Also: On Sunday at 9 PM, Comedy Central is running some sort of special using material from The Daily Show. It's called News Your Own Adventure: The Quest for the Best Daily Show Segments and that's about all I know about it.

And on Thursday, Stewart's last day as host, they're airing a day-long marathon of old shows. I sure hope they're thinking of rerunning a lot of that material in the future. I think it would draw a consistent audience despite its age.

This article over at Hollywood Reporter says, as I quote: "Jon Stewart's final Daily Show episode will feature guests Louis C.K., Denis Leary and Amy Schumer. The longtime late-night host made the announcement at the end of Thursday night's episode." No, he didn't. He said those people would be on next week but he didn't say they'd be on his last show.

The piece also says the last show will be 50 minutes long. I assume that's so and I'm waiting to see if anyone tells my TiVo, which still thinks it's 32 minutes.

After I posted the previous message, I thought of one other thing I should have said. Bill Carter says that something Stewart put on The Daily Show made Megyn Kelly cry. That may be so but I don't think it got her to change her act, nor did it probably cause any of her viewers to think less of her as a newsperson. My admiration for Jon Stewart is vast and great but I sometimes think his lasting impact is being exaggerated.

Also: I still don't know what's going to happen in the Daily Show timeslot between the time Stewart does his last show and Trevor Noah does his first. And has anyone heard anything resembling a debut date for the new Jason Jones show or the one with Samantha Bee?

Bill Carter on what Jon Stewart achieved on The Daily Show. I think this essay (and other praise Stewart is now receiving) may make too much of the more concrete effects — like getting CNN's Crossfire canceled, which given its ratings was no major toppling. I think Mr. Stewart gave us a brilliant, entertaining show that raised a lot of awareness in this country but didn't have a whole lot of impact in quantifiable ways. He exposed an awful lot of lying and hypocrisy among politicians and pundits and newsfolks…but I'm not sure it did those people a whole lot of harm.

Max Fisher thinks the online lynching of Dr. Walter Palmer has gone too far. It probably has if you look on it as an attack on one individual. If you look on it as a mass revulsion against trophy hunting, maybe not…but I'm sure it wouldn't feel that way to me if I were Dr. Palmer. And it's unfair that his employees, family and even some of his patients are being punished to some extent.

Interestingly, the worst things I've read online about the man were when I cruised, just outta curiosity, some online forums where hunters post. I'd expected messages defending the man's actions and while I saw some, I saw a surprising number that said things like, "It's men like him who give all hunters a bad name."

When I'm writing, I like to be hit in the face. By air, I mean. (If I liked to be hit in the face any other way, I'd try to find a job like when I worked on MacGyver. The three worst weeks of my life as a TV writer.)

Anyway, I like a little breeze coming at me…not enough to ruffle papers or even my hair but just enough to keep the atmosphere moving. This is probably not unrelated to the fact that I have Sleep Apnea and must sleep with a device clamped onto my nose that forces air into it all night. I tend not to breathe normally when prone so I require a bit of an assist at night, and there's a teensy bit of the same problem when I'm perpendicular.

So as I sit here at my computer, I usually have a small electric fan hurling oxygen my way. For years, I had an adequate fan there but I recently replaced it with a real good one, the Ozeri Brezza III Dual Oscillating 10" High Velocity Desk and Table Fan. It's pretty quiet, it has plenty of different speeds and it has a nifty little remote control so I can turn it off or down when I'm on the phone and don't want the party on the other end to think I'm in a wind tunnel. The remote also lets you move the air flow from side to side or up and down so you can point it exactly where you want it.

I did not check out every possible option; just bought this one and decided I couldn't have done better. There may be others just as good or cheaper but I thought I'd tell you of my happiness with it. If you want to check it out, here's an Amazon link. It's $43, air not included.

