Those rumors nobody's heard are true: I've just gotten the job as Marty Allen's new straight man and we'll be playing the Desert Inn in Las Vegas as soon as they rebuild it.

Don't scoff. Leave me out of it and you might have a pretty good act. At age 91, Marty's still pretty healthy and pretty funny. He and his much-younger wife often play cruise ships and yesterday, he was signing autographs and selling photos (including a great one of him and his then-partner Steve Rossi with The Beatles on the stage of The Ed Sullivan Show) at the Hollywood Show. This is the convention formerly known as the Hollywood Collectors Show — the one that was out at the Beverly Garland and then at that constantly-renamed hotel in Burbank across from the airport. The gathering has a new name, new management and a new location but the premise is still the same: Stars, past and present, sit behind tables and you can wander about, meet them and purchase signatures and memorabilia.

The longest line yesterday was for David Hasselhoff, who was there with a bevy of Baywatch co-stars. Next longest-lines seemed to be for Joan Collins and Bo Derek…and you could also see the kids from The Sound of Music, a batch of Bond Girls, plus George Lazenby and Richard Kiel; Bill Mumy and Angela Cartwright, some of the stars of Knots Landing (including Michele Lee, Joan Van Ark and Kevin Dobson), John Ratzenberger, Jaye P. Morgan, a whole bunch of other folks…

…and as you can see, Julie Newmar. Anyone who thinks there's no glamour left in Show Business oughta hang around Julie Newmar for five minutes. She's still stunning, still every inch a star…but, and this is the tricky part, an approachable star. She was so delightful to everyone who stopped by to buy a photo and/or ask her about the Batman TV show, Li'l Abner, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, My Living Doll or any of a hundred other things she's done. We talked mostly about Abner and the articles I did about the Broadway show and movie, and also about our mutual friend, the late Stanley Ralph Ross. I haven't forgotten that I promised you more stories about Stanley here.

And speaking of great ladies of the stage, I got to meet and talk with Cathy Rigby. If you search this site, you'll find umpteen instances of me gushing about her portrayal of Peter Pan, which I number among the great performances I've seen. Sorry to say, it doesn't sound like she'll ever do it again so do yourself a favor and hunt down the DVD of that show…and beware. Amazon seems to have several other versions of Peter Pan confused with Ms. Rigby's and she's not in some of the ones that list her in the credits. I think this link takes you to the actual Peter Pan with her even though at the moment, it doesn't list her in the credits. The DVD was outta-print for a time and costly to purchase but now the DVD is just seven bucks and an online download/rental is even cheaper. If you have young kids who don't know what musical theater is about, this would be a very good thing to show them.

Finally, I should emphasize what fun it was to meet and talk with Marty Allen. I told him I'd stolen a third of my jokes from him and at least half my hairdo, and we talked about Vegas in the old days, back when he and Steve Rossi were packin' 'em in. I saw one of their last engagements together at the Sands and was surprised, not in a bad way, that they didn't do many of their old "interview" routines. Most of it was Allen doing stand-up while Rossi held the one microphone in front of his partner's mouth and cracked-up at every single thing his partner said as if he'd never heard it before. It would have been a pretty awkward act if not for the fact that the audience was laughing just as hard as Rossi.

A fellow who didn't say I could use his name wrote to say…

I respect you, that's why I find this latest post disturbing. As I understand it this man's only 'crime' is: Saying while he has no problem with gays he does not and would not use them in advertisements for his product. For this he and his company should be ostracized? If so then Big Brother and 1984 are really here. No way can a person speak their mind from now on they must be 'correct'. Shame on you for being a party to it.

That's a silly analogy. Big Brother and 1984 were all about government control of speech. Me deciding I don't want to purchase a certain company's product is in no way comparable to that.

You know, the "free speech" part of the First Amendment of this country makes clear that the government cannot stop anyone from saying whatever they want. Okay, whatever they want as long as it isn't "Fire!" in the proverbial crowded theater. It doesn't say you have the right to say what you want without fear of consequence. If an entertainer gets up on stage and utters racial slurs, we have the right to not go see him. Or if a used car salesman gets up and says the Holocaust never happened, we have the right to not spend our money on his lot. Isn't there something a businessperson might say that would offend you and cause you to take your business elsewhere?

