I awoke this morn to e-mails from folks who are expecting me to have a really great Leonard Nimoy anecdote. Wish I did. I worked for three years for Alan Landsburg Productions, the folks who brought you the series, In Search Of, which Mr. Nimoy narrated. I didn't work on that program but I often ran into him at the office or at parties and he always said hello and seemed to be a nice and very real gentleman.

Performers in his position — you'll understand what position I mean in a moment — often seem to quietly appreciate it if you don't treat them like they've only done one thing in their careers. So in maybe two dozen times we exchanged words, I never mentioned Star Trek to Mr. Nimoy. I've never been a particular fan of that franchise anyway so that was easy. It seemed to please him that I knew he'd done other things and that he was an actor first and Mr. Spock, second.

In his honor, I have put up a photo of him not as Spock and I've wracked my cranium for a story that might convey the simple civility that impressed me about the man. This, I'm afraid, is the best I can do…

The lot at the Landsburg office was a mess of valet parking with runners (lowly-paid interns, actually) stuck out there all day to park and unpark too many cars in too small a space. That meant they often had to jam them in, stack-style, and when I wanted to leave, they'd had to move someone else's Mazda so they could then move someone else's Buick so they could then move someone else's BMW so they could then move someone else's VW so they could then move someone else's Mustang so they could fetch my Mercury Zephyr. It required some chess-like planning several moves at a time so I started calling it "Rubik's Lot."

I remember one scorcher afternoon standing out there for maybe a half-hour with ten other folks who wanted to leave as a particularly inept car-parker tried to free all our cars, one by one. Each move he made to try and remove cars from in front of our Business Affairs head's Mercedes seemed to be positioning more cars ahead of whatever Leonard was driving that day. He and I stood there, watching it all in despair, noting that when The Kid finally did get around to trying to bringing Nimoy's auto out, it was going to require the relocation of every other car in the lot. I was saying things to him like, "I think you have time to go in and narrate all of next season's episodes if you like."

Finally, my car became unblockaded — if that's even a word — and I offered to give Leonard a lift because "Your car will be an antique by the time you can drive it off this lot." Just then, someone apparently told The Kid who that slender man waiting patiently for his car for at least twenty minutes (so far) was. Mr. Nimoy had not thrown his clout or stardom about. He had just stood there in very hot sun, not expecting to be treated like anyone special even though, as he told me, he was going to be late for an appointment.

The Kid rushed up to him and said, "Wow, Mr. Spock, I'm sorry this is taking so long. I didn't know it was you but I do now so I'll get your car next and we'll beam you right out of here!" He gave Nimoy the little Vulcan salute. Nimoy, forcing a smile that should have earned him an Emmy then and there for acting, politely returned it and The Kid happily scurried off to begin the long process of liberating the Nimoymobile.

I got into my car and Leonard motioned for me to roll down the passenger window so he could say something to me. I did and he told me, making sure The Kid couldn't hear, "I hope he does not live long and prosper."

Not much of an anecdote, I know, but it's all I've got. I really didn't know the man but if that's what he was always like, I wish I had.

We love Bernadette Peters, no matter what she sings. Often, it's "Broadway Baby" from the show, Follies. Here's a mashup of some of the many times she's sung that tune…

Okay, one more thing. Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart did a pretty scathing piece about Fox News. In connection with it, his crew assembled a Vine video which offers 50 of what they call Fox Lies in about six seconds. Why they did this as a Vine video, which is hard to pause in some browsers, is beyond me. But Politifact has broken it down, assertion by assertion. They agree that at least 49 of the 50 statements Stewart's staff listed were Mostly False, False or Pants On Fire.

Tom Stemmle writes to say that the Dave who was functioning as substitute bandleader in that Tonight Show clip is Dave Grusin. Hey, I've heard of Dave Grusin. He's been the composer on an awful lot of great movies and has been nominated for (and occasionally won) a mess of Grammy awards and Oscars. A week or so ago, I re-watched one of my favorite films, And Justice For All, and it had a score by Dave Grusin. That's cool that that's him.