Duane Hanson wrote me to say…

I understand why you don't get the idea of hunting. It was never part of the culture or reality where you grew up. While I am of a similar age to you, I was born into a lower middle class family in a very rural area of northern Minnesota. My family hunted deer, ducks and geese. If my dad got a deer during the fall hunting season, it meant the freezer would be full and we would eat better all winter. In addition, deer hunting in places like Minnesota provides a necessary service by keeping the deer population at a manageable level. There is a limited amount of forage available and during harsh winters many thousands of deer can starve to death if their numbers outstrip the available resources. Nature's population control can be pretty brutal.

I never became a hunter myself and moved to a bit more urban area eventually, but I have many relatives who still look forward to hunting season in the fall and the chance to fill the freezer with venison and game birds. That type of hunting is a far cry from the trophy hunting pursued by people like the dentist who killed Cecil the lion. I have never been comfortable with trophy hunting and I understand the opposition to it. At my place of employment there's a guy just down the hall who has the walls of his office covered with big game trophies. I know trophy hunters feel pride and accomplishment in what they do, but I find it a bit creepy.

I'm afraid I find it more than a bit creepy. I do understand the kind of hunting where you grew up. It's not something in which I can ever imagine myself participating but I get it. There are lots of activities in that category like skydiving or race car driving or watching Will Ferrell movies. (Well, maybe not the Will Ferrell movies.) I just don't "get" the rush of pride and excitement that some seem to associate with trophy hunting.

And putting the head of the animal you killed on your wall? I'm not sure I could even stand to be in your house if you did that. I have left rooms because of taxidermy.

By the way: A lot of folks directed my attention to the segment Jimmy Kimmel did on his show about this. Watching Jimmy Kimmel is close to skydiving or race car driving in my book but this was pretty good. So you see: I am open to new experiences. Sometimes.

Here we have several years worth of openings from The Muppet Show…in German. Looks to me like someone — aware of the value of the international market for these programs — made sure that when they shot the openings in English with title cards that said "The Muppet Show" made sure they also shot them with "Die Muppet Show" for Germany. I wonder how many other languages they did this for…

Nate Silver, who interprets political polls the way Jascha Heifetz played the violin, says Donald Trump ain't as popular as some people — chief among them Donald Trump — say. Yeah, 20% or so of Republicans say they want him as their nominee but you can't win the nomination with 20%…and Trump's negatives suggest he'll have a hard time driving that 20% much higher.

I would also add that it's still a long, long time until people have to cast a real vote. I think a lot of them are enjoying the show he's putting on and not listening too much (or caring) about what he'd actually do in office. Let's see where he is when it comes time to get serious.

Also, Silver doesn't mention this but I have it on excellent authority that Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham all now have lower favorability ratings than Dr. Walter J. Palmer. Perry and Fiorina are, however, polling slightly ahead of Bill Cosby.

A man named Jonathan Pollard will be paroled from prison in November after serving thirty years. Fred Kaplan says Pollard is one of the worst traitors of the twentieth century for selling U.S. secrets to Israel. And here I thought a traitor was anyone who voted for Obama…

Happy Birthday, Professor Irwin Corey! Congratulations on living to be as old as your stage wardrobe!

Folks on Yelp are posting scathing "reviews" of Dr. Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who I think it's safe to assume now really, really regrets his decision to go Zimbabwe and hunt down a lion. He wanted to mount its head on his wall and now much of America is crying for Dr. Palmer's head to be mounted on a wall somewhere.

Yelp occasionally deletes a batch of these "reviews" but they apparently can't delete as fast as Dr. Palmer's detractors can report. Here's a typical one that's up at the moment…

I needed a tooth extracted, so Dr. Palmer shot me in the neck with a crossbow, chased and tracked me for 40 hours, and (once I collapsed from pain and exhaustion) removed my entire head and skinned me.

Best part, they accept my insurance!!