Mr. Barilla is, as I understand it, an Italian citizen…but the principle is the same. He can say what he wants — and what he said was a little worse than your laundered paraphrase. Then once he's said what he wants to say, my Free Speech allows me to say, "Gee, I don't think I want to buy Barilla pasta anymore." It's just like how if a candidate for public office says things you don't like, you have the right to not vote for that person. An exercise of small-D democracy.

If the government were banning the import and sale of Barilla Rigatoni, yeah, that might raise to an Orwellian level. But there is no way on this planet that I can stop Guido Barilla from saying whatever he wants to say. The most damage I can do to him is to deny his company some microscopic fragment of a penny of profit they might make from me. And he might not even suffer that because there are probably people out there who right this minute are buying Barilla products, the way they've lined up for photo ops at Chick-Fil-A, to show their support for anti-gay sentiments.

A few months ago, I prepped the above graphic because I wanted to write a little piece here about a product I like — Barilla's microwave quickie pasta meals. They have several varieties, each of which yields a plate of hot pasta in sauce that heats in one minute. You peel open a corner of the film and pop the whole container in the microwave for 60 seconds. Then — very carefully because it's hot — you peel the entire film off. What you find inside is hot pasta and a little dish of sauce. You empty the sauce over the pasta, mix a bit with your fork, then use that fork to eat the pasta.

This does not yield an Italian feast comparable to what you'd get in a fine restaurant but it compares favorably to anything else you can whip up that quickly on sudden notice. I buy their plain Marinara version in bulk and always have a bunch at the ready in my pantry.

That's all I was going to write when I made up the illo…but since then, the head of the Barilla company has come under fire for some anti-gay remarks and calls have arised to boycott his firm's products. He quickly issued several apologies including this one…

Even giving the gent the benefit of the doubt, since English is not apparently his native tongue, he doesn't sound all that candid to me. It sounds like the kind of committee-drafted statement anyone would make if they feared a massive drop in sales. Then again, maybe that's just faulting the guy for a bad performance in front of a video camera. There are more skilled actors who could have sounded convincing with precisely the same sentiment in their hearts. There are also folks who were honestly repentant who could well come across as that insincere, especially as they swear to an overnight conversion. No one sees the light of day that fast. I think I'd have been more impressed if he'd said something like this…

People with whom my company does business urged me to quickly issue a statement saying I'd misspoken or been misunderstood and that I actually meant no disrespect to anyone in the gay community. It would be easy to say that but it would be a lie. The truth is that when I said it, I did mean it. I am not sure I still do. Many from whom I have heard have said and written things that cause me to reconsider, and not just because my remarks might lower my firm's profits. I have much to learn and while I do, I retract and apologize for my remarks. If you feel uncomfortable purchasing Barilla products, I understand.

If he'd said something like that, I might not have the dilemma of what I'm going to do when my current supply of his instant pasta meals runs out. Will I buy more? I dunno. I just dunno.

I posted a partial version this before. Here's the whole thing.

It's a 1951 promotional film for Capitol Records and it includes some great footage of how records were made then. It stars Mel Blanc and Billy May and I assume you all know who Mel was. Billy May was one of the great conductors and arrangers of the music business, and he was responsible for an awful lot of hits. The film also "stars" Hollywood of that era, especially Wallich's Music City, which once upon a time was the place to buy records in this city. That's back when people bought records in this city…

Ezra Klein nails, I think, the reason we're in this ridiculous Shutdown: The Republicans in Congress are engaged in a civil war for the control of the party. Most of 'em want to make a deal but enough don't that they can't. One suspects the thing that's putting the Tea Party wing in control is wealthy donors making threats as to where they'll devote their bucks.

Neil Gaiman just sent me this. It's a radio programme on which Brit comedian Bob Monkhouse discusses his love for (and encounters with) Mr. Stan Laurel and Mr. Oliver Hardy. But hurry. This link expires as soon as it's tomorrow…in the U.K.

Some guys at the National Weather Service put a hidden (or maybe subliminal) message in the forecast: PLEASE PAY US. Go take a look.

The N.W.S. is a valuable, highly-competent department that does things that save lives and make life much more livable. If they're not getting paid during the shutdown, that's just as bad as not paying U.S. troops that are off in some foreign hotspots protecting our interests.

