The late/great Larry Gelbart discusses one of his most famous quotes. It's often said that he said it during the tumultous outta-town rewrites of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum…and maybe he did, also. First time I met him I asked and he wasn't sure but here, he seems to have decided it was said with regard to another, much less successful venture…

I spent yesterday (a) voice-directing The Garfield Show and (b) catching up on sleep I didn't get over the weekend working on the script. The session went well thanks to a superb cast: Frank Welker, Gregg Berger, Wally Wingert, Jason Marsden, Laraine Newman, Candi Milo and Corey Burton. Today, we have all those folks back plus Laura Summer, Jewel Shepard and the legendary Stan Freberg. As I am fond of saying, when you hire the best actors, a rhesus monkey could direct one of these things. Normal blog posting should resume shortly.

Many of you have noted the new headers on this page — not just one but several new drawings of me by a man of mystifying talents. His name is Sergio Aragonés and I'd hoped the new art would go quietly unnoticed for a time but no. (I love the folks who are writing me to ask if I noticed it had changed.) There are more drawings yet to come.

Also to come on this blog: In the next day or three, I hope to post a long piece about the situation by which Bob Kane is credited as the sole creator of Batman while his collaborator Bill Finger is not equally heralded on the strip or the movies or the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I shall mount the best defense I can of Mr. Kane and make a few points in his favor on this. But you'll still conclude, as I did, that it's awful that Finger's name is not there.

Also, I haven't forgotten that I promised more tales of working on Welcome Back, Kotter and witnessing, live and in person, a Battle of the Network Stars. And there's that long essay about the late Al Feldstein I said I'd get around to. And a few other things..

As usual, I will be doing more than a dozen panels at Comic-Con International this year down in lovely San Diego. There will be all the usual ones plus a few new things and I'll post my schedule here as soon as the convention is ready to release the total list.

By the way: Please don't write me about three things. One is getting into the convention. Another is helping you find lodging during the convention. And the third is suggesting programming, especially long after the schedule is locked, which it pretty much was a few weeks ago. You'd be amazed at the number of people who write or call me each year a week or less before the con to ask if some panel they want to do can be added. I don't program that stuff. There are people paid to do that and they have to do it way before the con.

I gotta get to the studio. Back later.

If you need me, I'll be in a recording studio for the next two days, directing voices for The Garfield Show. Try not to need me 'til we're done.

This actually happened the other day. I type these up from memory right after they occur…

HIM: Mr. Evanier, how are you? I'm Darryl with Whatever Construction and I spoke to you about six months ago about some work you wanted done on your house when you were ready for it.

ME: No, we didn't speak six months ago. We've never spoken.

HIM: Oh, yes we did, sir.

ME: Oh, no we didn't, sir.

HIM: Hey, I'm sorry. This is what they tell us to say.

ME: Congratulations. You're the first one in over a hundred of these calls to be honest about it so I'm going to do you a favor. There's no way I'm going to have your company do any work in my house so don't waste any more of your time with me. Go call someone else and see if you can make some money.

HIM: I appreciate that but could I ask you one question?

ME: Sure.

HIM: You don't happen to need any toner for your copier or printer, do you? Because I also make calls for a company that sells that shit.

You know…if I needed toner, I might actually have bought some from the guy.

Steve Rossi, who served as straight man to Marty Allen (and several other comedians) has died at the age of 82 following a long bout with cancer. In his day, he worked with everyone, including Mae West who gave him his first break and who changed his name to Steve Rossi.

I saw Allen and Rossi in one of their very last Vegas engagements. I also sat through a show that Rossi mounted a few years later with himself as headliner and a lot of…uh…unusual acts. I will tell you about them but not now. I'm still on the deadline. I'm also bothered that when I announce I'm too busy to post much, people die and I have to pop back here to post obits. Maybe there's a connection. Anyway, watch for a post about Mr. Rossi later this week.

John Kander and Fred Ebb perform one of the many fine songs they wrote together for Broadway…

Here's a list of 22 Things You Should Never Say to Someone Who Doesn't Drink. I am such a person. Have never had a drink of alcohol — not even beer or wine — and doubt I ever will. A couple of the items on that list seem worthy of sober comment…

4. "I'm going to get you to drink." No, you're not, the same way I'm not going to get you not to drink. People get to make their own decisions, and trying to change mine on alcohol will be a failed endeavor.

