Monthly Archives: June 2014

I promised I would announce here when the first issue of the long-awaited Groo Vs. Conan mini-series was coming out. Well, it's coming out July 23rd, aka Preview Night of the Comic-Con International. Here's a preview.

• Kind of amazed today by the number of people on the 'net who don't understand the difference between contraception and abortion.

You know, I really don't know what to think of this Hobby Lobby thing. One of the weird things about discussions on the Internet is that every time an election is won or a major decision comes down, you can always find a couple of articles saying the winners were the losers and the losers were the winners. Back when I occasionally tuned in Rush Limbaugh, he was a special master of this. Republicans would lose a big vote somewhere and you could count on Rush to shout, "This is the best thing that could have happened to us! Democrats will regret the day they won this one." I never got the sense in those cases that he would have said the opposite if they'd lost: "Oh, we'll regret our victory!"

So yeah, this could lead to legislation, the battle over which could force Republicans into positions that will cost them more of the female vote. And yeah, the Supreme Court didn't go as far as some right-wingers hoped, suggesting they won't in future cases. And yeah and yeah and yeah and reading all the debate, my overriding feeling is that this again proves that an employer-based health insurance system is impractical and we should unlink Who You Work For from What Medical Coverage You Have.

The current set-up has never made a lot of sense and this makes it worse. Let's say this decision gets carried to other matters beyond abortion.  It does seem like it's just a matter of that…and just a matter of condemning sex not for procreation.  But let's say it extends past that.  Let's say you're working for a family-based company and getting your insurance through them…and let's say they were all Christian Scientists and you're not. And let's say you came down with a terrible disease, the kind that most doctors would say requires immediate surgery. Are they going to tell you because of their faith, that's not covered and instead of going to a hospital, you have to go to a reading room?

Well, as expected, the Supreme Court issued two rulings this morning and I didn't like either. Neither one was quite as bad as it could have been but I think they were both wrong and so did four out of nine Supreme Court Justices in each.  Apparently, corporations are people but women aren't.

Am I misremembering some "good old days" when the Republican appointees didn't almost always vote the way Republicans wanted and the Democratic appointees didn't almost always vote to the satisfaction of their party? When all nine Justices were a bit more unpredictable instead of just one and sometimes two?

I recognize that sometimes these partisan decisions swing the way I want. I just find myself wishing we could respect these opinions as something more than the triumph of Democrats or Republicans managing to get their guy or gal on the High Court at the right moment. Congress works like that and it's supposed to work like that. Bills get passed or don't get passed because of who was elected at a certain time. You'd like to think that the Supreme Court, with its members appointed for life, would transcend that kind of partiality.

If these exact same questions had to be decided four or five years from now, the 5-4 decisions might go the opposite way, not because the issues or facts of the cases had changed but because someone on the court had died or retired due to old age and been replaced by a different partisan. Maybe I'm nostalgic for something that never really existed but I used to think the Supreme Court wasn't quite like that and you couldn't count on the Nixon appointees to vote as Nixon would have wanted, the Johnson appointees to vote all the way with L.B.J., etc.

Anyway, it's Monday so up goes the soup can. All it means is that I'm going to try to pay a little less attention to this site than usual today so posting may not be as plentiful. As you may have noted on previous Mushroom Soup Mondays, I often cannot stay away.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule tomorrow on two important cases. I expect to wake up to at least one decision I think is very wrong and very harmful to our country. Maybe two.

One of my favorite movies is the Buster Keaton film, The General. I thought I knew everything there was to know about it…but as Leonard Maltin tells us, there's suddenly a lot more to know.

Kirk Groeneveld has a question…

Just finished reading your column on Bob Kane/Bill Finger and the pending star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Can you give us an estimate of when it will be completed or dedicated? Any advance notice would be helpful, whether through the grapevine, in POV or on Facebook.

No one knows except that it will be before the end of 2020 but most likely some time in 2015. The way it works is that the honoree (or in this case, his or her representative) works out a mutually-agreeable date with the committee and they have five years in which to do that.

