They still don't seem to have one…someone to host this year's Academy Awards. According to this article…

[Kevin] Hart is reportedly also concerned that if he returned to the job, he wouldn't have enough time to prepare before the Feb. 24 award ceremony. Deadline reports that the Academy, which still has not named a host, is approaching multiple stars to split the duties.

The "not enough time" concern probably only matters if the host is going to do one of those elaborate openings that Billy Crystal made (almost) standard with a pre-filmed piece that puts the host and a raft of big-name cameo stars into film clips. Or if they want to do one of those elaborate special material production numbers that Billy Crystal and Neil Patrick Harris made (almost) standard. If they just want the host to come out, do a monologue, introduce the first presenters and then disappear for the next thirty minutes, there's plenty of time.

The problem is that there's no upside for someone like Kevin Hart. It's not like the exposure is going to get him more movie offers at higher fees. And if he's controversial, one section of the audience is going to slam him for bad taste, offending certain groups, dragging politics into it and so forth…and if he isn't controversial, another section is going to slam him for playing it too safe and (probably) not being as funny as he usually is. If I were him, I would never have accepted the gig. I'd have asked myself, "Why do I need that?" and not had a very good answer to give me.

I can think of two people who are bona fide movie stars who would probably rise above any criticism just because of who they are. Those would be Tom Hanks and Steve Carell. But again, they have nothing to gain. They've probably turned it down. Actually, I'll bet you James Corden could do a great job but the trouble is that the show is on ABC and he's on CBS and ABC isn't about to promote a CBS star. And he'd also want to do one of those big opening numbers.

After I wrote the preceding paragraph, I sat here for a few minutes, trying to think of a really great suggestion and I suddenly realized something: I don't care. Most of America doesn't care, which is why the Oscars ain't drawing the ratings it used to draw. There are too many awards shows and much of the public is getting tired of seeing (to them) overpaid lucky sons o' bitches fawning over one another and thanking their agents. Ignore this post. It doesn't matter to me and if you consider it for a moment, you'll realize it doesn't matter to you, either.

Joe Ankenbauer ASKS me…

Here's a question for you. I read numerous comic strips each day. Some comic strips continue their story line through the comics that appear on Sunday, while others put a Sunday strip that has nothing to do with the current story line. What is the reasoning behind that?

It's one of those decisions that, like so many in the popular arts, meets at the juncture of Creative and Business. Usually when a new strip starts up and the syndicate's salesfolks try to get newspapers to carry it, they can't get every paper to carry both the dailies and the Sunday page. Each paper had a certain number of open slots on their page of dailies and a certain number of slots in their Sunday section and those numbers rarely coincide, especially if they're carrying one or more of the strips that are daily only or Sunday only.

So the question becomes do we link the daily and Sunday continuities of our strip and hope that causes the papers that only want one to feel they need the other? Or do we make them separate so they read better for readers who get one but not the other? Obviously, the nature of the material itself has a lot to do with this decision as does the preference of the cartoonist. But at some point, they have to consider what the sales force thinks may be best.

Also, this isn't so relevant these days but back when a newspaper strip was more work (i.e., they were larger), it was not unheard-of for a cartoonist to choose to just do the six daily strips each week and turn the Sunday page over to someone else. Hank Ketcham did his Dennis the Menace strip Monday through Saturday and had ghosts produce Sunday's strip. I don't know that he ever wanted to have a day-to-day continuity in the feature but it would have been difficult with that split.

Roy Crane's strip Buz Sawyer dealt with the problem by making its Sunday page a completely different, slightly-connected feature. Monday through Saturday, it was an adventure strip featuring Buz drawn by Crane and later his assistants. Sunday, it was comical, self-contained exploits of Buz's pal, Rosco Sweeney who was rarely seen in the daily continuity. Rosco's pages were written and drawn by Clark Haas (and later, Al Wenzel) but signed by Crane. The decision to separate the storylines that way enabled Crane's uncredited writer, Edwin Granberry, to write Buz Sawyer adventures as a six-day-a-week continuity strip without worrying about readers who didn't get the Sunday page.

