Donald Trump likes to dismiss his opponents with insulting nicknames…and I must admit that I used to do that too, in a way. Of course, I stopped when I was in about fifth grade.

Lately, he has called Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg "Alfred E. Neuman." Alfred is, of course, the well-known cover boy on MAD magazine. My pal John Ficarra, who not so long ago was the editor of that publication, has something to say about the comparison.

I didn't have anything to say about Doris Day that everyone else wasn't saying but I may have just enough to justify a post here about Tim Conway. I've met a lot of funny people in my life but I can't think of one who was more naturally-funny than Tim Conway. In a way, it's both unfair and appropriate that so many people think of him mainly as "That guy who made Harvey Korman break up laughing on The Carol Burnett Show." It's unfair because those were cheap, easy laughs and Conway was hilarious in so many other ways.

But it's also appropriate because he made just about everyone around him break up laughing, myself included. The few occasions when I spent any amount of time with him, I was laughing and he wasn't even trying. That was just the way he was, the way he talked.

One of our last encounters was at a wake for Chuck McCann's son Sean. The room was full of comedians but you wouldn't have known it from the mood, which was understandably funereal. Laughing out loud was not forbidden but it sure would have seemed indecorous. I got to talking with Tim and it struck me that he was trying real hard not to be funny and not to call attention to himself at a ceremony that was only about Chuck and his family.

And that was clearly hard for Tim Conway…which struck me as funny.

Those sketches on the Burnett show were controversial within the TV community and especially on the staff of that show. At the dress rehearsal, which had a live audience present and was taped, Conway and the others would adhere to the script. Since Korman knew what was coming and it had been rehearsed that way before, he rarely broke up or broke character. Afterwards, Conway would check with the director and ask, "Did you get it?" If the director affirmed he had an airable "straight" version of the sketch, Conway was permitted to screw around during the final taping, adding in things Harvey didn't expect. It usually meant Harvey would be reduced to helpless tears of laughter.

The working premise was that in editing, they'd look at both versions and decide which to air. The nearly-unanimous verdict of the staff was that the first version, where they actually did the script, was a much better sketch by every measure except which one the audience would enjoy more. So they almost always broadcast the second. Gary Belkin, who was one of the show's writers — often a writer on the sketch in question — was constantly pissed about this. He once told me, "It was usually a choice between a well-written sketch and a Bloopers episode and they decided audiences would rather see the Bloopers version."

Belkin added, "The shame of it was that Tim was always better in the first one. People didn't get to see what a great comic actor he was when he wasn't focusing on trying to make Harvey break up."

Of course, Tim Conway showed how good he was in other places. He did movies (including a couple of underrated ones with Don Knotts) and was on other variety shows. He did his Dorf videos and he had an amazing number of TV series: McHale's Navy (1962-1966), Rango (1967), The Tim Conway Show (1970), The Tim Conway Comedy Hour (also 1970), The Tim Conway Show (1980) and Ace Crawford, Private Eye (1983). My then-girlfriend Bridget had a tiny, uncredited-and-usually-cut recurring role on Ace Crawford and I visited the set once. Though the first episode had yet to air, Tim was making jokes about how he hoped this one would last long enough to time a hard-boiled egg.

In addition to the above shows, Tim was in a staggering number of other shows and unsold pilots because everyone thought he was hilarious. They just couldn't figure out how to package it into a TV series.

Then for many years, he toured America with a show that featured Harvey Korman and himself, usually accompanied by a friend of mine, Louise DuArt. Louise would do her stand-up routine and also assume Carol Burnett's roles in sketches recycled from the Burnett program. Conway's company produced and booked most of these shows, renting the halls, managing the publicity and selling Dorf videos and other "merch" in the lobbies. They were wildly successful (and lucrative) and the two I attended were packed with very happy audience members. When Harvey insisted on cutting back and taking it easy, Tim did the shows with Don Knotts and later with Chuck McCann until his own health forced him to take it easy.

