying those efforts aren't also sincere and political and totally protected by any reasonable definition of Free Speech. It's just that when there's dough to be made off those t-shirts and such, they're more likely to be sold. In the past though, the market for them was people who never liked Trump, never voted for him, never had any respect for the guy.

While I may doubt Mr. Walsh's sincerity, what I think we're seeing now is people trying to get in on the expected bandwagon of former Trump-supporters who are looking likely to abandon him. It may not be most of his backers but it may be enough that there will be advantages to getting in on the ground floor. Anthony Scaramucci has now apparently figured out there's no place for him in the pro-Trump world, whereas he gets welcomed on talk shows and gets book deals by turning on Donald. Joe Walsh wouldn't be on all those interview shows if he was still solidly behind Trump.

His conversion may be genuine but it may also be because he's anticipating a growing trend in talk radio and punditry, which are really the only things he does these days. I hope for his sake and the country's, it will turn out to be a wise business decision. Because I suspect that's all it is.

This originally ran here on December 22, 2014…

I'm oddly fascinated about bizarre pricing practices in business. I often notice in supermarkets that they're selling Friskies canned cat food for 50 cents a can or a box of 20 cans for eleven dollars. This is presumably known in the trade as a Reverse Quantity Discount.

Last evening, I went out on some errands and on a whim — and because I had a coupon — I decided to pop into a Subway sandwich shop. On the way in, a homeless gent asked me for spare change and I made a mental note to give him any I had on my way out.

As I mentioned here, I occasionally like Subway and when I do, I get either a meatball marinara sandwich or a tuna sandwich. The coupon I had said, "Buy ANY 6-inch sub with a 30 oz. drink and get ANY 6-inch sub of equal or lesser price FREE!" So I went in, figuring I'd get one of each — one meatball, one tuna — for the price of one of them.

The lady behind the counter said I couldn't do that. She pointed to fine print on the coupon that said, "Not valid on $2 subs or Flatzilla." And then she pointed to the big menu board where I could see that the meatball marinara sandwich was on sale for $2.00. "You can't get a $2.00 sandwich in the special," she explained.

I said, "I don't think that's the intention of the offer. They don't want me to get two sandwiches for $2.00 but they're fine if I get any two for $4.50." $4.50 was the list price of the tuna sandwich and most of the other ones on the menu board.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't make the rules and the $2.00 sandwiches cannot be purchased on the coupon deal."

I explained to her that I wanted to buy a tuna sandwich for $4.50 and also pay for a 30 oz. drink (and they could keep the drink since I don't ingest soda) and then get a meatball marinara sandwich for free since it was, as the coupon said, an "equal or lesser price."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't make the rules and the $2.00 sandwiches cannot be purchased on the coupon deal."

"No, no," I tried to explain. "You're telling me that if I buy the tuna sandwich for $4.50 and pay for a 30 oz. drink, I can have a $4.50 sandwich for free but not one that usually costs $4.50 and is on sale at the moment for $2.00!"

"Exactly," she said.

"Okay, let's try it this way. Let's say I come in and ask for a tuna sandwich and a coke. You make them up and then I show you the coupon. You say, 'Oh, for the same price, you're entitled to pick another sandwich for free!' Are you with me so far?"

She said yes.

"Fine. So I say I'd like the meatball marinara. Do you then say, 'I'm sorry, sir. For your free sandwich, you have to pick a more expensive one'?"

"That's right," she said. "Would you like to talk to the manager?" Just then, the manager walked in, probably returning from taking his dinner break at a better, saner restaurant. I explained the whole thing to him, concluding with: "So if I want two of your most expensive sandwiches, they'll run me $4.50 but if I want one of your most expensive sandwiches and one of your least expensive sandwiches, that'll be $6.50."

The manager said, "Yes, sir. Those are the rules."

By this point, I realized that they weren't the stupid ones here. The stupid one was the guy spending all this time arguing over two dollars…actually fifty cents since to get the deal, I was also going to buy a $1.50 soda I didn't want.

So I went out and asked the homeless guy what kind of sandwich and drink he wanted. He said, "Black Forest Ham on 9-Grain Wheat with plenty of mustard, and a Diet Coke." Then I went back in and used my coupon to get a Black Forest Ham on 9-Grain Wheat with plenty of mustard and a Diet Coke and as my free sandwich, I got tuna, plus I bought a $2.00 meatball sandwich. Then on the way out, I gave the ham sandwich and the drink to the homeless gent and went home with my meatball sandwich and my tuna sandwich.

Yes, it cost me way more than it should have but I got to use my goddamn coupon. Don't tell me I don't know how to save money.

