Still waiting. And trying to figure out where Lydia got twenty bucks.

Apparently, we're waiting for the "In Memoriam" reel or maybe the Irving Thalberg Award. Lydia is offering to bet me twenty bucks that Get Out wins for Best Picture.

I tried to just keep an eye on her but she's been acting so sick that I'm coming to you now from the waiting room of a vet who's open on Sunday. He's only charging me double plus a special "Interrupting My Academy Awards Viewing" rate.

Lydia is here with me in a cage. I don't mean we're both in a cage. She's in a cage and I just belong in one. She was a lot easier to catch this time than last time. We're waiting for the vet who says he'll get to us some time after they present Best Supporting Actress. More later.

The fine actor/conductor has passed away at the age of 75. I can't think of anything he did on screen that I didn't think was well done and my personal interactions with him consisted of one long day and a couple of follow-up phone calls. To hear from someone who really worked with the man, go read my pal Ken Levine.

In 1996, I helped Stan Freberg out when he recorded the long-awaited — and by "long," I mean like three and a half decades — Volume 2 of Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America. There's a long story of why it took so long but it has nothing to do with the late Mr. Stiers. One of the main contributions I made was to talk Stan out of using his old stock player, Jesse White, in many of the key roles. Jesse had been the co-star of Volume 1 and if Stan had done the second one in the sixties, seventies or even the eighties, Jesse could well have filled the parts Stan had him down to play.

But in '96, I'd worked with Jesse recently enough to know that fine performer was no longer up to it. In fact, he passed away early in '97. Jesse was instead assigned a small cameo role on the album and Stan chose Stiers to fill most of the roles Jesse was to have done. David was honored and thrilled to part of the project but early in the recording session, he began to have trouble with Stan's tendency — which he himself used to admit and joke about — to do way more takes of a song than were necessary. As I mentioned at the June Foray Celebration last September, Stan once had her, the rest of the cast and the Capitol Records Orchestra do 100+ takes on a record…and when the record was released, what was on it was Take #2.

David was worried that his voice would not hold up for the rest of the day but he was too polite/professional to tell that to Stan. Instead, he took me aside and asked/told me, "Please…if we start a song and you think it's not perfect, please stop it instead of letting us sing the entire thing." I told him I would and to the extent possible — since Stan was in charge and he always said, "That's fine but let's try it one more time" — I did.

During breaks, David and I talked about…well, about everything except his years on M*A*S*H. That may very well be what you know him best for and I never heard him say a negative thing about the show but he clearly did not want to be thought of just as a guy who was on that series. We talked a lot about his first love, which was classical music. I don't know a lot about that subject but I do know Gershwin and Jerome Kern and Gilbert & Sullivan and a few others that were close enough.

He was charming and bright and utterly disinterested in the money for the job, which was not much. And when someone asked him about M*A*S*H, he was polite but he rapidly moved the conversation elsewhere.

Years ago, a producer I knew told me, "There are two kinds of actors in the business…those who want to be rich and famous but also want to do good work, and those who just care about the good work." Based on what I've read and seen about David Ogden Stiers along with that one day we worked together, I'd peg him as the Poster Boy for the second kind. He certainly succeeded in that category.

She lives! She turned up on my back porch within the last hour but she is not a well cat. She's moving slowly and walking sadly and when I put out some food for her, she inspected and rejected it, opting instead for a few laps of water from a nearby dish. I put out two other small dishes — one of another flavor of Friskies and one of some moist, dark meat turkey pieces that were going to be part of my lunch. No interest.

This is not like her. This is not like any feral cat that's in good health. Our old pal The Stranger Cat acted like this in his final days.

I called the two vets I know. Both are closed for the weekend but one phone was answered by an assistant. She says there's nothing they can do today except tell me, "Keep an eye on her." So I'm going to keep an eye on her.

I fear the worst. It's been several days since I've seen Lydia and she's never been gone this long before.

Lydia was (or, I hope, still is) one of the many feral cats I've fed in my backyard over the years. It started with Jackie, a reddish cat who was found, seriously underfed, rummaging through my trash cans one day in 1991. I began putting out grub for her and she was a more-or-less constant presence in the yard until 2003.

During much of that time, she chased off any other cat or animal that encroached on what she'd decided was her turf but she apparently had other duties elsewhere. She couldn't be there 24/7 so other cats snuck in to partake of the buffet and near the end, Jackie got a bit more generous with the food I was paying for. By the time she crawled under my house and died, I was feeding other felines on the back porch. I've never been out of customers since then.