David Letterman has renewed his contract with CBS through 2015. As I hear it, he didn't know what else to do with his life at this stage and CBS didn't know who else to put in his place. Everyone's kind of waiting to see where the "late night wars" will stand after Fallon replaces Leno, Arsenio settles in to some ongoing level, and we see if Jay will remain a player in this arena somewhere. We are not yet to the contractual point where Leno could entertain serious offers to go to another network or into syndication and the rumor from "sources" close to him is that he's playing it close to the vest — not saying he wants to go elsewhere, not saying he doesn't — until he sees what kind of interest he gets and where the numbers stand at that point.

I'm sorry to say I don't watch Dave much anymore…sorry because there was a time he did my favorite show in all of television. He just seems to me now like a man who doesn't want to be there but since he has nowhere else to go, he'll drop by and do the same show he does every night, avoiding something new for something he can do with minimal effort. I did watch the episode last week with Bill Clinton and while that combo of host and guest made for some sparkling, interesting shows in the past, this time it was a dull thud. Clinton got bogged down in policy minutiae, as he often does, and Dave didn't seem engaged enough to leap in and guide his guest to more interesting topics. When he's good, Letterman is awfully good…but when I tune in lately, he isn't.

My late night viewing is down to almost nothing. I TiVo Leno and Ferguson regularly but unless one of them has a great guest on, I rarely stick with them much past their monologues. I TiVo Fallon and Letterman when they do have someone on I want to see. (This page is a handy way to know who's on what and when.) I've given up on Arsenio, Kimmel and Conan.

Actually, I keep forgetting Conan even has a show but when I have watched it, I've enjoyed it more than I enjoyed his Tonight Show. He's calmed down now, doing a show where he doesn't feel he personally has to get a laugh every three seconds. A comedy writer friend of mine says that the secret of Mr. Leno's success is that he hasn't succumbed to a disease that hits most people who are on television for a long time and aren't Johnny Carson. It's a condition in which you believe with each passing year that your show ought to be more and more about you and less and less about anyone or anything else. I call it The Bob Barker Syndrome.

I probably shouldn't be amused by this but it's just on the right side of laughing with people as opposed to laughing at them. It's fifteen minutes of really, really stupid things people said on game shows…

Ted Cruz appears to be concerned that he hasn't managed to piss off every single person in America who isn't a Tea Party looney.  The latest…

"The House of Representatives has repeatedly compromised already," said Cruz, who already spoke against funding the law on the Senate floor for 21 hours earlier this month. "The House began — it is the view of every Republican in this body, and indeed every Republican in the House, that Obamacare should be entirely and completely repealed. Nonetheless, the House started with a compromise of saying not repealing Obamacare but simply that it should be defunded."

It's statements like this that make me wish we had an actual Democrat in Congress besides Bernie Sanders (who isn't even a Democrat) to veer as far left as many Republicans veer right. The Dems oughta send Sanders out to demand that Obamacare be "repealed and replaced" with Single Payer, then have all the putative Democrats in both Houses endorse this for a few days. Then they can drop it, agree to be satisfied with the Affordable Care Act "as is," and say, "Okay, we compromised!"

And by the way, I don't for a minute believe every Republican in the house thinks that it would be a good thing for America if Obamacare was completely repealed. Most of them might well think that it would be a good thing for the Republican party.

Comics writer Mark Waid has penned an important "Open Letter to Young Freelancers" which I think is mistitled because almost everything in it that's valid also applies to old freelancers. My esteemed colleague is right that it's key to success to do good work and also to be professional about it, which generally means meeting deadlines. Balancing those two imperatives is not easy and a lot of us err on one side or the other.

It's important, I think, to be aware of the process; to understand what damage, if any, you do to the overall product by being late if (and this is a humongous "if") you're actually late because you're making your contribution better. If you're late because you just plain weren't doing the work, that's a whole 'nother matter. If I take two more weeks than planned to finish a script, that may mean the artist has two weeks less than he planned, which may be two weeks less than he needs to do his best work. I also may screw up his life because it delays work he'd expected at a certain time and/or a paycheck he expected at a certain time.

