Dispatches From the Fortress – Day 347

Tuesday is the day I should be getting my second dose of the Moderna vaccine but I've heard nothing from the agency that is supposed to e-mail me about when to come in for the shot. The website says "Due to supply uncertainty and site closures due to weather and holidays, appointments may be scheduled further out, but within the CDC recommended window of 28 to 42 days." I'm going to assume that is so.

I should have said this a few days ago here: I feel really bad about what's happened to so many people in Texas. Some of the louder residents of that state have long put out a strong anti-government "We don't need anybody" vibe and there's the temptation to say, "Well, they asked for this" and to suggest the Federal officials should let them suffer. But of course, they're Americans and real human beings and only a small number of them put out that vibe.

You — because you're a thoroughly decent human being as I like to think I am — wish for the suffering to stop and for steps to be taken to make sure this never happens again. I heard someone on one of the cable channels say that was unlikely because "that would mean some state officials would have to admit they did some very wrong things." That is not, of course, a valid reason for not fixing problems but it's one that sometimes prevails in this world. You and I, decent humans that we are, hope that is not so.

And by the way, I'm really sick of people who never grasped (or chose not to understand) the concept that "Global Warming" would lead to more extreme weather problems, both hot and cold. Every time there's a major blizzard and temps at or around zero, you can find them saying, "Well, so much for that 'global warming' bullshit" when, of course if anything has been proven, it's the opposite of what they think.


I've read Abraham Riesman's new book on Stan Lee, True Believer, and I've also read a lot of reviews of it, some quite negative but most so far, just the opposite. My feelings about it are mixed but at the moment, generally positive. I'm going to wait a few days, give it another read and then see if I can unmix some of those feelings and write something here about it. It is certainly not, as one guy on Facebook insisted, "a hatchet job."


The other day here, we watched a video clip of a very funny moment on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Actor-writer Douglas McEwan sent me this…

Re: your story about that 1969 Carson show. You wrote, "Well, you had to be there." I WAS!!!!

I was in the room when that happened. I'd been hanging out all day on the Laugh-In set. They were on a dinner break, so I wandered down the NBC halls to where Johnny Carson was shooting that night's Tonight Show, and slipped in a door. (As you could do then but can not do now, as you know.) I stood beside an audience bleacher next to someone else who had come in that door, the local KNBC 11 pm news anchor then, Tom Brokaw. I witnessed all of that from mere feet away, and Tom Brokaw and I were laughing our heads off together. I know it was 1969, not 1970, as I did not spend any of 1970 hanging out on the Laugh-In set.

22 years later, I met my friend Barry Humphries for the first time on that same stage. So thanks for that blast from my own personal past today. Twas a trip.

I used to slip in through those same doors at NBC to watch Laugh-In and Carson and Golddiggers…and Douglas is right. You can't do that there or anywhere these days. That was Stage 1 and while Show Biz History was probably made often at all the stages in that studio, more of it was made on Stage 1 at NBC than anywhere else in the TV industry. I'm so sorry there's nothing like that today. Thanks, Doug!