In case you missed this week's episode…

I'm not seriously following the current state of things in The War With Iran. That's because I know the current state today will not be the current state on Wednesday, which will not be the current state on Friday…and so on. And you certainly couldn't figure it out listening to our Commander-in-Chief, who keeps saying we're winning and they're losing, then acting as if those roles are reversed. So I just wait for the latest Fred Kaplan article. The one from today starts with…

Iran's latest demands in the diplomatic quarrel over the Strait of Hormuz may seem excessive — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said they "could never be an acceptable condition of any deal" — but in fact they were part of the deal that President Donald Trump agreed to two months ago.

The proposal, issued Saturday by the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, stated that Iran would not open the strait — the waterway for a quarter of the world's seaborne oil traffic — until the United States ended its naval blockade, lifted sanctions on Iran's oil exports, released Iran's frozen assets, withdrew its military forces from the area around Iran, and paid reparations for the damage inflicted by its massive bombardment of the country since February.

Looks like Trump's plan is to surrender, then make a full court press to convince as much of America as possible that he won the war and that any suggestion otherwise is treasonous fake news. We'll see how well that works.

Ken Williams wants to know…

Why are the producers of Boop! The Musical doing the national tour as Non-Equity? If they're paying the actors less, it stands to reason that they won't be getting the best possible actors which would probably result in the show not doing as well as it might. What am I missing here?

I may have told this story before but many years ago, I worked on a TV show that involved a whole bunch of wrestlers who were in what was then called the World Wide Wrestling Federation. The absolute monarch of the W.W.W.F. was Vince McMahon and he was also involved. At the time, Mr. T (the guy from whichever Rocky sequel he was in and The A-Team) was turning up, usually as a surprise combatant, in W.W.W.F. wrestling matches. Just to make conversation, I asked McMahon how he got Mr. T to do that.

Slowly — like he was talking to a very dumb small child — Mr. McMahon said to me, "In the history of professional wrestling, no one has ever done anything for any reason except for money." That is a verbatim quote. It was the moment I suddenly understood everything I ever needed to know about professional wrestling and probably a lot of other endeavors as well.

It's a little too cynical even for me and I have learned there are exceptions — but not many.

There's a hard reality in the entertainment field that everything is, at some point on some level, about the money. And looking it from the POV of those behind Boop!, you have to remember that the Broadway show was capitalized at a reported $26 million bucks and lost all of it. If that number isn't right, the real number is in the same expensive neighborhood. The show had investors who would like its producers to do what they can to recoup some of that.  That would include merchandise , the cast album, perhaps a movie or cable deal and other productions, both foreign and domestic.

I don't know — and you probably don't know, either — enough about the math on a national tour to assess the risks. Maybe going Non-Equity will yield less income but someone who's supposed to know about these things thought otherwise. I would imagine they took into consideration that the show, having not been successful in New York, does not have the rep of a show that ran for years in New York, won Tonys, had people paying huge amounts for seats, etc.

You'll note on the tour schedule they're in many cities for just five days.  Someone, probably looking at what similar shows have done in those theaters, think that's sufficient to sell all the tix they're likely to sell in those cities.  I'm not excusing non-union shows…just trying to explain them.

I would disagree with you if you're saying that paying less for actors will necessarily mean inferior actors.  Maybe…but I remember seeing a Non-Equity tour of Catch Me If You Can and the guy playing the Aaron Tveit role was terrific — too good to be working Non-Equity but I guess that's what he could get.  I did see both the Equity and Non-Equity tours of Something Rotten and the Equity tour starring Rob McClure was sensational.  The Non-Equity version was nowhere near as good but there were still some folks in there who were of Broadway quality.

Acting is a rough business.  Very few performers ever get most of the jobs they deserve.  I'm very pro-union, having been on the warfront of efforts to unionize Animation Writers.  I wish every theater and every production in every theater was Equity but I can't find it in me to fault those who have to settle for what they can get.  And I still don't know if I'm going to see Boop! when it gets to Los Angeles.

Here's a segment from Pawn Stars. A lady brings a copy of MAD #1 into the shop and –well, watch this and then we'll discuss it…

Okay. There's a lot wrong here. It makes it sound like the Comics Code was some sort of government-decreed censorship board.  It wasn't. It was something most of the major comic book publishers at the time assembled to try and ward off government action against comic books. It also makes it sound like Dr. Fredric Wertham was the driving force. Wertham was very vocal and visible but he had no actual power and, in fact, never endorsed or even approved of the Comics Code.