The last few years, it's been common knowledge that he was failing. In 2013, I attended an event where he and Carol Burnett chatted and though I tried to say it nicely in the post, it was obvious something was the matter with Tim. A few years ago when he was not present for a big, televised salute to The Carol Burnett Show, you knew he had to be in pretty bad shape.

He was just a little oasis of joy whenever he appeared. I'd close by saying we're going to miss him but we've been missing him for over a decade now. Just a funny, funny man.

Comic-Con International is 64 Days Away!  That's a little less than two months so I'd better start unpacking from last year.  The convention continues to announce Special Guests, many of whom they deem as important to the history of the sprawling beast that is Comic-Con International.  I was announced today along with many others.  More names will follow.

My friend, the talented cartoonist Carol Lay, informs me that the movie Bathtubs Over Broadway — which I raved about here — is now playing on Netflix. Well worth your time.

I linked earlier today to a video of the old song, "Ain't She Sweet?" Jack Lechner tells me something I didn't know; that songwriter Milton Ager wrote it about his newborn daughter Shana. As noted here, Shana grew up to become the noted journalist, Shana Alexander.

Lastly, it looks like I'll be on around ten panels (as moderator or panelist) over the three days of Heroes Con. Those three days are at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. They're June 14-16 and you can find out more about them over at the con website.

I went back to Maltinfest on Sunday and again, a large part of the fun was hanging out in the lobby talking with people of like interests and sensibilities. That was one of the things that made the gathering more pleasing than watching the same films at home on DVD. Another was seeing them on a big screen in an actual movie theater with an audience.

Yet another was hearing the intros by Leonard Maltin, with and without his daughter Jessie, and yet another was that each feature they showed was preceded by a short subject. I took a friend with me to see Absolute Beginners, the 1986 British musical film and before they ran it, they ran a 1933 Screen Song from the Max Fleischer Studio, "Ain't She Sweet?' with Lillian Roth leading the audience in singing-along. It began with an animated sequence of Fleischer-style animal characters and then —

Wait a minute. Why am I describing this film to you when I can show you? Here it is…and make sure you follow the bouncing ball and sing along…

We all sang along at the Egyptian, partly because the film was so infectious and partly because Leonard's wife Alice threatened to brain anyone who didn't. And don't think she makes hollow threats.

I enjoyed it. In fact, I enjoyed it more than Absolute Beginners, which struck me as lots of style and very little substance. The movie was very controversial in its day and I suppose still is. It has some stunning, wonderful moments starting with an astounding tracking shot that runs something like six minutes and introduces several of the key characters.

What's it about? Well, it's kind of about what Wikipedia says it's about…

The film takes place in 1958, a time in which pop culture is transforming from 1950s jazz and early rock to a new generation on the verge of the 1960s. London is post-World War II, but pre-Beatles/Stones. The storyline incorporates elements of the 1958 Notting Hill race riots. Young photographer Colin falls in love with aspiring fashion designer Crepe Suzette but she's only interested in her career. Colin tries to win her affections by taking a crack at the big time himself. Meanwhile, racial tensions heat up in Colin's neighbourhood of London.

But in a way, I thought it was about a lot of clever staging and camerawork and that the storyline, such as it was, was not served well by the style. A lot of folks felt that way and I'm again going to crib from Wikipedia…

Upon release, Absolute Beginners received immense coverage in the British media. At the time, the British film industry was perceived as being on the point of collapse (with the recent failure of the film Revolution). However, the film was panned by critics and became a box office bomb. Some of the criticisms included stylistic anachronisms, such as the mini-skirt and decidedly 1980s music from the likes of The Style Council and Sade, the bowdlerisation of [Patsy] Kensit's character (Crepe Suzette had been depicted as a promiscuous "negrophile" in the book), and the casting of [David] Bowie, who made it a condition of his musical contribution. Although the film was not a success, Bowie's theme song was very popular in the UK and reached number two in the charts.

Some folks at Maltinfest loved it. For me, it fell into the category of "Didn't Like But Glad I Saw It" and I'm glad I saw it on a big, real movie screen because what was good about it would not have been so good on my home screen.

