Julien Neel — who all by himself is one of my favorite singing groups — favors us with a song from 1927…

This piece I wrote about a freelance artist who fibbed and gave me a huge deadline problem continues to draw mail. This is from Steven Marsh…

I've been a professional magazine editor for nearly 18 years, and your column about Mr. "No Problemo" darn-near gave me an anxiety attack just to read and experience second-hand. So, once again, your writing has provoked an emotional response from me!

My question is: Do you have any insight into WHY an artist (or other creative) would DO something like that? Is it hubris? Delusion? A vain attempt to FORCE the creativity to come? What's the best-possible outcome they can envision?

Yeah, I can explain it because after I forgave the guy and began giving him work again, we discussed it. The artist was a freelancer who worked for many companies and editors. I absolutely sympathize with anyone in that position because that's been my entire career for 49 years now — juggling assignments, working for several places at the same time.

By his own admission, this artist worried incessantly about not having enough work to meet the expenses of life. Even when he had a full dance card and was turning down work, he was fretting, "What if there's nothing more after I hand in my current assignments?" When I asked him to draw the story for me, he should have said no, he didn't have time. He was already committed to too many other jobs but on impulse, he said yes. Remember that I had just become an editor for the Hanna-Barbera comic book division. He wanted to establish himself with me because I was a new source of work for him.

He also wanted to get a lot of work from that division. We paid a little better than others and we paid faster than anyone else. With everyone else he worked for, it took a week or two to get the check. If I received the work before 2 PM, the check would go in the mail that day or if you brought the pages to me before 2, you could hang around for fifteen minutes and I'd get the accounting department to issue the check then and there. Also, the artist liked me and wanted to work with me.

He thought he was doing both of us a favor by taking on the job…and he thought he'd have more time than I said. When most editors say "I need this in two weeks," the freelancer assumes he can fudge it by a week or two; that there's padding built into the schedule. I told him there wasn't but as he explained to me later, "I always assume there's more time than the editor says because there almost always is."

I probably erred by not saying something like, "And I honestly just have to have it in two weeks. Please don't take it on if you can't get it done in two. I'll offer you some other work soon but I truly need this one in two weeks."

So he took it on and then one of his other employers made some threatening noises and he felt he had to do an assignment he had from that guy before he tackled mine and…well, everyone has limits. He simply mismanaged his time and mis-estimated how long everything would take him to do…so he couldn't get everything done when he said he'd get it done. This happens. His real crime was in not being straight with me as to how the work was proceedings. He apologized, I decided he was sincere and we put it behind us.

This reminds me of a story about Betty White that I don't think I've told here. I'll try to write it up in the next few days.

There have been a lot of great dancers in movies but nobody danced better than the Nicholas Brothers…

This news story has my favorite headline of the week…

• 90% of Libertarians and Independents I meet are Democrats or Republicans who are too embarrassed to identify with the party they'd gladly belong to if it did what it was supposed to do.

I have often mentioned my friend Paul Harris on this blog. Paul has been hosting radio programs on a regular basis for four decades, most recently on KTRS in St. Louis. Today, he does his final regular show there. That doesn't mean listeners somewhere won't hear him again. You can take the boy out of radio, etc. He may do fill-ins and guest hostings. But he no longer has his own program and he can now devote all his time to his favorite pastime — losing every cent he ever made in radio at a poker table.

No, actually, he seems to be pretty good at winning at cards, though I think I could take him in a high-stakes game of Old Maid. He is also really, really good at radio. When folks ask me for pointers on interviewing — something I often do at comic book conventions — I tell them to go to Paul's website and listen to how he asks questions. He is well-informed on his guests. He knows what kind of interesting stories and discourses they may have. He asks pointed questions that give the guest a good starting point for a reply. (First sign of a bad interviewer: Too many questions that include the phrase, "What was that like?")

Most of all, he senses how much of any given interview should consist of him talking and how much should be the guest. There are people paid millions of dollars a year to host TV talk shows who could stand to learn this. I am about one-tenth as good at interviewing as Paul but it would be more like one-thirtieth if I hadn't learned from his examples.

His last show today is on KTRS from 3 PM to 6 PM Central Time. You can listen on iTunes or at the KTRS website. I have great confidence though this will not be his last show. It better not be.