But here's what's really wrong: MAD did not convert from a 10-cent comic book to a 25-cent magazine to avoid the Comics Code. It's an easy mistake to make if you look at the timing.  Its publisher, William M. Gaines, tried to get around submitting his comic book line — E.C. Comics — to the Code for approval.  He replaced comics like Crime SuspenStories with more pro-social titles like Valor but his distributor insisted: No code, no distribution.

So everything he published except for MAD began sporting the "Approved by the Comics Code Authority" seal beginning with books that went on sale in March of 1955. The last comic book issue of MAD (#23) came out that month without the Code stamp. The first magazine issue of MAD (#24) hit newsstands in July.  So yes, it looks like he converted MAD to a magazine to dodge the Code. In truth, he converted it so he didn't lose its editor, Harvey Kurtzman.

The comic book MAD was almost pure Kurtzman. He edited it. He wrote it. He did some of the art. He did layouts for the artists who did the drawing he didn't do. When the publication caught on big, Gaines became convinced that MAD would be the salvation of his small publishing company.  Just about everything else he had was under fire.  But he was also convinced that if Kurtzman quit, as he was threatening to do now and then, MAD would not survive that loss. There was some evidence for that.

Because the MAD comic book did so well, other publishers were bringing out imitations of it and Gaines did likewise with a MAD imitation called Panic. It was not put together by Kurtzman. Harvey was just barely able to get MAD to press each month. Panic looked remarkably like MAD. It had the same artists and similar stories and it came from the same company…but it was written (mostly) by Jack Mendelsohn and assembled by Gaines' other editor, Al Feldstein. It sold decently but significantly less than MAD — and the only real difference between them was that MAD had Kurtzman and Panic didn't.

And here's why Kurtzman was making noises like he might quit: He was embarrassed to be in comics. He loved the form but hated the business.

He was embarrassed that all the fine work he and his artists were doing was printed on crummy paper — paper that severely limited what could be done on it.  He was embarrassed that his work sold for a dime and on the same racks as some pretty tacky (to him) and exploitive material. He'd been embarrassed to work for the same company that published The Vault of Horror and other horror/crime comics, though the Code had just put an end to those.

He also wanted to be part of a big company that might get bigger — one with larger budgets, greater possibilities and more stability. Gaines wanted to keep his business small enough that he could basically manage it himself. He hated the whole idea of expansion and, indeed, kept MAD as small a business as he could to his dying day.

In 1955, that was not what Kurtzman wanted. He looked at companies like the one that put out Pageant, then a top-selling slick magazine. Pageant had big offices and a big staff and good printing and a desire to grow. They did a story about Kurtzman and MAD, then offered Harvey a job as their cartoon editor. Kurtzman decided to take that job but when he told Gaines, Gaines decided he couldn't let that happen.  MAD was the only thing he had that wasn't collapsing on him.  He told Harvey, "Stay and we'll turn MAD into a slick magazine!"

Kurtzman stayed…but not for long. Gaines did turn MAD into a slick — and it happened just as MAD would have had to begin having Code approval but that wasn't the reason for the change.  The reason was to keep Kurtzman.

When I interviewed Harvey at a San Diego Con years ago, he said — and I'm not sure if this is true but it might have been — that the Comics Code meant nothing to him.  He didn't like the idea of having to submit his work for outside approval but if he'd been forced at gunpoint to continue doing MAD under the Code, that would not have been a problem.  He merely wanted out of the ghetto.

He also said that the problem he then had with MAD after it became a slick was that Gaines still acted like a comic book publisher — small staff, small budgets, the cheapest-possible printing, etc.  There was also the fact that MAD was taking off and the Gaines family owned 100% of it and still wanted to pay flat fees to its makers with no contractual profit participation.

The collapse of the rest of his line drained Gaines' cash reserves.  So did the fact that Kurtzman was a meticulous, slow worker who had trouble meeting deadlines.  MAD was officially a bi-monthly but four months elapsed between the release of MAD #26 and #27, and three between #27 and #28.  Years later, Wally Wood — who was one of Kurtzman's star artists — told me (approximately), "Harvey won't turn loose of a script until he's redone it seven or eight times.  And the seventh or eighth versions are always worse than the first or second."