I haven't encountered this much since I hit around age 30 but before, I found myself around a number of people who made it their personal mission to get non-participants involved in liquor and/or other mood-changers. Once at a party, the host (one of them) went to get me a 7-Up and, being the suspicious type, I spied and saw him pour something else into the glass. I think that's one of the assholiest things I've ever encountered in my life and I told him so and went home.

By the way: I'm really a non-drinker. I've since quit 7-Up and all carbonated drinks, too.  My body has decided it wants nothing stronger than water and I don't miss other liquids at all.

7. "You must think I'm such a mess." No, I don't think you are such a mess because you are drinking and I'm not.

I never think that drinking alone makes someone a mess but I have been around some people who…well, let's just say that if they weren't drinking and could see how they looked and acted while drinking, they might stop drinking. But that's their choice.

10. "Do you think you're better than us?" Alcohol's a beverage, not a measure of moral superiority (or inferiority). So no, I just don't want to drink.

I've had this exchange. I do not have any moral condemnation of anyone who drinks unless they do something awful because of it.

Many years ago, someone I cared a lot about was killed by a drunk driver. Amazingly, the driver thought he should not be punished because he was drunk at the time and therefore not in any position to be responsible for his action. He tried to claim Temporary Insanity and his lawyer made the offer that his client would plead guilty (or maybe No Contest) to a charge of public drunkenness if the prosecutors would drop this irrelevant stuff about the dead girl.

That, by the way, is not the reason I don't drink. I wasn't the least bit interested in it before that, either. But yeah, I guess I do feel morally superior to someone who lets himself get into a condition where he doesn't know what the hell he's doing and harms others or even, as has been the case with a few friends, themselves. This is a pretty tiny percentage of those who drink.

18. "You must have so much dirt on everyone, watching us sober." Of course, my favorite hobby is to collect blackmail and is the sole reason I don't drink. Actually, I'm not judging. Please stop judging me.

Actually, I do have "dirt" on some people because I was sober and could remember things they said while drinking but I pretend I never heard them. Once in a while though, it's hard to get them out of your mind and I'm afraid a few of them have — shall we say? — colored my view of three or four individuals.

My main gripes relating to the way those who drink deal with those of us who do not are (a) people who assume my not drinking is some criticism of them and (b) people who assume there's nothing I want more than booze. I've had folks mix me a drink, come up and hand it to me on the presumption that everyone must love it as much as they do. Then they get annoyed with me that they made that mistake.

As a person with many food allergies, I also have to cope with the social discomfort of people preparing or giving me food I can't eat. Not being able to eat certain things is not exactly like choosing not to drink but it often gets you to the same clumsy situations. One time, I went over to pick up a date…and I thought I was taking her out to a restaurant of mutual choice. It was my second — and as it turned out, last date with this lady.

She greeted me at the door wearing an apron over other garments and announced, "I have a surprise for you," a phrase I have come to dread when it relates to food or drink. She'd spent all day cooking a meal for the two of us…and there wasn't a single item there that I could eat. Well no, there were carrot sticks but a dish of them is not exactly fine dining.

She'd also mixed a whole pitcher of martinis (I think that's what they were) for us to share despite the fact that I'd told her on our first date that I didn't imbibe. That information somehow does not register with some people. It seems so natural to them, I guess, that they can't grasp that it isn't for everyone. I have that same problem with people who pour me unwanted coffee because, you know, everyone drinks coffee. I don't.

That second date did not go well. She felt stupid or angry or…well, I'm not sure how to describe it. I had somehow made a mess of the evening and caused her to waste the cost of the groceries and a whole day over a hot stove by not being able to eat asparagus. Whatever, it was surely my fault for not being a normal human being. She also got a bit drunk — the nasty kind of drunk — because she downed all the martinis and that further ensured there would be no third date.

I get along fine without drinking alcohol or even coffee. I get along fine without eating the things I shouldn't eat. I'm utterly respectful of your right to control what goes into your body. I just ask that everyone be that respectful of mine and recognize that what's good for you may not be good for me.  Once in an awkward while, people just don't seem able to do that.

