This will probably only be meaningful to fans of Allan Sherman…but a few days ago as I was being transported from hospital to hospital, I glanced out the ambulance window and I thought, "Ah! I finally found out where the Drapes of Roth are stored!"

Wanna see the scorecard of how everyone's doing? Here it is. For those of you too busy to click: Fallon has a comfy lead, Colbert's doing better than Letterman, Corden's numbers are fine, Noah is down from Jon Stewart's numbers and more people are watching Andy Cohen on Bravo than are watching Conan O'Brien on TBS.

I'm in a frisky mood so I'll make a prediction: By April Fool's Day, The Daily Show will be close to where it was with Stewart, and Colbert will be ahead of Fallon. Let's see if I'm right.

I didn't catch all of the debate infomercial last night but it seemed like the candidates got their demands and that their demands were that moderators not correct them on bogus info or point out when they've dodged a question. Neil Cavuto, who always struck me as incapable of finding fault with anything uttered by any Republican, actually did a little of it when the conversation swung to what to do about banks that are Too Big to Fail but which fail.

Most of all, it went like Kevin Drum notes with Carly Fiorina: She was asked a question that pointed out that Democratic presidents have lately done much better at job creation than Republicans…and she answered it as if the question assumed the opposite. That's kind of how this whole election seems to be going. Unemployment is down, gas prices are down, the deficit is down, etc., but we're going to deny all that to make the case that Obama has been a disaster.

I can't be the only person who recalls the 1976 presidential debate when Gerald Ford practically lost the election with one stupid statement. He said that that Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia were free from Soviet interference. His opponent, Jimmy Carter, pointed out that was not so and Ford thereafter looked like a man unfit to handle U.S. foreign policy. Today, a Ben Carson can say that the Chinese are in Syria or a Mike Huckabee can say that most of the Syrian refugees are not really from Syria and nobody blinks. Some people may even give them credit for independent thinking.

Years ago when Stu Shostak started his fine weekly podcast about TV history, he ticked off a list for me of folks he wanted to land as guests…and since then, he's bagged an amazing percentage of celebs from that list including Dick Van Dyke, Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters, Shelley Berman, Bob Barker and Rose Marie. One I recall him mentioning several times was Angela Cartwright, who of course was so outstanding on Lost in Space and before that on Danny Thomas's sitcom. She did lots of other fine work in TV and movies before leaving those fields largely behind and she'll be discussing all of that on Stu's Show tomorrow because she is, at long last, his guest.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond.  Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. It's a deal not to be missed.

I have knee-related issues to tend to today so blogging may be sparse. Remind me one of these days to tell you why during my recuperation, I've had the constant urge to go on live TV and perform the Boss Hijack sketch.

Often on this site, I mention the multi-talented writer-performer Shelly Goldstein. I am far from the only person impressed with her abilities. She was just nominated for a 2015 BroadwayWorld Los Angeles Award for Best Cabaret Artist in the Female category. She deserves to win, especially since Audra McDonald has way too many trophies and would surely appreciate not having to find a place for another. (I saw both shows and preferred Shelly's.) Click here to track the voting or, better still, to vote for Shelly.

I agree a lot with my friend Paul Harris about shoddy reporting these days…and about how no one is called out for bad predictions. If a doctor was wrong about medicine half as often as William Kristol as been about the economy or foreign affairs, that doctor would no longer be a doctor. But Kristol is most welcome on any political talk show and people treat him like his forecasts have meaning.

I am starting to really see why Trevor Noah was picked to replace Jon Stewart and it's looking more and more like a good decision to me. I'm also kinda glad John Oliver wasn't still around to get the job. I like him right where he is. This week's episode of Last Week Tonight was outstanding.

Glad to see that the national debate is finally getting away from boring topics like the economy and terrorism and we're finally focusing in on the real important issues. Like why the pyramids were built.

Don't know when I'll be back but I'll be back — alive and hopefully kicking.

Most of the major fast food chains are switching over to food sources that are healthier and/or more humane — like cage-free eggs and pork that isn't raised in gestation crates. Here's an article about how this isn't as easy as one might think, and how the folks who own Taco Bell aren't even making the attempt to meet the standards of McDonald's and Burger King.

The knee continues to improve and I thank all of you who wrote to wish that and to share similar experiences. I have a pretty simple approach to being ill or injured: I always expect to get better but I expect that there will probably be pains before I get there. I know people who — when they get the flu, for example — go into some form of Denial; like if they act like they don't have the flu, they won't have the symptoms and problems. Almost invariably, the denial fails, the flu has its way with them and it seems as if the effort to will it away makes things three times as uncomfortable.

Years ago I worked on a TV show where our 1st Production Assistant came down with the flu. Through some combination of denial, fearing for her job and wanting to show everyone how dedicated she was, she insisted on coming to work anyway. She was successful in making everyone uncomfortable and in passing germs on to others…but that was about all she accomplished.

