Like all of us, I've been wondering what it would be like to take Carol Channing to Disneyland. Well, we need wonder no longer. Our pal James H. Burns sent me this link to an account by someone who did just that. (I was going to title this post, "E-Tickets Are A Girl's Best Friend" but I'd be dating myself…)

Fred Kaplan says Vladimir Putin ain't as formidable a leader as a lot of people seem to think. And never mind Putin being on the wrong side of history. I'm more interested to see he's on the wrong side of Fred Kaplan.

It's interesting that a majority of those who oppose Gay Marriage don't know (or I guess in some cases, don't believe) that they are no longer the majority in this country. This is one of those issues that was always destined to go this way. It was never an "if" gays would be allowed to marry but how long it would take. Frankly, if I were a right-winger, I would long since have abandoned this one and invested my resources in a more winnable — and probably more important — matter.

This poll says 59% of Americans support same-sex wedlock. In a month or two, it'll probably be two-to-one. I take back everything I ever said about how this matter was better served by voters voting as opposed to court rulings, and about how long it would take some states to come around. Gay Marriage is winning in Arizona and you now have prominent Republicans in Wyoming championing it there. A friend of mine predicted last year that by the time Barack Obama leaves office, we'd have Gay Marriage in every state. I told him he was wrong; that a few would hold out forever. I'm thinking now that he may have been right.

Today (Wednesday), the guest on Stu's Show is Johnny Whitaker, who many of you probably first knew as the irresistible little boy on the 1966-1971 TV series, Family Affair, which starred Brian Keith.  That's Johnny in the above photo, pretending to trim the beard of his co-star, Sebastian Cabot. I could also have put a photo up here of Johnny on the popular kid show, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, or of Johnny in movies like Tom Sawyer or Napoleon and Samantha.  And he sure guested on an awful lot of TV shows.  The last time he was on with host Stu Shostak, they barely got halfway through his list of credits.  Today, they tackle the other half.

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.

This is pretty much how I watched the Academy Awards on my TiVo…

The Wall Street Journal says that Ellen DeGeneres' use of a Samsung Galaxy during the Oscar telecast was product placement, paid for by Samsung.

On the question I asked earlier about the audio when Ellen was in the audience: I should have just asked my longtime pal Marc Wielage, who knows more about audio and video than anyone on this planet and maybe a few others. He wrote to me to say…

I believe Ellen had a Sanken COS-11 lav microphone in the same color as her outfit, coupled to a 250mW Lectrosonics transmitter, and they were using special processing to minimize any feedback in the audience speakers. The Dolby Theater has great acoustics, which help a lot. Ellen's mic picked up well enough that you can still hear somebody talking about 3 feet away, but not much further than that. No extra microphones were used.

That's pretty standard for award show stuff. Most likely, it would've sounded better if she had used a handheld directional mic, but they probably did whatever they could to make her comfortable.

BTW, there was a ton of missed mic-cues, mics accidentally left on, mics left up too early, and all kinds of crap. Heck, you could hear Ellen talking to the pizza guy before they came out on stage, which kinda ruined the bit.

There were a lot of audio mistakes but I kinda liked that we heard her talking to the pizza delivery fellow off-stage. I thought it added to the sense that the bit was legit.

The pizza she ordered came from Big Mama's & Papa's Pizzeria, a relatively-new chain in Southern California that has about twenty outlets. Their specialty item is a 36" pizza that's a great conversation topic for parties. I was at a party once where they brought one in — chopped into about fifty rectangular pieces — and I thought it was pretty bad pizza. But that was some time ago and since the chain is growing, I'll bet their pizza isn't always like the one we got that night.

It's interesting that she ordered from them, from a store just far enough away that the delivery person had to drive and brave the traffic around there. The Dolby Theater where the Academy Awards are done is part of the Hollywood and Highland shopping complex. There's a California Pizza Kitchen restaurant there and in the food court, a place called the Hollywood Pizzeria Express…but they were both closed, as was the whole mall, for the day of the Oscars. However, within two blocks, there's Greco's New York Pizza (which is pretty good), Andre's Pizza, Combo's Pizza and Deli, and Stefano's Two Guys From Italy.

The delivery person was a gent named Edgar Martirosyan who owns the shop, and they say he didn't know until Ellen dragged him onstage that the pizzas weren't for the writers or backstage crew and that he'd be going out there. I was suspicious because he was, in manner and dress, exactly what what you'd want in a delivery person if you set up this moment. You wouldn't want him to not be dressed like a pizza delivery person, as most I imagine are not. You'd want him to look kinda dazed and not be someone who'd try to be funny. But I'm willing to buy that they didn't pre-select him and that all was as it appeared.