The current Popeye strip consists of reprints on Monday through Saturday — old strips by Bud Sagendorf. The other day each week, Hy Eisman produces a new Sunday page. I would imagine a lot of the papers that carry it only carry one or the other…but there are not enough total to warrant making it all-new. That was one of those Business-type decisions.

How to bathe your sloth…

I don't know if you have these rental scooters all over your town but Los Angeles is lousy with them. There are all sorts of official rules for their usage — like in some areas, you're supposed to wear a helmet and in some areas, you're not supposed to ride on sidewalks — and from what I can tell, no one pays any attention to any of the rules.

I have eyewitnessed two accidents on them so far, neither of which resulted in injury to the scooterer but they sure came close. About a month ago, I was in a big parking lot and a lady of — I'd say — fourteen years of age was having a helluva lot of fun riding one up and down the aisles…that is, until she ran into the side of a car. She was shaken up and the car sustained one of those dents that's so slight, you don't want to bother getting it fixed. Still, it was scary.

A second collision of scooter and, in this case, Toyota Corolla was right outside my house. A gent on a scooter was racing along and he zipped across a street so rapidly that an oncoming car apparently didn't have time to see him and brake fully, nor did he see it coming. The car bumped him and he sprawled onto its hood. Both car-driver and scooter-driver were pretty shaken and the guy eventually hobbled off, not scootering. He might have had some sore muscles but he got off easy. A few inches either way though and, like the parking lot encounter, it could have been way more serious.

Yesterday, there was a big car chase in Los Angeles (when isn't there one?) and at one point, the fleeing "suspect" simply hit a guy on a scooter and kept going. Anyone watching on live TV probably thought they'd just seen someone killed…

Culver City police began the pursuit of the driver, who was suspected of assault with a deadly weapon, around 11 a.m. His car, a red Honda Civic, was traveling at slow to normal speeds before it struck a man riding a scooter in the 7800 block of West Manchester Avenue in Playa del Rey about 11:30. The man who was hit was taken to a hospital with injuries that did not appear to be life-threatening, fire officials said. Meanwhile, the chase continued.

And still, the scooters continue with no one paying any mind to whatever regulations may have been instituted. I don't know if anyone's been killed on one yet. It would be amazing if it hasn't happened but even if it hasn't, it will. I've seen some pretty nasty bicycling accidents in my life and these sure look more dangerous than a bicycle.

I don't know why I wrote this. I have no solutions that will prevent these imminent demises. Everyone knows they'll happen. Everyone knows it's a problem. It was just on my mind and if it's on my mind, it's likely to get a blog post here even when, as is the case here, I have nothing interesting to say about it. Let's move on.

This kinda ties in with my earlier rant. Because of television, anyone under the age of around seventy-five has the opportunity to experience past news events pretty much the way most of the nation did — on TV. The video clip below is from Thursday, August 8, 1974 and it's almost three and a half hours long so I don't expect anyone will sit through it now. But perhaps some day, whether you were glued to the set that night or not, you'll want to watch the night that Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency.

You can experience it close to the way we did that evening. You'll lack some of the historical and emotional context we had that night but it can otherwise be sort of a "real time" experience for you, albeit tape-delayed about 45 years. This is the CBS coverage with Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather reporting, both super-cautious, especially early in the telecast, because though a jillion sources said Nixon was going to resign in the speech they were covering, they couldn't be 100% certain. Not with Nixon, anyway.

It's also an interesting bit of video because of all the newsfolks trying to be super-gracious so as not to be accused of glee or of saying "Told ya so!," though of course they were so accused. I'm not posting this because I think we'll soon have a rerun with Trump but it is an interesting artifact of television news back then…and chance to get into the WABAC machine and witness history for yourself…

Gilbert Gottfried remembers Bob Einstein.

You probably know the famous story Gilbert mentions about how Einstein's father suffered a fatal heart attack and died in front of half of Hollywood after performing at a Friars Roast of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. If you wanted to get Bob Einstein really angry, all you had to do was to ask about him about it. As apparently an awful lot of people did.