When I get the flu — and it's been a long, long time since I have — I find it better to just accept that I'm going to feel like crap for X days. I don't fight it. I just try to figure out how to get through it with as little discomfort as possible, both to myself and those around me. I isolate myself and just chant some personal mantra about how good I'll feel a week from Tuesday or whenever. It's my way of minimizing the damage.

As I get older, I'm sure that someday I'll encounter an ailment that doesn't have a visible expiration date but I don't see the point in presuming that for any given ailment. Worry is not good for one's health. So when you folks write to tell me not to worry about my knee…well, I appreciate the friendliness but I'm not worried. I'm just looking forward to having a little bit more of the problem go away each day. This is very fixable even if it takes longer to fix than I might like.

Al Jaffee on The Comics Code, Fold-Ins and continuing to work at age 94.5. And to clarify: MAD did not change from a 10-cent color comic book to a more expensive slick magazine to escape the Comics Code. It changed because its editor Harvey Kurtzman wanted to get out of comics and into slicks and its publisher, Bill Gaines, was afraid to do MAD without Kurtzman. So he changed the format and escaping the Comics Code became a happy, unintended result…

Jonathan Chait analyzes the Marco Rubio tax proposals and points out that what Rubio wants is a quadruple dose of medicine that has always failed in the past…

The Republican Party's commitment to regressive, debt-financed tax cuts as its central domestic policy goal dates back to the 1970s, when Jack Kemp and William Roth first proposed large-scale income-tax cuts, which became the basis for Ronald Reagan's 1981 program. At the time, there was at least theoretical justification to cut the top rate, which stood at 70 percent. Subsequent events have not been so kind. The Reagan-era recovery benefited from a bounce-back from a Fed-induced recession that crushed the inflation of the 1970s, but it did not see an increase in the underlying growth rate.

Events since then have looked worse and worse for the anti-tax cause. Bill Clinton raised the top tax rate to 39.6 percent and, confounding unanimous conservative predictions that a recession would ensue, enjoyed an economic boom. George W. Bush cut taxes and, in spite of conservative certainty that faster growth would follow, the economy instead grew tepidly before collapsing in a worldwide meltdown after the housing bubble popped. When Obama opposed extending the portion of those tax cuts that applied to income over $250,000, conservatives insisted it would harm growth. Instead, economic growth has accelerated.

In 2012, Mitt Romney promised that, if elected, by the end of his first term he would bring the unemployment rate down to 6 percent. With 15 months left to go, that unemployment rate now stands at 5 percent. The recovery from 2008 may not be as fast as anybody would like, but it is faster than the recovery in any other country that endured the financial crisis. What factual analysis of these events in any way suggests that a return to regressive, debt-financed tax cutting is the tonic the economy needs?

I like Jimmy Fallon and I like James Corden and I find both of their shows generally unwatchable. They're both multi-talented guys who seem to be really enjoying their jobs. Neither one seems to have ever encountered a guest who was not the superest, most-terrific Living Legend that he just can't believe is actually here in person on his couch. Both of them seem to do a lot of bits on their programs that they'd rather not do but someone has told them — perhaps correctly — that this is what America wants to see. And both of them occasionally come up with a goodie that I watch on YouTube, not on their actual shows.

Here's a nice little opening Mr. Corden did not long ago…

Christie Aschwanden explains to us that the whole Keystone Pipeline controversy wasn't about jobs or the economy or the environment…at least to the extent folks claimed it was about one or more of those. It was about politics…and what isn't, these days?

We suddenly have a flurry of reports — a lot of them coming from sources that would not usually be described as hostile — that things Ben Carson has been saying are not so. Well, obviously, a lot of his opinions are pretty wacko but now we're dealing with strictly factual matters and he's being called out for supposed lies.

Are they? Looks that way with some of them…but to be a lot fairer to him than he is to his political opponents, a few of them seem a bit stretched to get called out as lies. And a few of them are things he could have dealt with in a wiser manner saying, "Okay, I guess I phrased that badly," instead of calling reporters liars. I suspect the biggest damage all this is doing to him is making him look very, very thin-skinned and inept at crisis management.

And I do think that if a Democratic opponent had the same seeming gaps in truth, Carson and his supporters would not hesitate at all to say the examples prove the Democrat is a mentally-ill congenital liar who can't be trusted to tell you today's date without lying his or her ass off.

Lately, I've been plugging the very fine book, Woody, written by David Evanier. David is my cousin and he has given the world a fine portrait of one of its great comedians and filmmakers, Woody Allen. No one has ever delved so thoroughly and wisely into the man's life and if you want to buy a copy, here's an Amazon link.

And I often plug the radio shows and interviews of my pal Paul Harris, who I consider to be the best interviewer working today. Here's a link to Paul's site where you can hear many of his conversations.