Bill Maher keeps saying, as he did on his show last Friday night, that the main problem the Tea Party has with Obama is that he's black. I don't think so. I mean, there is a strong racist streak in some of them but I find it hard to believe we wouldn't be hearing all the same screeching if our president was Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. We'd probably even be hearing that Joe Biden was secretly a Muslim born in Kenya. They just seem to hate anyone they think is on "the other team."

Hal Roach was the man who owned and ran the silent (later, sound) motion picture studio that made the best Laurel and Hardy comedies, as well as Our Gang and many others. No human being ever had his name on so many funny movies. Around 1983, I got to spend one afternoon talking with Mr. Roach in the home you'll see in this video. He died in 1992, about two months before what would have been his 101st birthday.

He was, at least during our time together, a sweet, funny man who loved to talk about his accomplishments. He also loved to tell dirty jokes and he asked me a lot of questions about "these girls today" and what it was like for a guy my age (31) in the entertainment business. I'll phrase this as nicely as I can: He wanted to know if it was possible to have sex with actresses without giving them a job or marrying them. He didn't suggest he had done either in his day but as we spoke of that and of the kind of opportunities a young man had in today's industry for financial advancement, he did start a lot of sentences with, "Boy, if I was your age today…"

I wish I could tell you that I learned a lot about his studio and my two favorite performers (Stan and Ollie) but the visit was largely useless for that purpose. Without any prompting from me — because, I guess, it was among the first questions everyone asked him — he launched into a story of how Laurel and Hardy teamed up. In his life, Mr. Roach told at least six different versions of this, none of which match up to the films themselves or the truth as established through interviews with others. The story he tells in this clip is as wrong as any of them.

This is something I discovered meeting folks of his era in the movie and cartoon businesses. They develop little stories — witty little anecdotes to tell people and especially reporters. Mel Blanc, for instance, long told a story about how, when asked to come up with a voice for Porky Pig, he decided to give Porky a stutter. It worked fine for years because there was so little history written down that he could tell it in a roomful of people and no one would say, "Uh, Mr. Blanc, weren't you the second voice of Porky Pig, replacing a comedian who'd been hired because he actually stuttered?" I don't think Mel was exactly lying. He'd just simplified the truth down to make it into a shorter, more entertaining anecdote.

Roach had done the same thing with a lot of what he said.  He could embellish or rearrange the truth because there were few sources around for better info…and who's going to argue with Hal Roach about how things worked on the Hal Roach lot, anyway? Still, I enjoyed the time we spent together. He was his most forthcoming and realistic when I asked him about the Our Gang comedies and about a great, great comedian who worked for him as a performer and sometimes a director, Charley Chase.

This is a 20 minute conversation with him that ends abruptly in mid-sentence. It's a bit outta-sync but it'll give you an idea about the way he was when I met him, minus the dirty jokes and sex talk. Do not believe most of what he says about how Laurel and Hardy got together…

Brian Spence just e-mailed me with an interesting theory why the Oscar ratings were better than expected: "Crummy weather covering half the country kept people inside."

You might be on to something, Brian.

The Oscars did even better in the ratings than I or anyone expected. I wonder what kind of "lesson" its producers and network are extrapolating from this information. That America loves Ellen? That the whole country cared if 12 Years a Slave won? That people were tuning in just to make sure Seth MacFarlane wasn't back? Beats me.

By the way, I keep forgetting to mention this: Ms. DeGeneres did a lot of bits out with the audience and I'm wondering about the audio out there. Most of the stars she picked to chat with out there were well-heard. She wasn't carrying around a microphone so I wonder if they were all picked up on a super-sensitive wireless mike she was wearing or if there was something else employed. I went back and looked at some scenes to see if the crew had put mikes on folks like Liza and Meryl and I don't think they did. (That would have been really awkward and uncomfortable to arrange, even if they knew for sure who Ellen would be speaking with.)

Birthday greetings continue to trickle in. Thank you, thank you, thank you. To answer the question everyone keeps asking me, I spent most of my birthday doing whatever it is I do on Groo. It's the first issue of a new twelve-issue series that will bring Groo back to monthly publication for an entire year. I don't know when it will commence but it should be after the Groo Vs. Conan mini-series, the publication date for which will be announced any day now. You'll be getting a lot more Groo, folks, whether you like it or not.