My first real rant/commentary of 2019 is kind of a companion piece to this essay that I placed here last August. Go read it if you like but basically, it was about how at the age of 66, I'm sick of people around my age acting like we're all just waiting for the Grim Reaper…and by the way, have you noticed how old some of our friends are getting to be? I think it's healthy to accept how old you are but there's no reason why you have to surrender to it and start acting like the on-screen Burt Mustin…

That's a photo of Burt Mustin, who for years played the Old Man in every TV show or movie where they needed an Old Man. He passed away in 1977 and I suspect in his will, he left all those roles to Charles Lane. I'm not sure who Mr. Lane left them to. Maybe Betty White.

But I met Mr. Mustin in 1971 over at NBC Burbank on the set of a TV show called The Funny Side. He was 86 but he had the energy of a man of…oh, around what I am now. And apart from my knee problems, I'd like to think I don't act my age, however someone my age is supposed to act.

I've always loved the story from when Jack Benny did his screen test for the film of The Sunshine Boys. I wrote about it here at least once before…

At one point during the filming, Herbert Ross (who was directing) stopped the action and told Benny he was moving with too much energy. He said, "Remember, Jack, you're playing a 70-year-old comedian." There was a pause and then Benny replied, "But I'm an 80-year-old comedian."

In other words, "Don't act like you are. Act like society thinks you ought to be." Benny didn't live to make the film but if he had, I would have loved to see a reviewer say, "Jack Benny struck me as too young to play a 70-year-old comedian." Over at NBC that day in '71, I pretty much saw Burt Mustin given the same direction to move slower and act more like the cliché.  I think that too often in life, we give that same stupid direction to ourselves and to each other.

And this essay is also a follow-up to my piece the other day on why I didn't like the new movie, Stan & Ollie.  How so? Because another thing people my age do to make themselves older is to complain, in some cases almost incessantly, about how These Kids Today don't love what we loved.  My friends who loved Stan & Ollie are saying to me, "Hey, maybe it will cause These Kids Today to discover the wonders of Laurel and Hardy."

It might be nice if it did but I really don't care much if it doesn't.  I'm certainly not going to get emotional about it.  Too many of my contemporaries sound like parents after The Beatles did The Ed Sullivan Show, predicting or praying that These Kids Today (i.e., Those Kids Then) would outgrow that garbage, it would all disappear and T.K.T. would begin listening to "good music."  You know, like Perry Como or Mantovani. No generation ever embraces everything or even most things that their folks liked.

What I do care about, vis-a-vis Laurel and Hardy, is that their films (a) exist in the best possible form and (b) are readily available.  When I first became a true fan of Stan and Ollie, neither was the case.  If you wanted to see their films — and I sure did — forget about seeing them in a theater with a live audience. You had to scour TV Guide. Their films were shown a lot on TV…but not all of them. The silents? Almost never. Lucky for me, we had the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles but if you lived elsewhere, too bad.

The sound shorts were on Los Angeles television a lot, usually programmed like the Three Stooges shorts, meaning for children. Some of the features ran often and some never aired.

The prints were terrible: Missing scenes, splices right in the middle of speeches, poor video, commercial breaks inserted (literally) between the set-up of a joke and the punch line. The local CBS affiliate had a print of The Big Noise which apparently had its canisters mismarked because every time they ran it, they ran reel 5 before reel 4. And of course, you had to watch it when they wanted you to watch it. When I was twelve or so, I stayed up one night until 4 AM to see for the first time, Pack Up Your Troubles. It wasn't that good at that hour. No film is that good at that hour.

I fantasized about owning a complete collection of Laurel and Hardy movies. By age fourteen, that was less likely to happen than my concurrent fantasy about sleeping with Mary Tyler Moore. The fantasy without Mary would have involved a then-nonexistent room in my home, a sixteen-millimeter projector — they were a bitch to thread and operate — and a mess of 16mm prints that were then very expensive if they were even available. Most were not.

Flash seriously forward. Today, I have that complete collection and it's on DVD. Doesn't require a projector, doesn't require a room full of film canisters. It probably cost me about $100 to amass and I can watch any one of 'em or all of 'em any time I like. Best of all, the films have been restored as much as humanly possible. Some of the prints are gorgeous. Some contain scenes I never saw when I saw these films on TV.