There's one bit of advice that Mark doesn't give so this one will: If you're being treated badly in comics, maybe you ought to spend some of your time pursuing some other field. I've never met anyone who could write a good comic book who couldn't write a good something-else. I have met a few guys who wanted to be "in comics" so badly that they neglected other opportunities, thereby making themselves virtual prisoners of this field that wasn't treating them too well. One of the keys to being comfortable in any kind of gig as a freelance writer is to remember the "freelance" part and be able to walk out the door if things become intolerable.

I'm going to use the word "employers" here but when you're a freelance writer, "customers" might sometime be the more applicable noun. I've been a professional writer since June of 1969 and in all that time, I've never been without paying work for more than, oh, about six hours. A few times in there, paying work didn't pay but that's another matter. At no point in what I jokingly call my career has more than around 80% of my income come from any one employer and it's been rare that all the employers I did work for were in the same line of work. There have been times when a comic book company offered me all the work I could handle. Even then, I was also writing for TV, also writing for non-comic magazines, also writing for stand-up comedians, etc. The mix has varied over the years but it's always been a mix.

There are many reasons for this and I'm not even sure which is the most important. One is that I think it's helped the quality of the work. I learned things doing one kind of writing that I could apply to another. Another is that it's always nice to have a little insurance because you never know when the flow will suddenly stop from one source. It's financially prudent to have another flow in reserve.

And also I've found that you and your work are just plain treated better by people who don't own you. You shouldn't, except in the most extreme situations, actually threaten to take a hike…but most employers respect a guy who can. (There are employers where the opposite is true: They don't want you around if they can't own you. I don't want to work for or with those people anyway. At least for me, it never ends well.)

There are downsides to juggling multiple employers — days when I have a TV producer on Line 1 saying, "I must have that script today" and a comic book editor on Line 2 telling me the same thing. I have that at the moment which makes me wonder why I'm taking the time to write this. But it's still better than having everything riding on one professional relationship. So I think I'd better stop blogging and go make those two employers happy…

If you're anywhere near my age (61) and you grew up where I grew up (Los Angeles), you either listened to 93 KHJ or prided yourself on being too hip or refined to listen to that particular radio station. KHJ "Boss Radio" played the same hits as every other channel and its "boss jocks" didn't add or subtract much except to hit a high energy level as they back-announced records…but it was "the" radio station for a generation or so in these here parts.

That was late sixties. Around 1975, everyone outgrew that format at once, ratings plunged and KHJ went in search of a new raison d'être. For a year or three there, they tried something called "The Rhythm of Southern California." That didn't work. Then the station went to country-western. That didn't work.

They went back to Boss Radio, selling themselves as an oldies station. That didn't work. Then they went to something they called Car Radio, which was a lot of traffic reports interrupted for the occasional song. That didn't work. Then they changed the station name to KRTH-AM to try and coast on the success of KRTH-FM, an FM station with the same ownership but a more successful easy-listening format. KRTH-AM tried to split the difference between oldies and easy-listening and — you guessed it — that didn't work. Then the fit hit the shan…

For a decade or so, the parent company — RKO General — had been under continuous investigation and indictment for unethical and perhaps illegal business practices and in 1989, the F.C.C. ordered them to sell off their radio stations and their one TV station, KHJ Channel 9. What had once been KHJ radio was snatched up by a company that brought in a Spanish-language format. That worked…and it's continued to work to this day. At some point in there, the call letters even reverted to KHJ.

Let's go back to that brief period when they were trying to sell "The Rhythm of Southern California," whatever that is or was. Our video today is more of an audio. It's 7+ minutes of the jingles that were recorded to give the station its identity…and I think you can understand what went wrong just from them. Someone brought in the late, great Paul Frees to do his kinda-like-Orson-Welles voice and it just sounds creepy…like trying to have a dance party in the Haunted Mansion or something. You won't want to listen to the whole thing but listen to a few of the jingles with Mr. Frees and ask yourself if you'd have any desire to tune to this station…or for that matter, any idea what the hell this "rhythm" business was all about. I listened a bit while they were trying the Rhythm Method and I had no idea other than that the disc jockeys tried to sound more mellow and they played a lot of Simon sans Garfunkel…

They're toying with me! Usually, the Souplantation chain offers my favorite soup, their Classic Creamy Tomato, for all of March and then one week in October…although I think they skipped the October week last year. This year, the Souplantations near me — I haven't checked them nationwide — will be offering it for four days later this month: October 17-20. This is the first time I've ever heard of them putting out a soup for four days but I guess I should be grateful for even that. I shall plan my soup-eating accordingly. Here's where you can check the menu for your area, assuming you're within souping distance of any outlets of the Souplantation or its sister chain, Sweet Tomatoes.