Lydia, as I eventually named her, showed up here around June of 2007. We called her The Kitten then and if I left the door to the garage open, she would usually sneak in there to look for food. That year, she somehow managed to be hiding in there when Carolyn and I left for the Comic-Con in San Diego, locking the door behind us. Ergo, we unknowingly locked The Kitten in there.

When we returned 4.5 days later, we found her — hungry but unharmed. I had left an uncapped bottle of drinking water on a counter in there and she somehow knocked it over and got to the water. She was a good sport about it. Once I'd fed her, she forgave me for what I'd done.

A little less than a year later, she somehow got pregnant…and maybe I shouldn't say "somehow" because there's only one way that happens. In an epic adventure which I recounted in this diary, I managed to trap her and take her in for a pussycat abortion. She also forgave me for that…and she's been coming around since then. For a time, I had four cats out there with occasional guest stars but lately, it's been down to two: Her and Sylvia.

So Lydia has been in my backyard for around well over ten years…and if she wasn't in my yard, like when my gardener was out there, she was in an adjoining neighbor's. Sylvia comes around almost every night but Lydia is there for breakfast, lunch, dinner and a midnight snack. Or at least she did. I haven't seen her since last Thursday and like I said, I fear the worse.

I didn't mean to dump this on you. I mean, I know how many other problems and concerns you have on your mind and it's possible Lydia's just vacationing in Barbados or something. Then again, the average life span of a feral cat is 3-5 years and Lydia's around 11. I'll let you know if she shows up but I have a not-good feeling about this…a real not-good feeling about this.

Last October when Amber and I were in New York, one of the shows we saw was Prince of Broadway, a paste-up presentation of show-stopping numbers from shows that were produced and/or directed by Harold Prince. I wrote about it here and about my reaction, which was that I liked it but did not love it. Several of the numbers were quite wonderful but the show didn't quite come together as anything more than a nice sampler.

The show closed in New York at the end of that month and I said in the above-linked piece that I wished there had been a cast album because I'd like to hear some of those performances again. Well, it turns out that a cast album (a CD, actually) was recorded and it will be out next month.

And I found this video not of the New York production but of the earlier Japanese company. It's in English with many of the same actors I saw in New York. One of them is Bryonha Marie Parham, who tore the roof off the dump (as they say) performing the title song from Cabaret. You'll hear a few seconds of her in this video and get an idea what the show was like…

I'll bet I'm not the only person in Los Angeles who needs to seriously readjust his or her sense of how long it takes to get from here to there. Traffic has been awful lately and there seems to be a commission somewhere that figures out which streets I have to drive on and puts them permanently "Under Construction." I think it's staffed by the same people Chris Christie used to use for his bridge closures.

Not all that long ago, it took me fifteen minutes to drive from my house up to the Magic Castle in Hollywood. Lately, it's 25-30 and if the trend keeps up, I'll soon have to leave for Friday Lunch some time mid-Thursday evening.

I hate being late for things. Even when I can get there just barely when I'm supposed to be there, I hate that urgent feeling of "Will I make it on time? Will I make it on time?" Needless to say, I also hate it when someone else is late and keeps me waiting. That's why I hate being late: I don't like doing to someone else what I don't want them doing to me.

I don't claim to be infallible at arriving somewhere on schedule but I got better at it many years ago when I worked with the great TV host and producer Dick Clark. Dick, some said, was infallible when it came to being on time, which I guess is a skill you develop when you do a lot of live television and radio broadcasts. He also had to be in place every New Year's Eve in Times Square to cover the ball drop for Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve or whatever they called those specials.

One year, I was asked to write on one of those shows and it would have also meant accompanying Dick to New York for the live portion. I wrote about it here some years ago…

It meant working on the music segments that were all pre-taped in October — when the acts were available and not charging what they charge to perform on New Year's Eve — with the hosts saying, "And now, let's cut to Dick Clark in Times Square and see what's happening there. Dick, what's the mood like in New York tonight?" And while this was being taped in L.A., Dick was just off-camera. Then 12/31, Dick and I would fly to New York at the last possible minute, do the live remote from the rooftop, then fly back almost immediately.

I remember being amazed at how close he cut it, given that he had to be on the air live at a specific time…and it was not a time when travel in and out of the Times Square area was likely to be a breeze. If I absolutely had to be on a rooftop there at the moment the new year commenced, I think I'd have had them do the telecast from a hotel there, flown to New York a few days before, checked into that hotel and not left it…then flown home a few days later.