Meanwhile, Tim Dunleavy notes that the date given for that clip — 10/03/1965 — must be wrong because October 3 of that year was a Sunday. So your guess is as good as mine.

And that's about all I have time to post right now because I have a deadline that needs meeting and, heck, I've put up tons of content the last few days. I'm entitled to coast one day a week. Ergo, I have put up a photo of a soup can to indicate that posting will be light here the rest of the day…or however long it takes me to finish this script.

What happens to someone who goes on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and loses $225,000? Check out the sad (but in some ways, inspirational) story of Justin Peters.

As we mentioned, RadioShack is going away…so what to do if you have gift cards to redeem there? This article will tell you…and I'll add that if you're going to go in and buy something to use them up, you'd better hurry. The last few days they're in operation may not be the time because as they run out of items, they're not going to be restocking those shelves.

This is a fascinating clip from The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson and it's from 10/03/1965. Not many of the shows from that period survived.

You may know this part already. When Johnny took over the show, it was an hour and 45 minutes every night and it started twice. They would start the show at 11:15 and then go to commercial around 11:28. At 11:30, that commercial break would end and they'd do a new opening, billboarding the guests again. This was because some local stations ran a 15-minute newscast at 11 PM and some had a half-hour. The two starts were so stations could join the broadcast at either time.

Originally, Johnny did his monologue at the start of the 11:15 segment but more and more, stations then were shifting to 30-minute newscasts so fewer and fewer of them were airing that labor-intensive bit of stand-up. Around early '65, Johnny decided the first fifteen minutes had to go so he could do his monologue for everyone to open the show. For a time, he just plain refused to do the first 15 minutes of the show, insisting he was sick and leaving it to Ed McMahon and the show's bandleader, who then was Skitch Henderson.

Eventually, Johnny won. NBC agreed to get all their stations lined-up to start at 11:30 but the "first fifteen" starring Ed and Skitch continued for several months until that happened. They'd play games, chat, sometimes interview one guest, all the time reassuring the audience that Johnny Carson would be along shortly. Some nights, it was pretty grim until he showed up.

This is an excerpt from the "first fifteen." Skitch seems to have been off that night and the bandleader seems to be someone named David. I do not recognize this man but he and Ed introduce a band number spotlighting the great trumpeter, Clark Terry. Terry played in the band for most of the sixties, leaving in 1972 when Johnny moved the show from New York to Southern California. This clip appears to be from a 1965 visit that the show paid to Hollywood but Mr. Terry came along to join what was probably a band made up mostly of L.A.-based musicians.

After he left The Tonight Show, Clark Terry continued to be one of the greats of the jazz trumpet…and I seem to recall him sitting in with the band in Burbank every now and then and offering up an amazing solo. He toured and did concerts and some people say he played on more jazz recordings of his era than any other trumpet player. He passed away last Saturday at the age of 94. Here he is doing what he did as well as anyone who's ever held one of those instruments…

• Donald Trump running for President again. Not one person not on his payroll thinks he will get more electoral votes than Donald Duck.

People keep writing to ask me about the Joan Rivers "snub" from the Oscars' In Memoriam segment. The word "snub" is getting way overused on the Internet these days, its definition now being broadened to include any time you think the wrong person got selected for something. It's like when a casting director has to pick which of ten actors who were considered (or even which of fifty who were submitted) will get a part. He picks the one he'll hire and then folks say they others were "snubbed."

Sometimes, they say they were "banned." If you host Saturday Night Live only once and then Lorne Michaels decides once is enough, or you get turned down to guest with David Letterman, you're likely to wind up on a list of people who are (gasp!) "banned" from those shows.

Or even "blacklisted." That's another one. A comedian I met at a party a few years ago was complaining that he couldn't get on The Tonight Show, which of course has always been the fate of well over 99.9999999% of all people who consider themselves professional comedians. He was saying he'd been "blacklisted," likening his non-selection to the injustice done to actors and writers who were persecuted by a conspiracy involving multiple employers who did not question their ability, only their exercise of free speech and free association.