I transferred a couple of my favorites to my computer. Right now, I could close this file, open another and within twenty seconds be feasting on a pristine copy of Sons of the Desert or Our Relations. It is a wonderful time to be a fan of Laurel and Hardy and if you want to start building such a collection for yourself, buying this DVD set is a great start.

All of this, of course, also applies to the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton and Chaplin and Harold Lloyd and all my favorite dramatic films. There is very little that I could ever want to watch that I can't obtain. Most of it has been fully restored or will be, and it ain't expensive. Between hundreds of TV networks, streaming services, DVDs, Blu Rays, videogames, multi-screen cineplexes, anyone today who has a very modest amount of money has access to way more media than they can ever consume.

So when someone says, "These Kids Today haven't watched all the great movies of the past," I think, "These Kids Today can't even watch all the good stuff on Netflix. I sure can't."

This is why it doesn't bother me if T.K.T. don't know all my favorites. I don't know a lot of theirs, either. One of these days if/when I have the time, I may get around to watching that great show that you know and I don't, just as T.K.T. may discover the joys of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. As long as the material is available, that's possible. And it's never been more available.

This is an obit for Bob Einstein, part of a family that includes many funny people including him, his brother Albert Brooks, and their father. Their father was Harry Einstein, a great comic (mostly in radio) who performed as a befuddled Greek man named Parkyakarkus. Like his father, Bob Einstein was best known by his character names — Officer Judy on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Marty Funkhouser on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and his long run as the self-immolating daredevil Super Dave Osborne. You never knew what daring feat Super Dave would attempt; only that at the end of it, he would meet some fate previously met by Wile E. Coyote.

Einstein was very funny and very deadpan in front of a camera and he was very funny and very smart in yet another role of his — that of a TV producer and writer. He won or was nominated for Emmy Awards in all three capacities: Producer, writer, performer.

The obits I've seen so far either forget or minimize how many shows he was involved with, behind-the-scenes. They included the show with the Smothers Brothers but also Bizarre (with John Byner), Van Dyke and Company (with Dick Van Dyke), various shows with Sonny Bono (with and without Cher), Pat Paulsen's Half a Comedy Hour, Redd Foxx's variety show and many more. What those shows all had in common was a mischievous sense of humor and a profound attempt to do things on television that no one had ever done before. That probably wasn't wholly because of Bob Einstein but those goals were present in all his work.

I met him a few times and he was always dour, self-deprecating, pissed-off about something and quite hilarious in his real or postured misery. The first time was after he'd written and directed the 1972 Another Nice Mess, a film which portrayed then-President Richard Nixon and then-Veep Spiro Agnew as, respectively, Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel. The movie was not a success and Einstein seemed pretty angry, not that it hadn't made money but that almost no one had seen it.

The last time, I think, was when I got a mysterious phone call in 1992 that he wanted to meet with me. The person who called wouldn't say what it was about but I had a hunch. I went in and, sure enough, it had to do with a Super Dave cartoon show that was then in production and but a few months from debuting. Mr. Einstein said he was very unhappy with how things were doing and someone had told him I was a "fixer" in such circumstances and shown him some shows I'd worked on. He wanted to know if I could come in and "save" his animated series.

I asked how many of the thirteen had been written and recorded. He said, "Eight." I said, "If they're truly as bad as you say, it's over. There's never been a cartoon show that had eight poor episodes and got better." He sighed, said I was probably right…and the business part of our meeting was effectively over. Since he'd cleared the hour and I'd driven all the way there, we sat around for the next 57 minutes talking about his past work, his father and his (and he brought this up) problems with being overshadowed by his younger brother. He also told me around thirty great off-color jokes and I told him a few. It was a great hour even if you considered that all I'd really accomplished there was to talk my way out of a job.

I don't know how to end this without using the term "very funny" again because he sure was. It's always a shame when we lose the kind of person you can't talk about without using that term.