Shortly after MAD became a magazine, Gaines told Kurtzman they might have to cut the budget and perhaps suspend publishing for a few months.  Kurtzman urged Gaines not to do that — which turned out to be pretty good advice — and Gaines and his sister tapped into their personal savings to keep MAD going.  That extra investment apparently became an issue when Kurtzman received an offer from Hugh Hefner, whose Playboy magazine was just taking off.

Hef wanted Kurtzman to helm a humor magazine with better printing, a higher budget, a big staff, etc.  Wood thought Kurtzman was also dazzled by Hef's charisma and the lush lifestyle he was carving out for himself.  So Kurtzman, emboldened by this better (he thought) offer, demanded 51% ownership of MAD.  He must have known the chances of Gaines agreeing to that were microscopic.  It was probably a ploy to get fired so as to lessen any guilt that Harvey might feel about abandoning Gaines so soon after getting him to sink more money into MAD.

So, to wrap this up: Kurtzman and most of his crew left and did Trump, the upscale humor magazine of his dreams, and it lasted two issues.  Gaines installed Al Feldstein as the new editor of MAD and soldiered on.  Feldstein didn't have Kurtzman's flair for humor but he knew how to hire funny people.  Perhaps more important was that he knew how to produce a bi-monthly magazine that would come out bi-monthly.  Its sales just went up and up and up.

Yeah, I got way off the topic here but it's a good story and I thought you'd enjoy it.  All I really set out to do was to say that MAD didn't become a magazine to avoid the Comics Code.  Don't get your comic book history from Pawn Stars.  I wouldn't even let them tell me what that old watch my uncle left me is worth.

The original incarnation of the game show What's My Line? was on TV from 1950 'til 1967. Many of those episodes are on YouTube and they get an awful lot of hits, especially (I suspect) from folks who just want to watch the Mystery Guest spots. A lot of the episodes are missing but every now and then, one turns up. The one for July 23, 1967 recently surfaced and I've decided to link you to it.

You have a choice: If you want to watch the entire half-hour, click here. If you just want to see the Mystery Guest spot — a particularly good one with Carl Reiner — then click below. I've set it to start at the point in that episode when he comes on…

It is unlikely I will ever see a show at the historic Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine. It is, after all, 3,057 miles from me — and yes, I figured that out with Google Maps. But I always hear great things about the productions they put on there. It's a respected venue and it is an Equity House, meaning that all the shows that grace its stage are done under the appropriate contract with Actors Equity.

(Let me explain why that matters at this moment: I'd really been looking forward to seeing the national touring company of Boop! The Musical, which will be in Los Angeles next July. If I'd given the matter any thought, which I didn't, I would have assumed it would be an Equity tour. That's how it's usually — but not always — done: The national tour of a Broadway tour is an Equity-contracted tour and then, if someone decides the market is there for a second national tour, that might be non-Equity, meaning non-union actors. Hearing that the Boop! tour is non-Equity makes me think I might pass on it. Obviously, I have a lot of time to decide.)

Meanwhile, back in Maine…The Ogunquit is currently mounting a production of one of my favorite musicals, City of Angels — Book by Larry Gelbart, lyrics by David Zippel, music by Cy Coleman. Here's a number from it.

I should explain for those unfamiliar with the show, it's kind of two stories in one. The stage is cut in half. On the left — in full-color — is the story of Stein, a mystery novelist who's in 1940's Hollywood adapting one of his novels into a movie. On the right — in black-and-white — is the story of that movie featuring his character, Stone. At various points, the characters from one story interact with players from the other as in this duet between Stein's wife and Stone's Girl Friday…

It has been my joy/privilege/honor (all of these) to know several people who were deserving of the oft-overapplied term of "genius." One of those was Stan Freberg, who was born one hundred years ago today and who left us in April of 2015 at the age of 88.

I first discovered his work via Soupy Sales' TV shows when Soupy would fill four minutes by having his puppet friends, Pookie and Hippie, mime to one of Freberg's brilliant comedy records. I was twelve or so…but Freberg had been a presence in my life for years, in one sense before I was born. At my sixtieth birthday party, he met my mother who told him that she used to watch Time for Beany when she was pregnant with me.