So here's the deal with the Oscars segment. Each year, a committee at the Academy — not the producers of the telecast — has to make up the roster of who's in and who's out. They start with a list of maybe 400 names — everyone in show business who died in the last twelve months and had anything to do with a movie. Probably that list isn't even complete but they have to start somewhere. Then they whittle it down to 40-50 names.

You might ask, "Why don't they cut some musical number or a commercial or two and put in more names?" Well, they'd sooner not give out Best Picture than cut a commercial but even that wouldn't solve the problem. If they put 100 dead folks on the screen, the fans and family of others on the master list would still say, "Hey, you included the caterer on a movie made in 1974 but you left out the caterer on a movie made in 1969!" The more you include, the more you lower the bar on how important a person has to be to make the reel.

The committee considers fame and importance. You get more points if you were nominated for an Oscar or won one, which is not to suggest they have an actual points system. They may or may not.

They used to only put up actors and an occasional director but there were too many complaints about "snubbing" other job descriptions. So now they make sure to include some writers, some make-up folks, some studio execs, some cinematographers, etc. I would guess that the one or two most important costume designers who die each year will always make the final list because it would be viewed as an insult to all costume designers if at least one wasn't included.

I am told the official Academy site says that the honor is only for actual members of the Academy but I don't believe that rule, if it exists, is followed religiously. I mean, do we think some huge star who never actually joined would be omitted for that reason? It may matter in the case of those who are on the cusp.

And then the committee decides what they decide. I would assume there is discussion of whether someone is a TV person or a stage person and whether they did enough of their careers in movies that they belong. On Shelly Goldstein's Facebook page, Bruce Vilanch posted…

it ain't the people's choice, it's the academy's choice, and they tend to choose people who actually are in the movie business, not the fashion business or the television business.

Bruce has been involved in enough Oscar telecasts to know of what he writes.

Each year, we have this controversy and folks read way too much into the decision to include A but exclude B. Sooner or later, the Academy is probably going to tell whoever constructs and designs the montage, "Look, here's a list of 423 people who died since the last Oscars. We'll give you four minutes instead of three. Get every one of these names on the screen for a few seconds, even if for some, it's just putting up a crawl or twenty names at a time with no pictures."

Then there will instead be complaints about who got a picture and who didn't, and why someone's name was on longer than someone else's, and putting up 423 names will just about guarantee that someone's is misspelled. And then we'll hear about how someone whose name wasn't on the initial list of 423 was snubbed…or maybe even banned or blacklisted.

I want to recommend today's Stu's Show and I want to recommend a recent book by Stu's guest. Joel Tator is a TV producer with a long résumé, a shelf or two full of Emmys and an extensive knowledge of Los Angeles television history. He has recently given us Los Angeles Television, an excellent book about local TV in my home town back in the fifties, sixties and seventies…you know, back when there used to be local television other than late news and dawn-to-dusk coverage of police pursuits.

The group shot on the cover gives you a good idea of the kind of people covered by this volume. On it, I see Engineer Bill, Mike Stokey, Stan Freberg, Tom Hatten, Art Linkletter, Skipper Frank and so many more. That photo's from a reunion years after most of them were vital contributors to local television but Tator's book is full of photos and history of earlier days. If you grew up where I did, you will love this book and your biggest complaint will be that it isn't long enough. So order it and listen in when Joel guests with Stu today.

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 way, way longer. Whenever a show ends, it's available soon after for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a measly 99 cents each and you can get four shows for the price of three. Well worth the money.

• Bill O'Reilly just announced his next book: Killing Fact-Checkers.

Paul Waldman over in the Washington Post gives a neat summary of the case against Bill O'Reilly on this charge that he fibbed about his experiences covering combat back in his news days. I don't care a whole lot about this because like Waldman, I don't think O'Reilly's employer or audience cares.

In fact, I think a lot of those who watch O'Reilly know and don't mind that he's full of excrement on some topics. They just like the show he puts on and a lot love that he often fights dirty, up to and including distorting facts, to slap the people they want to see slapped.