So what is up with Trump's Wall? Aaron Rupar runs down some of the conflicting things Trump is saying about it. Apparently, it's almost finished and the border is very secure but we still desperately need The Wall built because the border is not very secure except that it is but our nation must pay for it because Mexico won't except that Mexico already is via a new agreement that won't and which hasn't even been signed yet. Got that?

• Here's my solution to the Democrats/Trump gridlock over The Wall: Dems agree to release money to build The Wall but only as matching funds keyed to whatever Mexico puts up for it. A great deal for Mexico since, after all, Trump promised they'd pay for the whole thing!

If you'd like to see actual Laurel and Hardy films starring the actual Laurel and Hardy, set your TiVo or DVR for Turner Classic Movies next Monday night, January 7. Starting at 8 PM on my TV (yours may vary), they're running a batch of great Stan and Ollie movies…and one of their weakest. The films are, in order: The Music Box, Busy Bodies, Way Out West, Sons of the Desert, Tit for Tat, Swiss Miss, Pack Up Your Troubles, Air Raid Wardens, Brats and A Chump at Oxford.

The Music Box, Busy Bodies, Tit for Tat and Brats are shorts. The Music Box is the best of these and Tit for Tat is, in my opinion, the weakest. Tit for Tat was a sequel to a short called Them Thar Hills and usually when TCM runs Tit for Tat, they run Them Thar Hills right before it.

The rest are features and the two best in there are Way Out West and Sons of the Desert. The one to miss is Air Raid Wardens, which may be the least funny movie they made. It's the only one of this batch that they didn't make for the Hal Roach Studio.

A man just walked past my window. He was an older man, perhaps in his eighties, and he was screaming either at no one or maybe into a Bluetooth headset, that he was going to "rape every last one of you." He did not clarify who that list included…and he was wearing a lovely top hat and a full tuxedo with tails.

• Lots of online debates this morning over whether Trump would beat Elizabeth Warren or vice-versa. I'm amused by the assumption that either one of them will be their party's nominee.

Cookie Monster visits the Ellen show…

Ever since the trailer came out for Stan & Ollie, I've been asked incessantly if I've seen it or the film and as a lifelong lover of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, what I think of this motion picture. Saturday evening, I attended a screening at the Writers Guild so here is what I think of this motion picture.

The art direction, design and cinematography are superb. I can't think of a film that has ever done a better job of re-creating the world of a time gone by.

I also can't think of a film about well-known personalities that did a better job of making you think you were watching the real people. Folks are especially raving about John C. Reilly as Mr. Hardy but I was more impressed with Steve Coogan as Mr. Laurel. I thought he had the tougher role in playing more of a multi-layered character plus I thought the make-up/prosthetics job on Reilly did a lot of the heavy lifting in that performance.

The make-up was real impressive and certainly Oscar-worthy because it didn't look like make-up. Usually, Billy Crystal playing a much older man looks to me like Billy Crystal with a lot of stuff on his face.

Beyond that, I really, really disliked this movie.

I went in wanting to love it. Honest, I did. And I really expected to because so many friends of mine who adore The Boys have expressed their delight in it. (How to know if someone's really a fan of them: They speak of "Stan and Babe," Babe being Hardy's nickname.)

Leonard Maltin, a lover of Stan and Babe if ever there was one, even started his review with "I love this movie!" and reviews don't get any more approving than that. I rarely disagree much with my pal Leonard but I suspect we'll be mudwrestling over this one for the rest of our lives or our friendship, whichever ends first.

Before I get into detail about why I didn't like the film, I'm going to post one of these…

Okay now. First off, I need to say something and this is not the reason I didn't like the movie but it has something to do with it. A lot of the actual history of Laurel and Hardy has been rewritten and fictionalized. Here are but a few examples…

Laurel did not resent Hardy making a movie without him in 1939. They did not have a great offer from Twentieth-Century Fox in 1939 which Hardy refused to sign then. Their popularity did not decline as rapidly as the film makes out. Their final trip overseas, which is what the movie is mainly about, was not the fiasco the film makes it out to be. And I don't know if the movie makes it clear but that was their third UK tour and they were all pretty successful.