Major streets in Los Angeles when they were dirt roads.  Some day, it will all look like this again.  Given the drought, I'm thinking a week from Tuesday…

I've been privileged to meet and know many of the great contributors to my childhood entertainment. One person I can't believe I knew was Bob Clampett, who gave the world Beany & Cecil and who directed many of the very best Warner Brothers cartoons. And you got a bonus if you got to know Bob because you also got to know his kids and his wonderful wife, Sody. They were both very nice to me…which is not a brag on my part because they were very nice to everyone I saw around them.

Sody assisted Bob with a lot of the business end of his work and carried it on after his passing in 1984. I'd occasionally go by and take her to lunch — always at either Musso-Frank's or the Farmers Market, both places where I'd often encountered Bob or the both of them — and I regret that I did not see her more often. She was a bright, lovely woman and she left us yesterday after, I'm told, being in very poor health for some time.  This sounds like one of those "Thank God it's over" deaths but it's still sad to hear about.

My favorite memory of Sody is from one of those evenings when she or Bob would call and say, "We're having people up to the house tonight to watch cartoons and we're going to bring in pizza. Please come." I would always cancel whatever I was doing and race to their lovely home in the hills, not far from the Hollywood sign. There would be between a half-dozen and a dozen folks who represented the "young generation" of the animation field. They'd run 16mm prints of some of Bob's work and he'd discuss it and answer every last question in painstaking detail. Sody would play hostess and serve the pizza which they steadfastly refused to let any of us help pay for.

One evening, they were running "Russian Rhapsody" — one of Bob's best but I'd seen it too many times lately so I wandered out into their balcony to take in the spectacular view and get some air. Sody was out there and I felt I had to apologize that I wasn't in watching Bob's work with the others. She said, "That's all right. I understand."

I told her, "I've seen this film at least fifty times, maybe a hundred. How many times have you seen it?" She thought for a second and said, "A lot. Maybe five hundred times."

I asked her, "Do you still like it?"

She glanced about to make sure Bob couldn't hear and then she told me, very softly, "It's a great cartoon but it loses a little something after the four hundredth viewing."

Johnny Mann, who has passed away at the age of 85, was a choral leader and record producer and he was the bandleader for Joey Bishop's late night talk show and he did many other things. Two stand out for me…

One that he was an expert producer of jingles, especially for radio and for disc jockeys. He was the master of them and was responsible for thousands heard on stations all across the U.S. and Canada. If I'd been a d.j., that's how I'd have known I'd made it: When I had a jingle of the Johnny Mann Singers singing my name. Oh, sure. They'd mispronounce it but it would still be an honor.

Also, he fronted a TV show that was on for three seasons, commencing in 1971 called Johnny Mann's Stand Up and Cheer. Here's a YouTube video of a hunk of it that was edited to showcase its choreographer who appeared in a segment. It'll give you a look at Mr. Mann and a good sense of what the show was like.

It was corny at times with a lot of shallow, flag-waving patriotism…but I always found something pleasant about it. The girls were cute and the folks in charge, one of whom was Mr. Mann, supplemented their cast of young, well-scrubbed performers with one old pro. If you look, you'll spot Thurl Ravenscroft, who voiced Tony the Tiger and appeared on hundreds of records and commercials and cartoons and Disneyland rides. They usually referred to him on the show as "Pappy" but here, he's Thurl. Every so often, they gave him a great solo.

A few years later when I was writing variety shows for Sid 'n' Marty Krofft, we hired a couple of dancers who were in the cast of Stand Up and Cheer. Since most of the ladies on that program looked alike, I'm not sure if any of them are in this clip. One of them told me that Johnny Mann was great to work with if you didn't mind really long hours and really small checks. That was said with affection because she knew that it was all done in service of doing the best possible show and she liked Johnny a lot.

She said, "It was a kind of music I wouldn't have chosen to listen to for myself but he did it very, very well." In keeping with my belief that not every bit of music has to appeal to everyone, I'd count that as a compliment…

Here's an interview with Conan O'Brien who is gracious despite the interviewer hinting he should dump on Jay Leno a bit.