It was followed by more lobby-chatter and then we traipsed back into the theater for the closing event, the much-anticipated — and some folks came just for this — screening of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. Preceding it was this 1928 short featuring the well-forgotten comedy team of Shaw and Lee…

That's what vaudeville was like, folks. Those men probably did that act exactly that way thousands of times on stages across the country. We laughed at a lot of it and I suspect we'd have laughed more in 1928 when we hadn't heard some of those jokes all our lives.

Then came the pièce de résistance, if not of Maltinfest, then certainly in the careers of Martin-and-Lewis impersonators Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo. And arguably, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla was not the worst movie in which Mr. Lugosi ever appeared, though it might have been in the bottom two.

I cannot give you a full review of it because we couldn't stay for the whole thing. Having seen it before though, I can say that if it was all like the first reel of the newly-discovered 35mm print, it never looked better. I know Mssrs. Mitchell and Petrillo have a vast cult following — I even met a gent there who's working on a biography of Sammy Petrillo — but I think it would have been a funnier film if they'd cast it instead with Shaw and Lee.

Still, it was a fun way to end a film fest that sure seemed to please its attendees. I eagerly await the second Maltinfest next year. And the one after and the one after…

I've been spending this weekend at Maltinfest, a film fest run by my longtime pal Leonard Maltin, his wife Alice and their daughter Jessie. There are interesting films being shown and at least as much fun as watching them is hanging out in the lobby, chatting with other attendees.

The premise of the event is to show movies — mostly from the last few decades — that Leonard thought deserved more attention than they got when they were released. A fine example would be Big Eyes, a film which totally eluded my notice when it came out at Christmas of 2014. Directed by Tim Burton and produced and written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, it's the story of Walter and Margaret Keane. He became famous for paintings of little, tiny children with big, sad eyes…but the secret was that he didn't paint them. She did.

Amy Adams played Margaret. Christoph Waltz played Walter. And as fine as Ms. Adams was, I thought Mr. Waltz did a stunning job of playing a guy who starts out as rather lovable and charming…but as the film progresses, you increasingly want to leap into the screen and beat the ever-lovin' crap out of him. It's really an amazing performance and how it didn't get nominated for every award in the book is beyond me. Maybe some voters felt it's not that big a challenge to come across as The Worst Person in the World when you're playing The Worst Person in the World.

Walter Keane really was, seizing the credit for his wife's work — at first, he claimed, for marketing reasons. He was a better interview and at the time, The Art World didn't take women seriously. But it's quickly apparent that he loves the spotlight a little too much; that being hailed as one of the leading artists on the planet is just too, too thrilling for a guy with no artistic talent of his own. Things turn very ugly and I'd probably be doing you a disservice if I told you much more than that.

Sitting there in the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, I was struck by many things but one biggie was how much I enjoy seeing a movie without knowing anything about it — in this case, apart from a few brief introductory remarks from Leonard. I had not seen any clips of this film. I had not seen its stars on talk shows discussing it. I had not read reviews or seen a trailer…or anything. And while I had a vague sense of where it was going from having read a bit about the Keanes before the film was made, the movie surprised me a couple of times, turning right when I was expecting it to make a hard left.

I really don't get why folks at Comic-Con rush to panels that promise a "first look" at an upcoming movie they really want to see. When the advance trailer for Stan & Ollie was posted online, several dozen of you wrote to tell me it was there and to ask what I thought of it. I'm sure you meant well but since I wanted to see the film, I very much didn't want to see scenes from it out of sequence and out of context. And I really didn't want to form any sort of opinion on it based on snippets. For much the same reason, when I read a murder mystery, I don't start by peeking at the ending and finding out whodunnit. I want to follow the itinerary the author laid out for me or any reader.

After the screening of Big Eyes, Leonard interviewed Alexander and Karaszewski, mainly in three areas. One was the long, maddening struggle to get the film made. Despite all their success and credits, it still took around twelve years and might not have happened at all. Another topic was getting the rights to the story from Margaret Keane. She's still alive but that troglodyte of a husband of hers is gone. Lastly and of greatest interest was discussing how faithful to the truth the film is. If its writers are to be believed, it's pretty faithful.