Most of the time, the star on the sidewalk is paid for directly or indirectly by a studio or some other entity that has a financial interest in the honoree. They then want the ceremony to take place when the honoree has a new movie opening or a new CD coming out or something else they'll want to promote. It would not surprise me if the Bob Kane star was dedicated on or around the time some major Batman product was coming to the market.

The 1966 TV series is reportedly being released on DVD this November. Someone over at Time-Warner Video is probably rankled that they missed a great promotional opportunity by not arranging for Kane's star earlier. Then they could have arranged a big, press-covered ceremony with Adam West and Burt Ward and Julie Newmar and such.

Or maybe it could have been done for the new TV series which starts this fall, Gotham. It's about the goings-on in Batman's home town of Gotham City, which was named in the comic by Bill Finger.

(I think that Batman-Superman movie is targeted for May of 2016 but I doubt Kane's family will want to wait that long.)

The ceremonies are only announced a week to ten days before the date so if you want to know when the Bob Kane star gets scheduled, you'll have to keep an eye on the Walk of Fame webpage. You might also want to follow Star Girl on Twitter. I'll try to announce it here if I find out about it in time.

That webpage has lots of information on the Walk of Fame, though some of its info seems to be outdated. They say on it that "One posthumous award is given each year." But the 2015 selections include not only Mr. Kane but the late Raymond Chandler and last year, they picked Tupac Shakur and Phil Hartman (both deceased) and the year before they selected Janis Joplin and Luther Vandross (ditto) and so on…

Mel Brooks turned 88 today. I was going to put up a post with his photo but I knew some folks would come to this blog, see a photo of him and go, "Oh no! Mel Brooks died!" Well, he hasn't as of 10:31 PM PT and I hope he never does. What a wonderful, funny man.

This is a musical number from the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors when Mel was deservedly toasted and inducted. It was cut down for broadcast. If you look fast, you can see some cast members from his then-current Broadway offering, Young Frankenstein, whose segment was excised from the number, presumably for time. I was surprised to see them include the Spanish Inquisition with Richard Kind. No one expects Richard Kind. But you'll see Martin Short and Matthew Broderick and Harry Connick Jr. and others, and the gent who starts us off is Frank Langella. The best parts of it are the shots of Mel mouthing his lyrics and/or getting emotional…

Bob Heer reminds me that in 1988, DC Comics put out a book called The History of the DC Universe and they included an essay by Bob Kane about the creation of Batman. Here's an excerpt from it…

I called in my friend Bill Finger who was a pulp writer just starting out to write for the comic books. He made several suggestions which enhanced my crude Batman sketch. He told me to remove the eye-balls from the slits in the mask to make it appear more sinister looking, and also to bring the eye-mask that I had originally drawn down over his face into a Bat-cowl. After awhile the first innovative Batman sketch was completed.

However, I soon refined his early look by elongating the short ears on the Bat-cowl, scalloping the side of the long gloves and changing the stiff bat wings into a scalloped bat-cape which would billow out behind him when in action to make him appear like a large bat.

I would like to pay homage now to my good crony, Bill Finger, who was truly the unsung hero on the entire Batman mystique. He helped me considerably on the innovative sketches on Batman and became the chief and best writer for most of the Batman series from 1939 to the 1960s. His unique style of story telling created the somber, mysterioso mood of the early stories which prevail once again with the current writers on Batman, removing it from the "campy" style of the Batman TV series. Bill also created many of the bizarre super villains such as the Joker, Scarecrow and Catwoman. I created the Penguin, The Riddler, and we collaborated on other villains along the way.

I regret that I did not give Bill a byline, which he richly deserved, but somehow the policy in those days was to give credit only to the original creator and not to the writers who came in after the fact. Bill, I wish you were around now for me to give your just dues for your invaluable input into Batman. I thank you now and God bless you eternally.