Dick's itinerary that year called for getting to his N.Y. hotel (a few blocks from where the chosen rooftop was located) around 4 PM on the last day of the year, making his way to the building somewhat later, then getting back to his hotel after the broadcast and flying home first thing the morning of January 1. I think it was like an 8 AM flight. Thinking back, it now sounds like it might have been a fun adventure but when it was offered, I somehow didn't imagine it that way.

I turned that down but worked with Dick on other things and did notice he was on time for every meeting, every taping, every everything…but I didn't gain any insight into how he managed that. Then one year, I was writing a special for ABC and Dick was booked to be its host. The producer-director was Bob Bowker, a gent who was skilled and experienced in both capacities. Bob had worked with Dick before too and he said to me a week before we taped, "The secret is not wasting his time. If we have our act together, he'll be the most cooperative performer you've ever worked with."

We worked out the schedule and then a few days before our tape date, we went over to the studio where Dick was taping American Bandstand. On a break, he took us into his dressing room and this is how the entire meeting went…

He said he was looking forward to doing the show with us. He'd worked with both of us so he said, "Just tell me when you need me on the set." We told him Noon. Dick then said — and this is a very rough reconstruction of it…

"Okay, I'll dress at home so I'll only need makeup and hair when I arrive. That's ten minutes. From where I park on that lot, it's about a five minute walk to the studio you're using so I need to arrive at 11:45. It's 40 minutes from my house so I'll leave Malibu at 11:05. Any particular way you need me dressed?"

I said, "A pink satin wedding gown with a hoop skirt and lavender brocade." Bob said, "What you're wearing now will be fine in any color." Dick said, "Fine. Just have everything on cards and I'll see you Wednesday at Noon."

We shook hands and headed for the door as he turned and began talking to the stage manager about the next thing they'd be taping for Bandstand. Our entire meeting lasted less than 180 seconds.

So right there was one lesson from the Dick Clark School of Never Being Late: Don't Waste Time. With someone else, that could have been a thirty-minute meeting. Hell, I've had two-hour meetings that accomplished less.

Wednesday morning, Bob and I — but mostly Bob — had everything arranged, including a thorough proofreading of the cue cards. Dick arrived in the Makeup Room at 11:44 and he walked onto our stage one minute before Noon. Bob showed him where to stand and which camera to face. I read the cue cards aloud to him as he read them to himself. At 12:03, we rolled tape. The opening ran about two minutes and though we were satisfied with Dick's read of it, he said, "I can do that better."

He read it again. He was satisfied with this one and so were we. Bob (who was directing from the booth) said, "That's fine. Moving on." It was 12:09 and the opening of the show was done and in the can. The rest of the taping went much the same way — or would have but for one guest star who was an hour late.

We had sent a limo for the guy, which is something a lot of shows do. It makes the guest feel very important and pampered but that's not why they do it. They do it because it helps get the person there on time. Only twice have I ever known it to backfire. Once, the guest refused to get into the limo because it wasn't fancy enough. There was a delay of around forty minutes while the limo company dispatched a fancier model.

The other time was on this special with Dick. The limo picked up the guest on-time but en route to the studio, the guest told the driver, "I need to get some new shoes to wear for this. Stop off on Rodeo Drive." The driver did so, the guest hopped out and disappeared into Gucci's. Twenty minutes later when he hadn't returned, the driver went in, couldn't find him and phoned us at the studio. This was before cell phones so there was nothing that could be done until the guest came back to the limo.  He got in empty-handed and said, "I couldn't find anything I liked so I'll just wear what I have on."

At the studio, we rearranged the taping sequence and did everything we could that didn't require the guest star but then there was nothing to do but await his arrival. Dick, who'd produced hundreds of TV shows and therefore had hundreds of guests arrive late or not at all, absolutely understood. He was pissed but not at us, especially since we clearly had arranged things properly — and again, that was mostly Bob's doing.

Killing the time, Dick and I got to talking about Not Being Late and he said something that I vividly recall, though for some reason I can't always remember it when I should.  He said, "You have to be very, very realistic about how long things take.  And you have to remember that unexpected things will always happen and you have to be real resourceful about working around them when they do."

Simple advice — and I'm usually pretty good at coming up with a Plan B when one is possible.  Sometimes, there isn't one.

But that first part about being realistic about how long things take…that's one that sometimes eludes me. I keep thinking it takes fifteen minutes to get to the Magic Castle even though the last half-dozen times, it's been more like double that. Fifteen is no longer realistic. I once had a lady friend who kept saying, "I can get completely packed in half an hour" but every time we traveled, it took in excess of ninety minutes. Not being realistic.

