• Listening to Texas leaders like Louie Gohmert stoking the paranoia of their followers. That military takeover is looking like a good idea.

Don't get envious, dear readers, when I forsake blogging for paying work. A very, very stupid barbarian needs my attention today as does a very, very stupid TV script for a very, very stupid brilliant producer. Barring any breaking news, I'll be back with you later tonight or tomorrow.

Before I go: Hey, my pal Vinnie and his crew did a great job with that David Letterman special last night…lots of great clips, artfully edited.

Tom Shales has another one of those "Farewell to Dave" essays that says how wonderful he is, citing stuff from long ago and far away, and making out like that's how the show still is to this day. Also, Shales makes a few errors like confusing Crispin Glover with Keanu Reeves…and I'm not sure if the reference to Ayn Rand as a "neo-Nazi" was earnestly meant or a failed joke.

Dr. Ben Carson has thrown his hat into the presidential race. I usually jest that these guys are going to get the exact same number of electoral votes as me (i.e., zero) but I have a hunch Carson is going to do worse than that and wind up owing some. He might, however, crush Carly Fiorina.

This year's recipients of the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing have been selected. They will be announced shortly. As you know, there is one award for a living writer and one for a deceased writer. I have removed myself from consideration for the first award because if I won, I would immediately qualify for the second.

See you shortly.

For the last few years, the musical version of The Producers has been available to just about any group that wanted to pay the license fee and stage a production. I wouldn't have thought it would have spawned as many high school productions as it has but YouTube is loaded with videos from them.

Why wouldn't I have thought this? Well, the license fee ain't cheap and the financial requirements for sets and costumes aren't cheap, either. Also, even if one cleans up the language a bit (as most do), there are an awful lot of gay jokes and sex jokes and most of all, Nazi jokes, plus it also requires some real good performers. Still, it's been produced often at the high school level…with varying degrees of success.

Here's the "Springtime for Hitler" number from the best production I've sampled on YouTube. This is Summit High School in New Jersey and they did a pretty good job. The whole thing's on YouTube in chapters if you want to seek out other parts of it…

So I'm wondering how many people out there still think Bill Cosby is being framed or lied-about by all these women who've come forth with variations on the same story. He recently finished his current "Far From Finished" tour. Some dates were heckled. Many were canceled. Many apparently had a lot more empty seats than the norm and some venues that stamp "No Refunds" on their tickets apparently felt the need to issue refunds to those who'd bought tix before all this rapey stuff came out.

Cosby seems to have no appearances scheduled — I say "seems" because the page that listed where he'll be has been removed from his website — and I'm thinking he may opt to keep it that way…just disappear for a while.

People keep asking me what he'll do or whether he'll ever try aggressively to defend his name. I dunno. There have to be lawyers calling a lot of the shots now and they know a lot more than we do about where he might be legally vulnerable and who else they fear might come forward. I don't think we've seen the last of him…but I wouldn't be surprised.

In my long post on Letterman, I mentioned my buddy Vinnie Favale, who's currently a high muck-a-muck at CBS — V.P. of late night, I think. He's held a number of jobs in entertainment and once upon a time, he was not an exec on the Letterman show but a guest.

The photo above is from October of 1982 — Dave's first year on NBC at 12:30, having replaced Tom Snyder. He was on Monday through Thursday back then but they gave him a 90 minute special on Friday night. Snyder had done an annual talent show for NBC so Dave did a goofier version and Vinnie, who was then working in the building on Howard Stern's radio show, was recruited. Vinnie also has a background as a comedian (and more recently, a playwright) but back then he went on with Dave as part of that broadcast.

Flash forward to today, 33 years later. Dave's going off, Vinnie is his liaison with CBS…and Vinnie exec-produced the special that's on tonight, recapping Dave's amazing TV career. Here's a little banner to remind you to watch. I'm sure it'll be one of those things I retain on my TiVo to watch over and over.

I've been watching David Letterman's final shows. Some of them, like when Michael Keaton was on, make it sound like Dave has some terminal illness and we have to tell him now how much we love him because we'll never see him again. I've been waiting for some guest to say, "You know, Dave, I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do next."

He's been running clips of memorable moments from the past. They're funny but they also remind you of the kind of thing he used to do and hasn't even attempted for way too long. An awful lot of the tributes to Dave — like this one by Conan O'Brien — seem like they're trying to ignore everything since around the year 2001. I saw one that mentioned the suit of Velcro (that was 1984) and dropping stuff off a building.