Stan was Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent, Dishonest John and several other characters on that legendary puppet show he did with his frequent partner, Daws Butler — another genius I was thrilled to know and work with. Before Time for Beany, Stan was a top cartoon voice actor. During Time for Beany, he became a writer-performer of top-selling novelty records. After Time for Beany, he did more records and became the auteur of some of the cleverest, funniest commercials ever made. For a time, every ad you could laugh at on radio or TV was either created by Freberg or by some ad agency trying to imitate Freberg.

He proved comedy could be smart and that satire was not just something, like the great George S. Kaufman once remarked, that closed on Saturday night. The man may have died eleven years ago but his work and influence are still with us. Here's but a tiny sample of what he could do…

Here's another installment — a pretty long one — of Everything You Need to Know About Saturday Night Live. This one covers Season 28, a season when I don't think I watched the show once. I guess I was waiting for someone to say, "Hey, you oughta watch the show" — or even "watch this sketch" — and nobody did.

Maybe that was a failing of my circle of friends but as I watch the excerpts in this recap, I think maybe not. One person in that circle who did watch described these years as a lot of talented people trying real hard to launch a character who could spin off into a movie. If you want to watch the earlier episodes of Everything You Need to Know About Saturday Night Live, click here.

Every so often, I come across a gizmo that improves my life a smidgen…but enough that I'm glad I spent the money on it. So let me tell you about the Dorobeen Rechargeable Battery Powered Fan, 20000 mAh Personal Desk Fan, Portable USB Table Fan, Quiet Desk Fan, Long Working Time, Desktop Fan for Study, Bedroom, Office, Camping. That's what they call it on Amazon.

In simpler terms, it's a rechargeable battery-powered fan that you can put anywhere you like to blow an adjustable volume of air anywhere you'd like it to blow. Right in your face might be a pleasant use. In times of great heat, as much of the U.S. is experiencing now, that can be an extremely pleasant use. This is either the same fan or one similar to the one Alton Brown uses when he wants to blow a constant stream of air on something he's cooking or something in his refrigerator. You charge it with a USB cable — either one you have lying around or the one they include in the box.

Amazon has them in two models. The blue one, which looks a little different than it does in the above photo, is smaller and it does not have a light on it. The green one, in addition to blowing air, also has a light under the top handle. For some reason, they are currently the same price.

The same price at this very moment on Amazon is $35.99 but there's a coupon thing you can click to bring the price down to $28.79. I have bought about seven of these because friends who visit me see mine, want one and then, being the generous guy I am, I give them mine and order another. I have reached the limit of my generosity so you can't have mine but you can order one at this link that pays me a teensy commission.

It's Amazon so you can return it if you don't like it but I think you'll like it.

Our pal Gary Sassaman has posted a new installment of his popular "Tales From My Spinner Rack" series, all about the comic books he loved when he — and I, to be frank — were younger. This one's a distillation of a panel Gary hosted at the recent Comic-Con International. It's all about Jack Kirby's return to Marvel Comics in 1975 — not the happiest time in his life…

There's this web channel called Secret Galaxy that's so secret I didn't know about it. How I found out is that a whole bunch o' people wrote to tell me they'd just done an episode on the history of Garfield and Friends, the series I worked on for a long time. I just watched it, bracing myself for a video that got lots of things wrong, as this kind of thing tends to do…but I was delightfully surprised. They got almost everything right! Here — see for yourself…

I'm busy today so I'll make this as short as I can…

A lot of folks write me with their complaints about Comic-Con International.  Contrary to what some think, I am not and have never been an employee or official of Comic-Con.  I'm just a Special Guest who does a lot of panels there.  (I am also, in no conceivable sense, a "founder" of the convention.  I know people who were or are, whichever way you want to put it, and they deserve all the credit.)

Most of the complaints that come my way flow from the fact that for some inexplicable reason, the San Diego Convention Center cannot accommodate an infinite number of attendees and have an infinite number of panels and program items and that everyone who wants a seat can get one.  The convention is also doing a particularly poor job of making certain that you can find every item you seek at a highly affordable price and also book a nearby, inexpensive hotel room.

Why oh why can't it be like Disneyland where it's never crowded, you never have to wait in line and all the food and souvenirs are real cheap?

Lately, people are bitching to me about Hall H — you know, that big room that I've never set foot in nor had anything to do with.  The complaints to me all sound like "They have to do something to ensure that all the stars I want to see there are on that stage and I can always get a good seat without a long wait!"