Anyway, I'd write more but I'm heading back to Maltinfest. Maybe I'll see some of you there.

In the above photo, I don't know who the woman in the center is but the man is Edmund G. "Pat" Brown who was then the governor of California, a post occasionally since then held by his son Jerry. The woman on the left is my mother, Dorothy Evanier. She worked on the elder Brown's campaign in 1962…the one in which he beat Richard Nixon.

Today as you know is Mothers Day. This week, I'm going to rerun here the first three "Tales of My Mother" essays I posted here shortly after she passed away in October of 2012. This one ran here on October 5, 2012.

Near the end, you'll notice I tell a story about a man I called "Howard Producer." I disguised his identity not because I was afraid it would cost me work but because he was a man I felt didn't have much of a sense of humor. He passed away two years later so if you want to know who he really was, he was this person. And that said, here's the first of my Tales of My Mother…

For about ten years after my father retired, my mother worked part-time for a small chain called Jurgensen's Markets. Around Christmas, she worked full-time and overtime.

There were at least four Jurgensen's — one in Beverly Hills, one in Westwood, one in Hancock Park and one in either Glendale or Pasadena. Pasadena, I think. This was not a place where most of us would do our marketing. It was a rich person's market with alleged-gourmet food and sky-high pricing…in other words, not a place you went to stock up on Franco-American canned spaghetti. They didn't carry it and if they had, they would have charged you five dollars…per strand. My mother worked mainly at the one in Beverly Hills where at least half the commerce involved one person in show business ordering wine and/or a fancy gift basket delivered to some other person in show business.

She did me an enormous service there. I do not drink wine or anything alcoholic…and I never saw any non-beverage component of a Jurgensen's gift basket I'd consider eating. So if she saw one about to be delivered to me, she would intercept and re-route. She'd call and say — this was just before Christmas when there were a lot of presents flying about — "Jimmie Komack is sending you a basket of exotic cheeses and your agent is sending you a bottle of wine" and I'd say, "Great! Change the cards and send the cheeses to my agent and the wine to Jimmie."

We did this for years…as long as she worked for Jurgensen's. Sometimes, it wasn't as neatly symmetrical as that but it spared me having a lot of bottles around I didn't want. Often of course, I received wine that didn't come from Jurgensen's but we had a solution for that, too. I'd take those bottles over to my parents' house when I visited and my mother would sneak them into Jurgensen's and send them out for me via Jurgensen's delivery methods. After we did this for a while, she felt guilty so she told the manager and offered to have the costs deducted from her paycheck. The manager laughed, decided it was a great idea and he began bringing in unwanted bottles that had been delivered to his home and having them sent out to others.

My favorite moment in all this came when I was working for a producer named…well, I'd better not give his real name because he might still hire me again. I'll call him Howard Producer and tell you that he was a very important Hollywood-type person and he was also a wine snob. The one time he allowed me into his home, I was subjected to a ritual that was apparently required of all visitors — a tour of his wine cellar. It was huge and temperature-controlled and filled with bottles that he fingered like rare Ming Dynasty artifacts.

Though I tried to explain to him that I did not know one wine from another, he would cradle one and say, as if it was the most impressive thing one could possibly say, "This is a 1947 Bordeaux from the hinterlands of Greenbriar County and it was bottled on a rainy Thursday by the infamous Maria." Then he'd wait for me to adopt a jealous expression and indicate that I realized what an awesome thing that was to own. I learned to just go "Wowww" a lot. I also learned that he took his wine seriously. Didn't even snicker when I asked, "Hey, you got any Manischewitz around this dump?" and followed it up by inquiring, "What's a good year for Ripple?" Come to think of it, he didn't laugh at anything I wrote for him, either.

So, getting back to Jurgensen's: That same year, my mother called and said, "I have a bottle of wine here for you from Howard Producer. Where do you want me to send it?" I thought for a second and told her, "Send it to Howard Producer." I thought it would make a nice Christmas present…give Howard back his own wine.