He started dropping things off buildings (or as a witty variation, crushing them with a steamroller) in 1985. It wasn't the cleverest idea — Hey, remember when ABC tried a prime-time game show based on that premise? — but it was funny a few times. Well, Dave's still doing it except he long ago started having someone else do it for him. Talk about minimal effort.

Want to remember Dave at his best? Tomorrow night, Ray Romano is hosting a 90-minute special of clips, including some from the NBC days. My pal Vinnie Favale put it together, probably without ample time, and at least one person I know who's seen it says it's excellent. I have my TiVo primed to grab it and you should do as I do. Here's a preview…

On his recent shows, Dave has made a few remarks about how announcing his retirement was a colossal mistake…as if he really had the option of staying much longer. As I see it, he has several problems now in terms of doing something else, performing-wise, once the show is out of his life. The biggie, of course, is what to do.

If you're in Letterman's position, you don't want to do just anything. It would be pretty embarrassing to follow a 30+ year run on broadcast television with a low-budget cable series…especially a low-budget cable series that didn't do well. Having been in a position where the top box office stars and political figures fought to get in your guest chair, you don't want to sully the memory of your old show by doing a version of it which has a fraction of the budget and the biggest guest you can get is Abe Vigoda.

So you want to do something that won't be a direct comparison to the old show…and the problem with that is that Dave has never really shown any aptitude (or interest) for anything but that old show and that format. He doesn't act. He doesn't host game shows or reality shows or shows that are not basically about David Letterman.

Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno have come up with successful Internet/cable programs but Jerry and Jay are guys who've been out doing stand-up and other things all these years. Their current shows are their secondary gigs — the things they do on the side when they aren't making towering piles of money doing stand-up dates. They have active, successful careers without their car shows.

Dave hasn't done real stand-up since it was an ordeal he suffered through to become a talk show host. The closest he's come is those short monologues he does, often without apparent joy, to an audience that loves him so much, they laugh when all he does is to repeat jokes from the previous night's monologue. I think he could do what Seinfeld and Leno do but it would involve traveling and strange audiences and unfamiliar surroundings…and a lot more effort than he's shown doing his own program for a long time. I doubt he even wants to do that.

Further complicating the problem of Letterman finding a new vehicle is that for many decades now, he's operated in an environment of almost total control. He's had a staff he's comfortable with, a staff that's 100% loyal. He's had darn near absolute say on everything. His show settled into its routine because that's the way Dave wanted it.

Could he function in a new environment? You need a new environment if you want to do a new show. Even if you bring a lot of your old crew along, you need new people for a new show (some of whom might suggest things you don't want to do) and new challenges and new decisions and new locations and new problems. I'll bet that's the biggest obstacle of all to a new David Letterman show somewhere. That doesn't mean there can't be one…but if there can't, that's probably why. It would probably even involve new employers since he and CBS don't seem to have come up with anything.

If I were at HBO or one of those channels, I'd go to Dave and offer him a weekly, well-funded and promoted hour on one condition: That the show be full of things he hasn't been doing on CBS since 1993. It couldn't be the same show unbleeped…and if he's as out of ideas as he jokes he is, then they bring in clever writers and producers and Dave has to do some of the things they want him to do. Steve Allen was willing to let his staff stick him in unplanned situations with guests he didn't okay in advance, and force him to ad-lib. Steve Allen wasn't more talented a talk show host than David Letterman, even Dave at his current age.

The odds of Letterman doing something like this? I'm guessing about the same as the odds of us seeing President Carly Fiorina.

The one thing I do like about the last shows I'm watching is that since it's a procession of Dave's Favorite Guests, we're getting a slightly more interested host who doesn't look totally bored with those he has to interview. A few weeks ago, CBS released this list of stars who'd be guesting with D.L. before he left the air on May 20…

Oprah Winfrey, Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Howard Stern, Martin Short, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Rudd, Ray Romano, Julia Roberts, Don Rickles, Steve Martin, Michael Keaton, Scarlett Johansson, Jack Hanna, Tom Hanks, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Robert Downey Jr, George Clooney, and Bill Murray.