I absolutely understand the frustrations.  What I don't understand are the denials of reality as to what's possible or fixable.  And I really don't understand thinking that writing to me is going to do anything about those realities.  Anything at all.

Hey! Anyone out there in the mood to watch an hour-long, very interesting interview of Billy Joel? If you are, I've got one for you…

Hey, let's watch an old Ernie Kovacs clip. The announcer at the beginning is Bill Wendell, who was David Letterman's announcer for many years…

Over the years, Galen Fott has sent me a lot of solid tips and insights about theater. After I posted this piece about the upcoming national tour of Boop! The Musical, Galen reminded me of something I should have mentioned. This is a non-Equity production.  Don't know what that means?  Well, allow me to elucidate:  Stage actors are more or less divided into two castes: Those who are members of Actors' Equity and those who aren't.  To quote from this website…

Actors' Equity Association, founded in 1913, is the U.S. labor union that represents more than 51,000 professional actors and stage managers. Equity fosters the art of live theatre as an essential component of society and advances the careers of its members by negotiating wages, improving working conditions and providing a wide range of benefits, including health and pension plans. Actors' Equity is a member of the AFL-CIO and is affiliated with FIA, an international organization of performing arts unions.

The current president of the organization is, by the way, Brooke Shields.

Plays are therefore also divided into two groups: Those which are done under the umbrella of the Equity contract and those which aren't. Everything on Broadway is Equity. The theaters in which those shows are performed are all signatories to the Equity agreement.

In other areas, there's a mix. From the viewpoint of the playgoer, it means this: When you attend a non-Equity production, you're probably paying the same price for a ticket you'd pay for one to an Equity production but they're probably paying the actors less. And the cast is not drawn from the talent pool of actors with Broadway street cred. That doesn't mean they won't be good but for whatever reason — and being real new could be one — they haven't joined Equity.

It is highly (note the italics for emphasis) unlikely that anyone who was on the stage of the Broadway production of Boop! will be on the stage of the touring company as it traipses from town to town.  It can be advertised as the Broadway production coming to a theatre near you but that means there's a lineage — in this case, the same director and, to the extent feasible as the show goes from town to town, the same script and art direction and such. It will probably have the same Tony-nominated costumes and staging and choreography.

The sets will be approximately the same, though modified as necessary to be highly portable. The musical arrangements may be scaled down — or maybe not. Some special effects may have to be eliminated.  (We discussed this here recently about productions of Hadestown mounted away from the Walter Kerr Theater on W. 48th in Manhattan.)

A lot of these downgrades are not because it's not Equity.  It's because it's a touring show.  A touring show of either kind may have financial limitations and it surely has to be able to pack up, get out of town and set up in another town in a hurry,

I'm always fascinated by the mobility of a touring show like this. Even it's an Equity-sanctioned tour and an Equity cast, changes must be made and the seemingly-impossible must be done. Look at the schedule for the Boop! tour and wonder how they can make some of these moves. Like, they do their last performance in Schenectady on Sunday, October 18 and play their first performance in Cincinnati (700 miles away) the following Tuesday. Later on, they close in Fort Worth, Texas on a Sunday and open in Las Vegas (1200 miles away) the following Tuesday.  There are other such leaps.

Not a lot of time to rest there. Not a lot of time to get used to a new theater and rehearse with new stagehands and however many local musicians they employ. I'll bet at times it feels less like show business and more like the Bataan Death March except instead of marching, everyone is singing and tap-dancing. I've seen non-Equity shows that were pretty wonderful but they do have a significantly lower batting average than Equity-covered productions.

I'm in no position to judge why the Boop! tour is non-Equity.  The deals for a tour like this are complex and involve an awful lot of money on the line.  Maybe they honestly couldn't make the math work to mount an Equity tour.  I don't know anyone, even a staunch supporter of unions like myself, who decides to boycott all non-Equity productions.

We might opt for caution but in this case, I note that Jerry Mitchell — the show's director-choreographer in N.Y. — is doing the same duties for the road.  Mitchell is a highly respected gent who wouldn't be involved if he didn't think the touring version would uphold the hallowed name of Boop!  So I'll go but it makes me wish I'd made the time/effort to get back to New York when it was there.