It saved me shopping for something. It saved me getting it delivered and paying for it and it also saved me having to figure out what to do with that bottle of wine. But the best moment came when we went back to work after the holidays. Howard came by my desk to thank me for the wine. Then he leaned in carefully and said, "Listen, next time you send out wine to people as a gift, check with me and I'll suggest a few. It's important to make a good impression in this town and you don't want people to think you're the kind of guy who'd give out that kind of wine."

If you have a blog and want to get a ton o' e-mail, just post a message about having problems with your shoulder. I thank all of you who wrote in — mostly to suggest I google "frozen shoulder" — but there sure were a lot of you. I will guardedly investigate some of what you all said — "guardedly" because it has been my experience that the 'net is full of the worst kind of quackery so none of it can be taken at face value. I do have good doctors though and I'll run a few of your long-range diagnoses past them.

Our friend Mike Kazaleh says that what's missing from the 33-minute print of The Nut House are some animated gag sequences. I suspect also missing is an actual introduction of the cast along with an up-front credit for Jay Ward and Bill Scott.

I've also received quite a few suggestions of New York Delicatessens that are worthy of being identified as New York Delicatessens. Quite a few of you touted the new Times Square location of The Pastrami Queen. I may give it a try next time I'm back there even though its menu contains what it for me the single scariest sentence in the English language: "All sandwiches served with cole slaw."

In 1963, Jay Ward's cartoon studio was riding high with The Bullwinkle Show and starting to break out into live-action productions. One was Fractured Flickers, hosted by Hans Conried, which offered up silent movie footage redubbed with hilarious dialogue. It was a modest success in syndication.

Less successful was an unsold pilot for a prime-time hour-long variety show on CBS. It was called The Nut House (sometimes spelled The Nut House!!) and it featured a troupe of young comic actors performing sketches of various lengths, interspersed with cartoon segments, with no sense of continuity. While it didn't become a series, practically everyone involved in it considered it a prototype for Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, which was a huge hit four years later. Most of them, in fact, were not hesitant to call Laugh-In a rip-off of The Nut House.

Ward's show was supervised by Jay and by Bill Scott. The writing staff consisted of some of the guys who were writing Ward's cartoons at the time plus some outside guys experienced in writing comedy sketches for TV. It is said that most of the material written by the outside guys failed to make the final cut. The full writing staff, as credited at the end, was Bob Arbogast, George Atkins, Allan Burns, Jim Critchfield, Chris Hayward, Art Keane, Jack Margolis, Hal Parets and Lloyd Turner. Atkins, Burns, Critchfield, Hayward and Turner all wrote animation for Ward before and after.

The cast consisted of Ceil Cabot, Jack Sheldon, Len Maxwell, Fay DeWitt, Tony Holland, Jane Connell, Don Francks, Andy Duncan, Adam Keefe, Muriel Landers, Mara Lynn, Marilynn Lovell, Kathy Kersh and Alan Sues. Sues, of course, was later a cast member on Laugh-In.

Charles S. Dubin was the producer-director, Jerry Fielding did the music, Herb Ross (later an Oscar-nominated director) did the choreography and there was special musical material from Martin Charnin, Mary Rodgers and Jim Rusk. Charnin later wrote for Broadway shows like Annie and Two by Two. Mary Rodgers, whose name was misspelled in the credits, was the daughter of Richard Rodgers and a pretty successful composer in her own right.

CBS was not happy with what the Ward-Scott team turned in and much editing was done on it. They didn't like the absence of a real host, cringed at the general chaos and objected to some bits as being unfunny or in poor taste.

The pilot was handed over to the CBS testing people, who showed it to focus groups and reported on their reaction.  It tested very poorly…probably about as bad as the pilot for The Mary Tyler Moore Show and we all know what a flop that was. Still, when the (by then) unsold pilot of The Nut House finally aired on CBS in September of '64, some reviews thought it was fresh and different. Alas, in network television, "fresh and different" are not always considered good things.