Traffic in Los Angeles has gotten worse and worse lately. A lot of it's street construction. Part of it is because at any given time, half the population is out, driving around for Lyft and/or Uber, waiting for the call to go drive around the other half. My G.P.S. is pretty good at recalibrating and adjusting for the congestion. I wish I could take that feature out of the G.P.S. and install it in my own head, as well as the heads of anyone who's supposed to meet me for lunch.

Some cartoonist I never heard of reflects on the history of Comic-Con. I think Sergio's first one was the third one, which was the first one held at the old El Cortez Hotel. The El Cortez is still there but it's now condominiums, as everything in the world will eventually be…

It's getting late and I'm weary of the eternal birthday question: "So what's it feel like to be [YOUR AGE]?" In my case, it's officially 66 today and no one's buying what feels to me like the right answer. In terms of physical conditions — knees that hurt, hands that occasionally ache, etc. — it's okay. It's not great but it's okay. In terms of mental spirit and attitude, I have no idea how it feels to be 66 because I'm convinced I'm 24. Since I was 24, I've always felt like I was 24.

24 was the age when I moved out of my parents' house, got my own apartment and began to feel like I had total control of my own life. My parents were as good as any kid could ever hope for…but I kind of had to eat when they wanted to eat and I kind of had to sleep when they wanted to sleep and I couldn't have a girl over. Once I had my own place, I could configure everything around me to my own needs. My second or third night in that apartment, I stayed up writing 'til dawn and went to sleep around 7 AM. Just because I could.

It was around then that I stopped thinking a whole lot about age. I'm going to work on staying that way.

I have a friend who is a comic actor in his eighties. Many of you would know his name but I'm not going to mention it. Since he hit the big eight-oh, he's become obsessed with his age. I don't think he's aware of it but all his friends have noticed how he can't utter three sentences without one of them containing some phrase like "Not bad for an old guy" or "In the years I have left…" or my least favorite, "You won't have me around much longer…" It's easy to tell what's constantly on his mind and I think it's making him older.

This morning, I was saying some of this to a friend who called to wish me H.B. and to ask how it feels to be 66. When I told him what I just told you about being 24, he said, "That could be dangerous. You don't want to forget you're 66 and go hang-gliding or para-sailing." I said, "There's nothing to fear. I didn't go hang-gliding or para-sailing when I was 24."

He said, "What did you do?" I said, "I sat around and wrote comic book scripts all day."

He said, "And what are you going to do today?" I said, "I'm going to sit around and write comic book scripts all day."

He thought about if for a second and said, "Okay…that might work for you."

Thanks for all the nice wishes today in my e-mail, on Twitter, on Facebook and I even got a couple of actual cards. Yes, they still make them. I started to answer a few, intending to at least acknowledge the gesture and say howdy but then I realized how many of them there were. Even just writing "Thanks" would take me until the wishes for next year started rolling in and I began getting calls from all the people who called today to ask me how it felt to be 66, calling to ask how it felt to be 67. But I do appreciate the thoughts.

Many folks have told me how much they loved the video of the show Dick Van Dyke and Company did Tuesday night at the Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood. I embedded it in this posting here. Some of you have informed me that it won't play in your browsers. If so, see if you can't watch it on this Facebook page.

And Steve Brumbaugh informs me that there are Sweet Tomatoes restaurants in Oregon. Good for Oregon!

This will interest a lot of you. It's an incomplete short subject from 1950 called "Famous Cartoonists." It shows a lot of famous cartoonists — a few of whom still are famous — at some sort of National Cartoonists Society gathering. You get to see a few of them drawing and most of them sitting around eating, smoking or gabbing. Still, it's kind of fun to see these guys and I wish we had the whole short…

You'd think that if we all learned nothing else from the Internet, we'd get that there's a pretty wide range of opinions out there about…well, anything. No matter what book, movie, TV show, play, pizza or other work of art out there you thought was stupendous, there's someone out there who thinks it was incontrovertible dreck…and usually, there are several someones who feel that way. That matters because if you can point to even one other person who shares your opinion on something, you can argue that most of the other people on the planet do, too.

I'm getting so tired of people who want to argue that their opinions are inarguable. They might just as well come right out and say, "You're not entitled to your opinion because it doesn't match mine." I used to make the mistake of questioning such folks just because they insisted their positions were unquestionable. I slip now and then but for the most part, my attitude now is that I'm fine with someone liking something I don't like. Often, I'd like to hear more about what they liked about it because I'm curious about what, if anything, I'm missing.