The tour promoter, Bernard Delfont, was not the inept con artist that the film makes him out to be, just as their old studio boss Hal Roach was not the angry tyrant that he was portrayed to be. (Even Leonard had a problem with the depiction of Roach.) Hardy did suffer a mild heart attack on the third tour and it resulted in the truncation of that tour. It did not result in Hardy promising his wife he would retire. Therefore, it also did not result in him breaking that promise, ignoring his doctor's orders and resuming the tour, even refusing to drop the strenuous dance routine.

I'm aware I'm one of the few people who did not like this film. Am I also one of the few who did not take that as a gloriously happy ending? To me, a happy ending might have been for Hardy to offer to continue the tour and for Stan to say to him, "I love you for that, Babe, but it's more important that you keep living than for us to do ten more cities and entertain a few thousand more people. You need to be there for Lucille…and hey, if your health returns, maybe we can make another movie or two." But instead in the ending, Stan seems quite pleased that his dear friend — the one who just had the heart attack and was ordered to stop performing — is up there, dancing his severely injured heart out.

In real life, what did happen was that Hardy went home, got better and the two of them were days from the commencement of shooting on a new film when Laurel had a stroke that ended both their performing careers.

But like I said, it isn't just the rewriting of history that bothers me. I mentioned some of it because I think it's significant that the filmmakers had to change so much reality in order to gin up a tale of Stan and Oliver fighting. There wasn't a real one that they could use so they came up with something that I'm afraid just did not ring emotionally true to me. I don't think it would even if I knew very little of the truth.

Two guys who've been together that long…fighting over those silly things? I'd hate to think they were really that shallow. Or married to women that annoying. Hardy was married three times. Laurel was married to four different women and one of them, he married and divorced twice, plus there was also a common law spouse before the four legal ones. If the wives depicted in the film were anything like their real-life counterparts, I think Stan and Babe each needed one more divorce.

This is a movie about two of the most beloved, successful comedians of all time. There's not nearly enough of that in the film. If you didn't know going in that the unsuccessful-at-first tour was a minor outlier in their careers, I don't think you'd figure it out from this movie. Or get what was beloved about them. The real guys had an innocence that made you love them. I don't think it's missing in the acting. I think it's missing in the story that the filmmakers chose to tell. It's Stan and Babe at their lowest point, told in a way that makes it lower so that we can get to a happy ending which I found more bizarre than happy.

Coogan and Reilly are astounding at looking like and sounding like the genuine articles but I found myself thinking, "Oh, I hope Stan and Babe weren't really like that." Stan's a bit of a dick in the film. Babe lacks the off-screen likability that every single person who knew the real thing said he had. (Hal Roach, portrayed wrongly as a bad guy in this picture, told me "Hardy made everyone smile everywhere he went." Reilly's Hardy doesn't.)

Since I saw the picture, I've spoken with several fellow L&H lovers who are aghast at my reaction. Some said, "Yeah, yeah, but isn't it great seeing them getting all this attention?" or "Maybe this will cause a new generation to discover their films?" Maybe…but that doesn't change anything about what I didn't like in the film. It's just a reason to perhaps tolerate it.

The last movie I saw that disappointed me while delighting many (not all) of my friends was Saving Mr. Banks. Shortly after I wrote here of my feelings, I ran into Richard Sherman who, of course, was a player in the story it told and an enthusiastic approver of the film. He said to me with amazement, "You really didn't like it? Why not?" I asked him, "How did you like spending weeks of your life with that woman?" He said, "I hated it." I said, "Okay. You didn't like spending a couple of weeks with her and I didn't like spending a couple of hours with her."

Mr. Sherman thought for a second and said, "You've got a point." I didn't like spending a couple of hours — it felt like more than it was — watching my two favorite performers at the ass-end of their careers wherein they created glorious work that will live forever, bickering and struggling through a quickly-forgotten tour. I am not out to change anyone's love for this film and I can see there's plenty of that around. But I've been inundated by folks asking me what I thought of it so I just told you what I thought of it. Perhaps some of them will consider that I have a point.