For years, bad video copies of that one episode circulated but a fairly decent one has recently surfaced and you can watch it below. The show as aired was an hour but this copy, which is minus commercials, runs 33 and a half minutes…so something is missing, I know not what…

I have no idea what caused it but my left shoulder has had something wrong with it for about six weeks now. It hurts like hell but only when I put that arm into one of several positions that are easy to avoid, especially when I don't have to put on or take off a shirt or jacket. Just sitting here writing, it's fine. If you pointed a gun at me and said "Stick 'em up," it might be less painful to have you shoot me than for me to raise that arm in the air.

And not only do we not know what caused it, the doctors aren't sure what "it" is. They did x-rays that told them very little and then an MRI which told them less. It's not a torn rotator cuff; that, we know.

There might be a slight tear in one muscle but it doesn't seem to be the kind to cause this problem. The shoulder doctor gave me (a) a shot of cortisone, (b) a prescription for more physical therapy and (c) an appointment in six weeks so we could assess how much (a) and (b) had helped. So far, the answer is "Just a little."

Physical therapy is great, though. For one thing, you learn stuff. The other day there, I noticed a wise bit of advice on the machine I was using…

"Stop if you feel pain or faint."  Yes, absolutely. This notice should be everywhere because it pertains to everything. No matter what you're doing — walking, running, having sex, twerking, watching Fox News, reading Groo the Wanderer, whatever — if you feel pain or faint, stop. Just stop.

We get lots of good advice that applies everywhere. When I go to comic conventions, there are almost always signs that remind you not to touch people without their consent or make sexual comments that may be unwelcome. You should absolutely heed those signs at conventions but you should also do what they say when you're at Costco, when you're walking down any street, when you're in a public park, etc. They apply everywhere.

Getting back to my shoulder: My orthopedist thinks that whatever's wrong with it will go away on its own. That seems logical to me since it happened on its own. For now though we're following the sage advice offered by the great all-seeing, all-knowing wise man, Henny Youngman. He told of the man who went to his doctor and said, "Doc, it hurts when I do this!" To which the doctor replied, "Then don't do that!"

It's a very old joke but it's basically what we're doing right now about my shoulder.

Last night, I was a guest on the first hour of the official podcast of the San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog. I recommend dropping by the blog on a regular basis because they post a lot of good news and info on the Comic-Con International, with which they are in no way connected. They just posted a good article by Robert Warners on myths surrounding the convention.

This time of year, they do regular podcasts. The hosts are Kerry Dixon and James Riley and they asked me to join them and talk about Comic-Con as we approach the fiftieth one. You can watch the whole thing below…

Josh Barro discusses the most divisive, class-oriented issue in the country today — the order in which we get to board airplanes. I never really understand it on any airline other than Southwest and I'm not always certain I understand it on Southwest. I just know I need an overhead space for my carry-on and I will certainly get it if I'm in Boarding Group A, probably get it if I'm in Boarding Group B…and there's a chance (but not a good one) I'll get it if I'm in Boarding Group C.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to criticize the Trump Administration's foreign policies because they don't even seem to know what they are. It sometimes seems like Trump himself doesn't want to get into a lot of foreign wars…but he picked John Bolton to be a national security advisor. You can mention just about any country on this planet to John Bolton and he'll tell you why we need to be dropping bombs on it, sending troops to it, seizing its assets and installing a government we control. Steve Benen has more.

I can't place the date exactly but around June of 2007, a little multi-colored kitten began showing up in my backyard, partaking of the free food that I put out there for other feral cats. I posted an item about her and this photo in September of that year. She's the one on the left…

We called her The Kitten and she turned up almost every night. At the time, I'm fairly sure her main hangout was across the street from me. It's a fairly busy street so she was risking her pretty little life every time she came over here for chow and then returned over there. At some point though, she seems to have relocated her base of operations to my yard.

In April of 2008, she was still dining here…but perhaps dining for at least two. She was either putting on serious weight or she was pregnant, mostly likely the latter. I called a friend who was involved with charities that care deeply about feral cats and asked what, if anything, I should do. He told me I should capture her, take her to a vet to get her "fixed" and to terminate the pregnancy. Each year, hundreds of thousands of feral cats in this country either starve to death or are "put to sleep."  It is better, he said, not to let them be born than to make the problem worse.