Ezra Klein on what's going on in Washington. This all sounds correct to me, especially this paragraph…

To the White House, the shutdown/debt ceiling fight is quite simple, and quite radical: Republicans are trying to create a new, deeply undemocratic pathway through which a minority party that lost the last election can enact an agenda that would never pass the normal legislative process. It's nothing less than an effort to use the threat of a financial crisis to nullify the results of the last election. And the White House isn't going to let it happen.

Nor should they.

For some reason, I've gotten hooked lately watching the reruns of Dragnet and Adam-12 on MeTV, which may be my favorite channel if only for its name. I've always thought of my life kind of as "me" TV.

The Dragnets are a lot of fun when its star-producer-writer-director Jack Webb wasn't lecturing people about drugs and/or the responsibility of having a badge. I don't think a lot of folks know that those shows were shot as rapidly as possible. They limited exteriors — and when they did venture out, they shot scenes for multiple episodes since Webb and his co-star Harry Morgan always wore the same clothes.

Dialogue scenes were done with heavy reliance on TelePrompters. Mr. Webb had a certain way he wanted the show to "sound" and the way he got his desired delivery out of most actors was to not let them see scripts in advance or memorize lines. They'd show up on the set, find out what they were playing and then they'd read their parts right off the prompter. After each good take, Webb (who directed most of 'em) would tell the TelePrompter operator to speed up the crawl a bit. The actors would read their parts over and over, a bit faster each time…and when they got to the point where they sounded like Alvin, Simon or Theodore, Webb would designate that the next-to-last "take" be the one used. It sounded odd at times but it sure got a lot of story into some of those half-hours.

Mr. Webb also produced Adam-12. I like this show first of all because it was set in Los Angeles so you get a lot of shots of L.A. in the early seventies and I can recognize many of the locations. I like the rapport between Martin Milner and Kent McCord and I like the surprising selection of actors who have small roles in some of them. The other day, they ran an episode where Officers Reed and Malloy stopped Keefe Brasselle for speeding. It was probably the last time he showed his face on TV. I'm surprised no one has done a big book or movie about Mr. Brasselle, one of the more — shall we say "colorful?" — folks in the history of television, a man who mysteriously got his own prime-time variety show on CBS despite no one knowing who the heck he was.

In 1972, I was working for Western Publishing, writing an awful lot of their Gold Key comics line. I worked for the West Coast office which produced about half their comics and there was an East Coast office that handled the other half. The company made a deal to do an Adam-12 comic book, it was assigned to the West Coast office and the senior editor there, Chase Craig, told me he wanted me to write it and Dan Spiegle to draw it. That was fine with Dan and me…but then intra-company politics intervened and the book was shifted to the New York office where it was written by Paul S. Newman and John David Warner, and drawn by Jack Sparling and Mike Roy.

There were no hard feelings — Dan and I had plenty of other work — but when I visited the New York offices shortly after, the editors there apparently thought I was upset and they asked me if I'd read the book they were doing and if I had any criticisms of it. I said the writing and art were fine (which they were) but that it was sure obvious the folks doing the comic didn't know Los Angeles. The scenery looked nothing like my home town and there would be frequent geographic boo-boos — like a police call to the intersection of Pico and Wilshire…or some other two streets that never cross. Or I think in one issue, someone was at the main police station, which is way downtown, and they took a short walk to the beach, which is in reality quite some distance away.

The editors in New York admitted that was a problem and after that, they occasionally called me for L.A. technical advice to ask if these two streets intersected or if this famous location was near that famous location. I guess that was easier than buying a map.

Anyway, as I'm now watching Adam-12 reruns, I'm starting to notice that Reed and Malloy keep getting calls to go to the corner of Lankershim and Santa Monica Boulevard…or some other non-existent intersection. Or you'll see them out in front of the Hot Dog Show on Riverside out in Toluca Lake and they'll get an urgent call to hurry to Beverly and Fairfax, which is a good half-hour away, and they'll say, "We can be there in three minutes!" So maybe the comic book was more accurate than I thought, at least in replicating the TV show.