What I'm really getting tired of are comments of the "it's crap" variety. I keep remembering a conversation I had once with a writer friend about a new comic book. I didn't particularly care for it but this guy was angry that it had been published and very, very bothered that I didn't share his outrage. The discussion went something like this…

HIM: But it's crap. Pure, unadulterated crap.

ME: What didn't you like about it?

HIM: I didn't like that it was crap. I don't like crap. You don't like crap, do you?

ME: Not as a rule but it doesn't usually affect me. I have developed this odd ability to not read it from now on. Why are you so upset about this one book?

HIM: Because I read it and believe me, I know crap when I see it. I think I was three pages into it when my Crap Alarm went off and I said to myself, "Hey, I think this could be crap" and four or five pages later, I knew. Yep, crap. You read it! Didn't you see it was crap from the start?

ME: I wasn't wild about it but you're still not telling me what it was about the work that you didn't like…

HIM: I didn't like that it was crap. I hate crap. Look, if a dog takes a shit on your lawn, you don't need to get a forensic scientist out to analyze the specimen. You know it's shit. Well, the same way, I know if something's crap.

And it went on from there but didn't get any deeper. He wouldn't or maybe couldn't say why he didn't like it. If I had to guess, I'd guess it was because it was fairly successful and he hadn't written it. But in truth, he doesn't need an intelligible reason to not like something. "I don't like the taste of it" is a perfectly valid reason for not eating tofu. He just needs a reason for not liking a creative work if he wants to discuss it with me because more and more, I'm absenting myself from that kind of exchange.

As I get older — I hit double-sixes tomorrow — I'm getting increasingly less tolerant of gratuitous negativity — especially of the overemotional variety, especially about things that don't really matter. Last week, a friend called in sky-high dudgeon to tell me how much he hates the way another friend of ours has been flooding Facebook with self-promotion. If I listed all the wrongs of the world, that would not make my top billion.

If you want to talk to me about something important — something that genuinely impacts lives (especially mine) or something we can and should do something about — fine. If it's anything we both care about, let's discuss it. But it isn't necessary to have an opinion about absolutely everything in the world and it sure isn't necessary to tell me every one of those opinions, especially the angry, negative ones. You have every right to have those views and to express them but I have every right to not listen to you.

A discussion is one thing. I love discussing things, exchanging insights and perspectives on most topics, especially when there isn't a discusser involved who has his or her ego all wrapped up in "winning" in some awkwardly-defined way. I'm just getting increasingly weary of rants, especially hysterical rants where the emotion is way out of proportion to the alleged crime. I'll listen if something constructive might come out of it and, hey, I'll probably listen if it's funny. If it's neither of those things, please do it where I can avoid it. Thanks.

…or maybe a day or two after tomorrow in some Souplantations or Sweet Tomatoes restaurants, they'll have this…

It's their Classic Creamy Tomato Soup, my oft-mentioned-on-this-blog favorite soup, which they only have one month a year — appropriately enough, my birthday month. Some time ago, I used this blog to campaign for them to offer it more often…like, 365 days a year, if possible. This campaign failed but it did cause the Souplantation people to send me a lot of coupons for free meals at their establishments and nothing makes a great soup better than not having to pay for it.

I even spoke to someone high up in the company a few years ago and he told me, approximately, "Yes, many have clamored for us to have that soup on a regular basis but we're very happy with the rotation plan we currently have." In other words, "It ain't broke so we ain't gonna fix it." This was a year or so before Garden Fresh Restaurant Corporation, which owns the Souplantation chain and its twin, the Sweet Tomatoes chain, filed for bankruptcy, began closing locations and offering itself up for sale.

They could have prevented all that if they'd just listened to me but no. Instead, they were purchased by another company and they brought in a new CEO but they still only offer their best soup one month a year.

It's on their March menu which goes into effect over the next few days. If you're in one of the nine states that have Souplantation or Sweet Tomatoes outlets — California, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Georgia or Florida — check one out this month. And as you leave the restaurant, make sure to tell them you'll be back when the Classic Creamy Tomato Soup is back. And not before. Maybe, eventually, they'll get the message,

A too-brief but worth-your-time oral history of the TV show M*A*S*H. Every so often, I catch a rerun of that series and think, "I have the complete run on DVD. I should start watching those, one or two a night." And check this page out, too.