I dunno if Dr. Palmer can or will be prosecuted in this matter but it looks like at the least, his dental practice will suffer and maybe end, and that he'll have to go through life with a lot of people thinking he is a horrible, horrible human being. If the least is all that happens, I for one will not think he went unpunished.

This is news footage of Jack Benny's funeral, which took place on December 28 or 29, 1974 (accounts vary), two or three days after the great comedian passed away. The location was Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City, a place I have visited too many times, including for the burials of three of my closest relatives…

It's hard for me not to get incensed over this story of the Minnesota dentist who killed that lion in Zimbabwe.

In a letter to his patients, Dr. Walter Palmer writes, "I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion." No, no, Doc. You didn't take the lion. You killed the lion. Your choice of verb is indicative of the problem here. To you, it's like a chess game — "I just took your Queen!" — but the result is exactly the same as if you'd said, "I think it would be fun to kill a lion!"

And if you step back and look at that sentence as a whole, it roughly translates to: "I deeply regret that my goal of killing a lion and paying a lot of money to kill a lion resulted in the killing of this particular lion." Does he get that most of the folks calling for his head now would feel that way about any lion?

Part of me would like to see this guy punished in a way that might cause others to think it might not be great fun to kill a lion or a deer or any other animal out there. I would stop short, as PETA hasn't, of calling for his execution…but I think this guy needs to be spanked hard enough for others to feel it.

However, part of me is uncomfortable for two reasons about the response to this — mine, included — one being that I am a Carnivore. I eat animals. I have heard the arguments for why it doesn't make you a hypocrite to do that but to abhor hunting and I don't completely buy it, especially when you consider the inhumane treatment of so many of the animals who are "processed" (i.e., killed) for food. Yes, there is a difference between killing animals for food and killing them for fun. It just doesn't seem like that vast a difference to me.

I'm willing to admit I don't "get" hunting. There are certain things in this world that others love that are like that. Back when Dick Cheney shot a hunting companion, I asked a former hunter I knew what was so much fun about the activities of that day. My friend was quite upset that what Cheney and his pals had been doing was being passed off as "hunting."

He said (approximately:) "Real hunting involves skill and risk and discomfort and challenge. What Cheney was doing was going to this camp where they raise quail to be shot, clip their wings so they can't fly, sometimes drug them so they're easier targets…then the hunters are driven up in air-conditioned SUVs and they get out, point their $3000 rifles which someone else loaded for them at birds that are two feet away and blast them. That's not hunting. That's killing helpless birds and pretending you just went on a dangerous safari and displayed great bravery and marksmanship."

Okay, maybe so. But I still couldn't understand what was enjoyable about what he would have considered "real" hunting. He and others have tried to explain it to me and the appeal, like I say, escapes me.

I can't imagine standing over the body of a dead deer and feeling pride in having shot it. Then again, as I'm writing this, I've been eating turkey sausage and I don't want to think of how those turkeys were fattened for the kill and then killed.

So I'm upset that that lion was "taken" (i.e., killed) but I'm also aware I don't have the cleanest of hands when it comes to the subject of animals being "taken" (i.e., killed). That's part of the reason I don't feel wholly comfortable with my position.

The other part is the vast number of human beings who are killed every day in this world without this kind of outcry. Yeah, Cecil the Lion is dead but so are so many others for no better reason. Doesn't it bother you that there are persons out there who are more upset at the murder of a lion than they are at the murder of a fellow person — especially a fellow person with dependent children? Bothers me.

Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) was a popular entertainer. That's him in the photo above at right, entertaining his grandson, Brian Gari. Proving something about heredity. Brian has grown up to become a popular entertainer who sings and writes songs and books and plays and who is today paying his second visit to Stu's Show. He'll be talking again about Grandpa Eddie, who had a pretty stellar career and who was much beloved by America. And Stu Shostak's going to get Brian talk some about his own life, which of course involves encounters with some pretty famous people. Oughta be a good one.

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 measly 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three.  If you know what's good for you, you'll do this.