In the intro, the interviewer writes, "…it is hard not to feel a little badly for Conan O'Brien and the way he was set on fire several years ago when Leno grudgingly handed off the Tonight Show torch to him — and then refused to go away. NBC's unwillingness to commit to O'Brien despite his lengthy tenure in the 12:30 slot created the biggest bungle in late-night history." Personally, I and a lot of people think dumping Leno for O'Brien was the biggest bungle…but I still don't see why Leno had any obligation to "go away," which in this case would have meant turning down a huge offer from NBC and putting his staff out of work.

And NBC did "commit" to O'Brien. In fact, they shoved their biggest star aside to give O'Brien the Tonight Show. They just gave up on Conan when his ratings didn't measure up to expectations. That may have been unfair but it is something TV networks have been known to do…like all the time. (Ousting Leno for Conan in the first place was the unusual action on their part.)

Jimmy Fallon's current ratings, which are topping David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel combined, may give us some idea of what the network's expectations were for O'Brien. But Conan even fell short of what the guy he replaced had been achieving in that time period.

I've occasionally tuned in the current shows of Mssrs. Fallon, Letterman, Meyers, Kimmel, Ferguson and O'Brien. I find Letterman and Ferguson semi-watchable when there's a guest on who the host really cares about. The other shows, I haven't enjoyed at all…but maybe I've just watched on the wrong nights. Recently though, I've received the DVDs that these shows send out to Emmy voters (I am one) to show how wonderful their programs are. When I get time, I'm going to watch the DVDs sent for Seth and the two Jimmies. I figure that's what they think was their best work so if I don't like those episodes, there's no point watching other ones.

Well, back to the soup…

Mushroom Soup Monday is starting a little early this week…on a Friday. I have a terrible deadline so posting will be somewhere between light and non-existent until I'm through. I'm voice-directing a Garfield cartoon on Monday and Tuesday so this condition may persist 'til then.  I will also be even worse than usual about responding to e-mails. I'm not abandoning you. Just putting paying work ahead of this.

I agree with this column about Dick Cheney. Every time he opens his mouth, he reminds America how inept and dishonest the Bush Administration was about the war in Iraq. They got darn near everything wrong and now Cheney's doubling-down and even tripling-down on perhaps this nation's greatest-ever military screw-up. The best thing you can say about them is that they weren't solely culpable; that they got a lot of Democrats and most of the press to go along with them.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will ultimately have cost this country over $6 trillion dollars and 4500 American deaths, plus more than 32,000 wounded. Counting the other damages done to this country and the deaths in Iraq is more difficult but those are surely staggering numbers.

Oh, well. At least Halliburton made good money off it.

Johnny Clifford writes, from "somewhere in England"…

Mark, I think you should remember that the Python team are British (yes, that includes Terry G — he's been living here for the past fifty-odd years). Most of us Brits are uncomfortable telling people how much we actually like them, so, instead, we "take the piss." We are also uncomfortable with the American style of gushing with praise for everything, so instead we offer compliments in an ironic manner. I refer you to a passage in the book The Name of the Rose, written by an Italian, where the German narrator sums up the main character (an English man) as being impossible to read because he always appears to do the opposite of what he means. The Python team are (overwhelmingly) a product of the English "public" school system. That they praise each other using a system of insults is no surprise to anybody on this side of the pond.

As to how they "allow" this to spread over the press or the internet — please tell me how they could actually stop this from happening. Could you? Also, why on earth should they want to?

Well, I may be making too much of this…so I'll just say that some of their published/quoted remarks about one another have not struck me as "compliments in an ironic manner." They've struck me as anger and hostility, which I'm sure also exist somewhere in the British style. Maybe I'm just not on the proper wavelength but if I interpret it that way, others probably do, too.

How could they stop this from spreading over the Internet? By not saying such things in venues where they're sure to be quoted, including their own tweets and postings.

Why would they want to? I dunno…maybe because it can be awkward to call someone names and then work with them? Or to have such quotes live on long after the anger has abated?

I'm not saying people who get pissed at one another should never say so. I just sometimes wonder if some of these disagreements are best handled by flaunting them in public. If I call someone a jerk in person or on the phone, we can kiss and make up and the remark will be forgotten. When you call someone a jerk on the Internet, that lives on forever and may well be taken as more serious (and current) than you intend it, if not at the time then certainly later.

This song is sung about as well as it can be sung and the orchestrations are perfect…but, gosh darn it, it somehow seems wrong to perform it when you're wearing a tux…