Alvin and the Chipmunks sing for Jell-O…

Record producer Quincy Jones is spreading gossip and celebrity secrets all across the 'net. People are writing to ask me, "How much of this should we believe?" My answer is "As much as you want to believe." People have a tendency to try and separate everyone into Truth-Tellers or Liars and I don't think anyone falls wholly into one of those categories. There are also people who sincerely believe things that aren't so…or tell stories that are more speculation than first-hand knowledge. I dunno how much of what Quincy Jones is spilling is true but a pretty safe answer would be that some of it is and some of it isn't. Since most of it is stuff I don't really care about, that answer works for me.

Are you following the Rob Porter Scandal? If you're watching Fox News, probably not since it's gotten almost no mention there. But he is the now-former staff secretary who resigned Wednesday after two ex-wives accused him of abusing and beating them. That's pretty awful but it gets worse when you realize how many people in our government knew about it and did nothing. In fact, a lot of them defended him and praised him and called his accusers "character assassins" or worse, right up until the moment that it became obvious that Porter's guilt could no longer be denied. Then suddenly we got a lot of "I didn't know about this" and faux sympathy for his victims. Dahlia Lithwick has more.

• You know, I worked with Richard Pryor and it somehow never occurred to me to ask him how Marlon Brando was in the sack.

This koala loves to have its tummy rubbed. But then, who doesn't?

Derek Tague, who lives in New Jersey, just sent me this…

It's great that you're alerting your readership about a rare live performance by Dick Van Dyke. Unfortunately, I reside on the wrong coast and, hence, will not be able to entertain attending. However, many of the live vehicles you recommend are prohibitively expensive for the average person to attend. I accessed the "Buy Tickets" link and the ducats range in price from $50.00 to $75.00 (VIP).

There are hidden, inherent implications whenever anybody uses the term "VIP." This is shorthand for "very important persons." In essence, the venue is implying that anybody who cannot afford the higher pricier seats are not "very important." How can you possibly subscribe to such a dehumanizing rubric? Answer me that, Mister Green Lantern.

V.I.P. tickets to events have become a pretty well-established marketing ploy for ticketed events. I dunno what it means in the case of Dick's show but they usually include some kind of "meet-and-greet" opportunity to get an autograph and/or a selfie or something. A lot of house managers and promoters won't book events if they don't get the extra bucks from selling V.I.P. packages. Or if they can't, they'll likely compensate by raising prices for everyone. In a sense, the V.I.P. purchasers make your L.I.P. (Less Important Person) tix more affordable.

Or sometimes V.I.P. just means better seats. Almost any place you go for a live event is going to charge a little more for better seats.

By the laws of nature, they're also going to have better seats and worse seats so someone is going to wind up in the worse seats and I guess you could call being seated in one of them a dehumanizing rubric. I wouldn't feel slighted by it any more than when I get on a plane and have to walk past folks in First Class to get to where my seat is…usually somewhere out on the tail assembly.

Non-V.I.P. tickets are just plain ol' tickets — usually the same seats at the same price as if the deluxe kind wasn't offered. Yeah, many of the live events I recommend are prohibitively expensive for some. I also think they're worth the money if you have it.

But I also recommend cheap shows. I've often pushed Instaplay, a great improv show that a bunch of my friends do from time-to-time. The next one is March 3 and a ticket, including service fee, is $12.89. I also highly recommend another improv show, The Black Version. The next one of those is February 26 and a seat for that will run you $21, also including a service fee. Neither of those is prohibitively expensive unless you add in the cost of air transportation from and to New Jersey.

The only unfair thing there is that I still don't understand why when I book online using the time of no employee of the firm selling me the tickets, I need to pay a service fee. I always feel like I'm the one performing the service.

[UPDATE, a bit later: I am informed that the "V.I.P." tix for Mr. Van Dyke's show at the Catalina merely get you better seats, nothing more. For what it's worth, there are some really bad seats in that club. The room is "L"-shaped with the performers at the corner, usually only playing to one side of the "L". I mention this not to push the more expensive tix — which I did not buy, by the way — but just to alert you that you may not be happy with where they sit you.]

Last September, I told you about attending a rare live performance by Dick Van Dyke and a great jazz band out in the valley. Well, they're doing it again. Dick and the same fine musicians will be performing one show only on Tuesday, February 27 at the Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood. Tickets will sell out and they'll sell out soon. I already bought mine so you can buy yours at this link. He's a great entertainer and he even dances darn well for a man of 92…better than I have at any age. Then again, there are hippos that can clear that low bar.

• Trump wants a military parade, I guess so he can feel more like Kim Jong-un. He'll probably want them all carrying flaming tiki torches, too.

Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca do the "Slowly I Turned…" Niagara Falls sketch without making any slow turns or mentions of Niagara Falls…