What's interesting to me about O'Reilly is that, first of all, I think he's a great showman. If you just see his job as putting on a program that people will watch…well, he's really good at that. Then again, he has a huge audience for his pronouncements on what's right and wrong with the world but I don't get that anyone in his audience sees him as a wise pundit. I spend way too much of my life debating issues with right-wing friends (I have more than you may think) and they'll quote Rush or Hannity or Mark Levin or Beck or Krauthammer or someone else like that.

No one ever quotes O'Reilly and I don't think I've ever seen him cited with Rush-like reverence on a right-wing blog. He must be in some corners of the web but it doesn't seem to me to be proportionate to the audience he reaches.

Last night, Jon Stewart — who had much on his plate upon returning from a vacation — did a pretty fine job of making Rudy Giuliani look like a remarkable hypocrite and exploiter of 9/11 for selfish partisan reasons. Okay, so he had a lot to work with. Giuliani's not doing very well as he tries to back off his Obama slam without offending anyone who loved his Obama slam.

I'm guessing Stewart — who actually seems to be in a mutual-admiration society with Bill-O — will get to O'Reilly tonight or tomorrow night. I'm further guessing his message will be, "Hey, Bill. Just accept the fact that you got caught in a lie and be thankful that you work at a company that doesn't mind that kind of thing." But maybe not. Mr. Stewart has surprised me in the past with his take on some controversies.

Today is Abe Vigoda's 94th birthday! Let's celebrate by going to see if he's still alive.

Last Friday, I went to lunch at the Magic Castle in Hollywood with my friend Bob Elisberg, whose blog you should be visiting…but only after you read mine ten times a day. One of my favorite magicians, Richard Turner, was performing.

Richard isn't exactly a magician. He describes himself sometimes as a Card Mechanic — a guy who can fix a card game. He is the best "card cheat" I've ever seen and it's stunning to see in person. You watch him. You study him. You never take your eyes off his hands or the cards. But you can't catch him dealing off the bottom of the deck or out of the middle or whatever he does so you wind up with a pair of threes and he has a surplus of aces. Really amazing.

And, oh yeah: He's blind. What he does would be astounding even if he could see but he can't so…

This video is from (I'm guessing) 15-20 years ago when his vision was a tiny bit better than it is now and he sometimes didn't tell audiences he couldn't always make out the cards. Today, he has to ask his "volunteers" for help making sure that the ones he gathers up after a feat are all face-down. But he can still do everything he did in this performance and then some…

Jason Jones has announced he's leaving The Daily Show to star in a new series for TBS. It'll be exec-produced by him and his wife Samantha Bee but there's no announcement yet as to whether she's staying or going. The timing of this is curious. This is not a deal that was hurriedly put together since Jon Stewart announced he was abdicating. One wonders if Mr. Jones is regretting his decision to leave or if he left because he knew he was not in line for Stewart's job whenever it came open.

Whatever the reason, this suggests The Daily Show under its new host may be even more different than some of us have been thinking. Several friends and I have been discussing whether Comedy Central would try having Jones and Bee co-anchor as per one of those male/female teams that are standard in news reporting these days. Guess not.

Okay…so Oliver is out. Colbert, of course, is out. Wilmore is saying he's happy right where he is so he's probably out. Bee is probably out. Williams says she's out. I'm not feeling like the other correspondents — Klepper, Mandvi, Hodgman, Madrigal, etc. — have been treated like folks with a bigger future at that network.

Maybe Klepper but it's starting to look like someone from outside. A reader of this site wrote me to speculate they'd grab up Craig Ferguson. I'd bet serious money he isn't even under discussion. I can imagine Comedy Central offering Craig Ferguson The Craig Ferguson Show but not The Daily Show since he'd only turn it into The Craig Ferguson Show. I'm now thinking it'll be someone like James Corden — i.e., someone whose name isn't on any of the short lists circulating outside the network.

Too often, these things turn out like a really bad murder mystery…you know, the kind where when they reveal whodunnit, it's someone you never would have thought of because there were, like, no clues. I remember reading one once where the murderer turned out to be a person who had never been mentioned before in the book. This may be like that. Brace yourself, fellow speculators.