Since that list was released, he's had visits from Travolta, Willis, Seinfeld, Rudd, Martin, Keaton, Johannson, Hanna and Downey. We can also cross off Ferrell, Short, Fey and Romano because they're on next week's schedule…

Mo 5/4: President Barack Obama, Will Ferrell, the Avett Brothers, Brandi Carlile
Tu 5/5: Reese Witherspoon, Nathan Lane, Mumford & Sons
We 5/6: Martin Short, Norah Jones
Th 5/7: Tina Fey
Fr 5/8: Ray Romano, Brian Regan, Dave Matthews Band

Another name on the list could appear on Thursday but there will more likely be a musical guest in that slot. So that leaves Oprah, Stern, Roberts, Rickles, Hanks, Clooney and Murray — seven guests…and Dave has eight more shows. It's hard to believe that Regis Philbin won't put in an appearance so that would be eight guests, plus Dave has reportedly invited Jay Leno and Brian Williams to drop by. I'm curious to see how they schedule them and who else they bring on in the "secondary" guest category like Marv Albert or Jeff Altman. They could "double-up" a few of those "special" guests and have two a night, though I believe some of them wouldn't appear with Howard Stern. (We have one bit of info: Don Rickles' website says he's appearing with Dave on May 11.)

I really hope Dave's last show is wonderful. And I really hope he says or does something to indicate that he's not going to spend the rest of his life in Montana, far from a television camera. He's too talented and he has too many years left when he could be doing something. I'd settle for almost anything but the show he's been doing over and over again for this entire century.

I see all these people online complaining that the Mayweather-Pacquiao "Fight of the Century" wasn't anywhere near as good as Ali vs. Frazier or Hagler vs. Hearns or Basinger vs. Baldwin or Joe Louis vs. Anyone. Uh, one of those may have been the Fight of the Last Century but this is a new century.

Hey, I haven't updated anyone on my little physical problems lately. The "machetes" (the agonizing shoulder/neck pains) have mysteriously disappeared. We don't know what made them disappear but they did. The knee problems come and go but aren't too bad most of the time. So all in all, I'm doing okay.

As soon as I finish it any day now, there will be a rave review here of Bill Schelly's new book about Harvey Kurtzman. It's really, really good. You can order your copy here now or wait for my longer recommendation. If I were you, I wouldn't wait for me.

So how do I feel about the Muscular Dystrophy Association discontinuing their annual televised fund-raiser? Well, there are two ways to look at that. If you think it was all about campy entertainment and putting on a show for us, it's disappointing…though frankly, it had almost stopped fulfilling that goal in the latter days of Lewis. If you think of it as a means of raising money for a worthwhile cause…well, when they say it's no longer cost-effective, I see no reason to assume that's not so. I think the second perspective trumps the first.

A little over two months from today, Comic-Con International 2015 convenes in San Diego. I am actually planning out my panels at the moment. My desk is still strewn with notes about last year that I haven't gotten around to throwing away yet. So much is wrong about the passage of time these days.

Hey, it's been at least three hours since I posted a video clip with John Cleese in it. He was on Seth Meyers' show the other night for a brief, unremarkable interview — but before he left, they had him sit in for some promos that Seth had to do…

Despite my many tweets on the topic, I didn't watch a second of the big fight last night. To the extent I cared who won, it was to kinda wish the guy with the history of battering women had gone down to defeat…not that the second-place purse would have been much of a punishment.

We had a 3.9 earthquake not far from me last night. It woke me up but I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or not so I went back to sleep.

People keep writing to ask me what I think of the whole thing with Bruce Jenner. I don't think I care much about the whole thing with Bruce Jenner, at least enough to cope with the Pronoun Troubles I would encounter in writing about the matter. Rational adults have the right to decide what's best for themselves in cases like this. He (or she) can transition to anything he (or she) wants to be as far as I'm concerned and I wish he (or she) didn't feel they have to convince the public to accept it.

More stuff here later today.

• I don't get the decision. Pacquiao got hit less than half the women Mayweather's dated.

• Manny Pacquiao just made $100+ million for an evening's work and proved he's the second best fighter in the world. What a loser.

• Remember: No matter how big the purse is, each of these guys is going to make less for fighting than George Foreman did selling grills.

• I'm not watching the fight but I am rooting for whichever guy sold less advertising space on his trunks.

• Mayweather and Pacquiao split a $200 million purse tonight…which is about 10% of what the pizza delivery places are making about now.