Johnny Achziger wrote to ASK me…

Every year when you bring up the Bill Finger awards I nominate Fred Toole and Al Wiseman from the 1950's-'60's Dennis the Menace comic. Maybe I'm the only one who does, but I think their body of work is every bit as good as Carl Barks, John Stanley or any other humor comic writers/artists ever. I can still read their stuff today and get many good laughs out of the experience. So, did you read Dennis? Did you like the comic? If so, could you do a post about them?

You are not the only person to nominate Fred Toole for the Bill Finger Award. We have a lot of folks who've received dozens of nominations for the posthumous award and I hope we keep this going long enough to get to all of them.

I was a big fan of the Dennis the Menace comic books but I'm afraid I know very little about them aside from what any reader could glean from reading them. Never met Mssrs. Toole or Wiseman. I did work with two men who did art for those comics — Owen Fitzgerald and Lee Holley — and all they had to say about them was that they were hired, they drew what they were assigned to draw and they got paid.

Hey, I'll tell you how much I liked the Dennis the Menace comic books: I collected and liked them even though I never liked anything else about Dennis the Menace. Didn't like the newspaper strip, didn't like the TV show, didn't like the way either depicted children. I even think that one of the reasons I never for a second in my life wanted to be a father is a deep-down fear that I'd have a son like that obnoxious brat. At one point, I let myself get talked into working on one of the many Dennis the Menace animated series and I didn't even like what I did on that show and got off it.

But the comic books? Great stuff. Dennis wasn't as stupidly destructive and I really thought his father was more the star of the stories even if Dennis got the most "camera time." I believe a lot of them have been reprinted lately and they're well worth seeking out.

Celebrating Season #659 (or whatever the number is) of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld sits down with Eddie Murphy and Joy Reid for a discussion about comedy…

Scott Marinoff wrote me with this question…

I enjoy the Carson Tonight Show reruns on AntennaTV and after watching dozens of them, I have a question about the seat to Johnny's immediate right, where the current guest is seated when he/she comes out.

Over the years, while the style and upholstery of the seat have been updated, something that all of the seats seem to have in common is a noticeable lack of "give." That is, the cushions don't appear to be anything like something found in most homes. It's as if they're made of wood, with a little padding perhaps, and covered with whatever fabric that is current at the time. I'd guess that this is for appearance's sake, but maybe also to help the guest be slightly uncomfortable and more alert (for lack of a better term) during his/her segment(s).

You've mentioned that you used to visit the set while a taping was in progress and maybe a time or two, when the show wasn't in production. Most sets are usually covered by sheets or tarps when not in use, but on a visit to the Carson set, were you ever able to sit in the "hot seat?"

Neither this question nor your response will be news breaking, but this is something I've wondered about.

Yes, I sat in the chair next to Johnny's twice — about five years apart and it was a different chair the second time. Mr. Carson, of course, was not on the premises either time.

Once was when a comedian friend of mine, Jeff Altman, and I snuck into Johnny's stage one morning before any of the crew had arrived. Jeff was doing his famous Johnny Carson imitation throughout. He stood on the star from which Johnny delivered his monologues and delivered a somewhat scatological one. Then we slid the tarp off the desk, all the time fearing we'd be caught and summarily banned from show business forever. Jeff sat behind it, I took the guest chair and he interviewed me about writing comic books.

We did this until the musical guest for that afternoon's taping wandered in, apparently an hour or so early for rehearsals. It was Barbi Benton and as I recall, she didn't act like anything was odd. Maybe she thought Jeff was Johnny's stand-in and I was the rehearsal guest or something…although, come to think of it, the episode she was there for was to be guest-hosted by Richard Dawson.

Anyway, that was one time I sat in The Chair. The second time was earlier on the day when Rod Hull made the appearance with Johnny that I linked to in this recent post. Rod and I were on the set a few hours before tape rolled. He was studying the set-up, deciding how he'd make the moves he needed to make in his act.

I recall the chair both times was firm and placed on marks that, I assumed, put it at the proper angle for the cameras that would be trained on the guest. It was angled lightly towards Johnny so the guest didn't have to turn too far to address him. They wanted a three-quarter view of the guest not a profile. The back encouraged you to sit up straight and not sink back in it. And there was a strange little motorized footstool which Johnny, at the touch of a button, could cause to emerge for guests whose feet wouldn't have otherwise touched the ground.

I probably should recall some sensation of how sitting in that chair made me feel like all eyes across America were trained on me and how I broke out in flop-sweat and was unable to speak…but I felt no such thing. I was just sitting in a not-terribly-comfy chair, glad I was under no pressure to be glib.

A brief interview with Randy Rainbow…

• At this very moment, Donald Trump is sitting at the G7 conference on France's Atlantic coast and thinking, "What outrageous thing should I say to make sure the news coverage of this gathering is all about me?"