I thought about it and decided he was correct. The catching of The Kitten was a long, difficult process which I reported on in diary form on this blog. The diary ends with me succeeding and I have collected those listings over at this page if you want to read them. Below is a photo from that mission…

During the adventure, The Kitten got an actual name. I named her Lydia. When I brought her back from the vet, she seemed so angry in that cage/carrier that I thought she'd never come near me again. But when I turned her loose in my yard, it took about two minutes before she was on my porch asking for food.

That was April of 2008. Since then, I have posted many items and photos of little Lydia. There have been times when for some reason unknown to me, I didn't see her for a long stretch of time and I feared she was gone, probably in the mortal sense. I've had a lot of feral cats out there and sometimes, we find them dead but more often, they just stop coming around.

At one point, I was up to four regulars and an occasional guest for dinner. Then it was three. Then it was two. One of those two, Sylvia, died last August, leaving Lydia alone out there.

I haven't mentioned Lydia lately here and I recently received three messages from folks who feared the worst and wanted to know if there's any chance she's still dining on my porch. After all, feral cats aren't supposed to live long. You can find all sorts of different stats online but most would say that an outdoor stray will survive 2-9 years.

Well, here's a photo I took of Lydia Tuesday afternoon…

She doesn't look all that different from the way she looked when I first saw her wolfing down Friskies on that step back in mid-2007. Assuming she was born around the beginning of that year, that would make her a little over twelve years old now — and yes, I know it's rude to discuss a lady's age but she won't know. She almost never reads this blog.

The main change I notice in her over those years is that she's less active and especially less likely to climb up to high places. She used to chase squirrels and butterflies and sometimes even feral cats she didn't know who found their way to the buffet I provide. Now, she doesn't bother. She also used to like to sit on the roof of my garage, peering over the edge like a gargoyle. I haven't seen her up there in years.

She's out in the yard there 24/7 except when the gardener or the pool guy comes by. When one does, she relocates into an adjoining neighbor's property until they leave her turf and she can come back and resume licking herself. It's a pretty good life and I don't know how much longer it will last. I just know it always makes me smile to see her out there. When I get up in the morning and go to my bathroom, I look out the window and usually see Lydia outside, napping or cleaning some part of herself. It's a reassuring way to start my day.

I'll probably get back to New York in the next few months. I'm not sure what I'll be doing there yet but I'm fairly certain I won't be eating any deli food. That used to be part of my New York Experience but since then, the Carnegie Delicatessen has closed, the Stage Delicatessen has closed and my go-to alternative, the Ben Ash Delicatessen has closed. For years, no trip to New York was complete for me without meeting Joe Simon at the Ben Ash…and now they're both gone.

The two best delis remaining there are the Second Avenue Deli — two locations, neither on Second Avenue — and Katz's. I usually stay in or around Times Square and all three of those locations are tough to get to from there. Katz's is always mobbed and noisy — and while the food is pretty good, there's just too much of it. The sandwiches especially are too big and priced accordingly. Since my Gastric Bypass, I can't finish half of one let alone a whole one. Unless you're splitting it with a friend or heading from there back to your hotel room and your hotel room has a mini-fridge, don't order a sandwich.

Also, I like mustard on my corned beef sandwich — not deli mustard, not honey mustard, not dijon mustard, not brown mustard, not spicy mustard, not hot mustard, not German mustard, not whole grain mustard…just plain mustard, the yellow kind. If you ask for it at Katz's, they act like you want to smear your sandwich with bat guano or worse, mayonnaise. If you don't mind, I prefer my deli food without cole slaw or attitude.

Here's a video about the place featuring a young woman who is a little too impressed to be there. I mean, I like the place but not as much as she does…

Just a reminder that I'll be a guest on on the podcast of The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog in a few hours. It all starts at 6:30 PM Los Angeles time at this link. I'll be discussing the past 49 years of attending Comic-Con International in its various incarnations since 1970 and what may happen 70 days from now at the fiftieth such gathering. Who knows? I may even tell an anecdote or two. I've been known to do that on rare occasions.