But now I get to plug both gents with but a single link. David was recently interviewed on The Paul Harris Show, resulting in an excellent chat about Woody and the new book. You can hear that long (almost 35 minutes!) discussion over on this page. Go and do this.

I watched at least part of every episode of Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris, which is not to say I enjoyed much of what I saw. I was impressed with a lot of the logistics — how they were able to do what they did…though I still don't understand how they incorporated people watching at home, being transmitted via Skype, into a live sing-along in the studio. How is there not a huge delay with Skype?

As I've mentioned before, I don't like prank shows and I don't like some stunt shows…but I do like live shows and Neil Patrick Harris so I had to check it out. I guess I didn't like it but I'm still rooting for it to be picked-up, the premise being that the more they make, the more new things they'll try…and there's a value just in doing things that haven't been done on television before. At least, it's different and a little daring.

I suspect there's a slim chance of Season Two. The first batch haven't performed well in the ratings, especially since they lost their cushy time slot following The Voice. If the producers sell the idea that they've got a lot of new ideas and big events planned and if NBC doesn't have anything too promising in the "on deck" circle, it might get renewed. If it does go away, I hope the industry doesn't take that as a warning to stay away from live TV or shows of unusual formats.

This is the finale of the last show, which impressed the hell out of me with Mr. Harris's performance, the skilled direction and camerawork, and the technical expertise involved. I would guess that 90% of the people in television couldn't do this…and I don't mean that they couldn't do it as well. I mean they couldn't do it at all. What a nightmare of rehearsal and planning this must have been…

So what caused the author of this blog to disappear so suddenly last weekend? Well, as a few of you guessed in e-mail, it had everything to do with my knee…my new knee, the one I had installed last September 28th.

It went rather well, I thought…that operation, I mean. And the recovery, too. There was pain but, you know, you can get philosophical about these things. There would have been pain if I hadn't replaced the knee, too…and that pain would have been getting increasingly worse as opposed to the pain from the new knee, which was lessening each day, well on its way towards a goal of zero discomfort. I was getting around on the new knee with some twinges and some awkwardness but as late as Friday morning, October 30, I was telling someone that it had gone as well as one could expect and that I was real glad I got it done when I did.

Friday afternoon, it started going not as well as one could expect.

Friday afternoon, the knee began hurting and swelling and turning the color of the Pink Panther's junk. I tried icing it and Tylenoling it but by Saturday afternoon, I was in agony and by evening, I was considering gnawing off everything from mid-thigh downward. I thought of going into the hospital emergency room but realized it was Halloween and the place might be a little overpopulated and freaky. The following morning when I did go in, a lady there told me, "If you had come in last night, we'd probably be getting to you about now."

Sunday morn, it took one hour before a doctor saw me and about a fifth of that time for her to say that my whole leg — the knee plus everywhere south of that where the knee drained — was acutely infected. Two surgeons were called in and they aspirated the knee, inserting hypodermic needles to draw out fluid. They filled about eight syringes before they got all that was easily removable.

That fluid is now residing in various petri dishes and incubators around the Southern California area as scientists attempt to identify exactly which strain of bacillus it is. Something is growing in the "broth" as they call it and twice a day, a wizened doctor who's been treating me and who specializes in such matters, phones up the lab to ask if there are any new clues. Last we heard, they were zeroing in on a precise identification but were about 99% certain that the various intravenous antibiotics I've been receiving all week were the right ones to purge the unwelcome visitor from my system. To be 100% sure, they need to know what it is.

The intravenous antibiotics started right after the knee aspirating. They're still going on and will for approximately six more weeks. To make this easier, I've made another new addition to my body — a thing called a PICC Line, the PICC part standing for "Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter. It will remain implanted in my left upper arm until such time as I no longer need it. It's like a semi-permanent intravenous valve which makes it easier for nurses to hook up intravenous feeds and collect blood, and easier for the patient to hook up his own intravenous feed — as I'll be doing until about the time ABC runs A Charlie Brown Christmas this year.

Does this all sound ghastly? Well, you haven't heard the worst part yet. On Monday, the surgeon who so deftly installed my new knee took me back into the operating room — a cleaner one than last time, one hopes — and opened the knee up again along the old incision. They cleaned everything in there, replaced some parts of the new knee, then closed me up. I am now trying to recuperate from the damage done by this grand reopening…but as I keep reminding myself, it had to be done.

So that's why I abandoned you, dear followers. I have a few more weeks of recovery but I'm out of that hospital where blogging was awkward and a non-constructive distraction. I will soon catch up on e-mail and deadlines and promised postings and such. And lest anything I've written here worry my friends, let me assure them that I will be fine. This was caught in plenty o' time and is totally treatable. Just view it as a real annoying, painful thing to happen to anyone — and doubly so when the anyone is you.