This is a better clip of something I posted once before here. Last year, the Disney company christened a new cruise ship called the Disney Fantasy and they hired, for probably a nice piece o' change, Neil Patrick Harris to emcee the christening ceremony. As part of the presentation, Mr. Harris performed a nice piece of special material not unlike the kind of thing he does so well on award shows. The opening is trimmed but here's the bulk of it…

Well, looks like I lost in the non-existent Oscar Pool to predict the ratings. Early returns say the telecast did about as well as last year, and some industry pundits are already congratulating Ellen DeGeneres for that. I still think the host doesn't have that much to do with the numbers but maybe I'm wrong about that, too.

I didn't mention Cate Blanchett's acceptance speech which thanked Woody Allen and which I thought was fine. A couple of folks wrote to ask me what I thought Hollywood's over-all reaction was to the accusations against Mr. Allen. I don't think "Hollywood" speaks with one voice or has one reaction to almost anything. If I had to guess what a poll would show, it would be that most people don't know which scenario to believe, feel that admiration for Allen's work is a separate matter, and maybe even resent being told they have to take sides when they see the evidence as far from airtight either way.

I should also mention that when I worked with John Travolta 38 years ago, he was always letter-perfect with his lines. And if he's anywhere near the same guy now, he'll be apologizing to Idina Menzel and begging her forgiveness the rest of his life. But maybe he's not the same guy now.

In the non-Oscar world in which we must all sadly now live: Several folks have informed me that the street configuration in Vegas has changed and it is now possible to walk from the Excalibur or New York, New York to the nearby In-N-Out Burger stand. It's not an easy walk, they say…but some have done it.

I got a weird e-mail from someone demanding I apologize to Sarah Palin for mocking her prediction, made some time ago and mocked by many, that if Barack Obama was elected president, Russia would invade Ukraine. First off, I never mentioned it. Secondly, I believe the mocking was over the assertion that Russia would not do something it wanted to do if America voted for someone else. And thirdly, has anyone tallied the number of predictions that woman has gotten wrong? Even phony psychics get one or two right out of a hundred. I don't think Palin was right in this one but even if she was, that's what? A .005 batting average? Do this woman's supporters understand that she's not running for public office? That she's running for money?

Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes to me yesterday. Much appreciated…and no, I don't feel any older. My knees do but the rest of me doesn't.

This is not actually a review of the Academy Awards. You shouldn't review a show that you watched using the Fast Forward button as much as I did. The critics who weighed in so far are being pretty harsh about Ellen DeGeneres as host but I thought she did pretty much the job you expect when you bring in Ellen DeGeneres: A few great lines, friendly chatter with the audience, nothing Earth-shattering. That's what she does. The bit with taking a "selfie" in the audience was kinda funny.

Personally, I think the Oscars oughta be hosted by someone who's either a big movie star…or someone, like Johnny Carson, who's almost more important than the ceremony, itself. I'm not sure who'd qualify in the latter category these days but in the former, how about Tom Hanks or Kevin Spacey? Or better still, Steve Martin again? (Actually, the guy I wish they'd get is Albert Brooks but I doubt we'll see that.) I'm curious to see what Neil Patrick Harris will do when, as seems inevitable, he does it.

It was not an exciting evening but that's not the fault of the producers. It wasn't an exciting list of nominees. I don't think most of America cared that much who won in each category. I was kind of hoping Bruce Dern would win, not because I loved Nebraska (didn't see it) but because I think he could have given a memorable, emotional acceptance speech. But again, it's not the producers' fault that he didn't win and didn't get to give that speech.

Musical numbers seemed fine. The heart aches for John Travolta botching Idina Menzel's name. It may say something that the best performance was of a song not nominated — Bette Midler's nice little non sequitur. The "In Memoriam" reel seemed a bit too mawkish to me and of course, there were glaring omissions, the biggest being Jonathan Winters and Ed Lauter. But someone hustled to get Harold Ramis in there instead of waiting for next year. That was nice.

Nothing I saw made me want to rush out and see any of the films…but then, I fast-forwarded through a lot of the clips. I'll predict the ratings will be tepid, not because of Ellen but because of who was nominated. I'll take "37 million viewers" in that Oscar pool. Another 10 to 20 million will have watched in other countries and the Academy will, as usual, total them all up and brag that a billion people watched. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Rob Lowe: "Whenever I shoot a scene where I turn around in a doorway, smile and exit, I wonder if it will someday be my 'In Memoriam' clip."

• I have to go out so I'll do my snarky Oscar tweets now: Boy, are these people phony! And look at that dress Meryl Streep is wearing!