There is some dispute over the creation of the Joker. Jerry Robinson was Bob's main art assistant in those days. In fact, the way a lot of people think Bob Kane drew in the early forties was actually the way Jerry drew. Jerry, who always impressed everyone as a man of great integrity and certainly not a credit grabber, claimed he created the Joker. Bob insisted it was Bill Finger and it may well have been; not that Jerry was fibbing but it's likely he contributed something, Finger contributed something and then different definitions of creatorship are in play here.

In any case, it seems pretty clear Bob Kane did not create the Joker and yet last I looked, his contract with DC said they had to say he did. They have to say Bob created all the Batman mythos, Batman included.

So here's another time Bob admitted Bill Finger deserved a byline — "richly," in fact. Even if "the policy in those days" justified not giving it to him then, what justified not giving it to him in 1988?

There is much talk on the Internet about the announcement that some time next year, Bob Kane will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I mentioned it here and joked that protestors would show up for the ceremony with signs that said "WHAT ABOUT BILL FINGER?" Apparently, some folks are talking about actually organizing something of the sort. I'm thinking I may even go out and join them.

For those who don't know: Bill Finger wrote the first Batman story and most of the early ones that established key things about the character and his world. He was a friend of Kane's and a very good writer, and while Kane argued with some accounts of exactly what Finger had invented, even Bob had to admit that Bill made a vital contribution to the property.

In Kane's 1990 autobiography, he stunned many with the following paragraph. The book, like most of the "Bob Kane" art in the comics, was largely the work of someone else. Still, Bob wanted this in there so it's as good as if he'd typed the words himself…

Now that my long-time friend and collaborator is gone, I must admit that Bill never received the fame and recognition he deserved. He was an unsung hero. I often tell my wife, if I could go back fifteen years, before he died, I would like to say "I'll put your name on it now. You deserve it."

But Kane did not do this and I really wish he had. He could have picked up the phone, called Paul Levitz or someone at DC and said, "Look, as long as it doesn't impact how much I'm paid, I'd like to add Bill's name wherever mine appears." If he had, Finger's friends and family would not have to deal with this injustice.

I suspect that it's caused some pain to Bob's loved ones, as well. They can't be pleased by that little black cloud that still hangs over Batman and Bob Kane. No one is. Had he made that call, people would not now be discussing Bob as someone who wronged a friend who made him rich and famous. We'd now be hailing Bob as a helluva great guy who, like the fellow in the cowl, righted injustices.

Around 1946, when DC was afraid of him suing them over ownership of Batman, he secured a very lucrative contract with the company. One of its provisions stated that Bob Kane — and only Bob Kane — would be credited as the creator of Batman and that hero's major supporting players. Kane often acknowledged that certain supporting players were created by others but he insisted on his credit and thereafter refused to give it up or modify it.

His deal also called for him to "draw" a certain number of Batman pages per month. I put "draw" in quotes because everyone at DC knew Kane was not going to draw them by himself and some probably suspected he'd do what he did, which was to hire someone else to do all of that work. Early on in this arrangement, Kane may have occasionally redrawn a figure here or there but at least 99% of the art was by a ghost, usually Sheldon Moldoff. DC was paying Kane a high-enough rate that he could pay his ghost and then live quite well off the remainder of the money. At the same time, many Batman stories were done outside this arrangement with DC editors commissioning the usual freelancers to produce work that would also be signed with Kane's name.

Due to the fluctuating art styles, fans got hip that "Bob Kane" art was drawn by many people. Even as a kid, I noticed that some Batman stories did not look like others appearing simultaneously. Some of it was obviously the work of whoever was drawing the Supergirl strip…which was not signed "Bob Kane."

If a fanzine blew the whistle, they sometimes received an angry letter from Bob or some friend of his scolding them for spreading stupid lies. In at least one, he was outraged by the suggestion that Bill Finger was in any way, shape or form a creator of Batman.

Kane's main "proof" that Finger didn't create any part of Batman was that Finger's name did not appear on the strip. If you read that letter to which I just linked, follow that up by re-reading the above quote from Kane's autobiography — written years later, when Finger was dead and Kane was much more secure in his financial position. Taken together, the logic goes roughly like this: "The proof that Bill Finger didn't create or co-create Batman is that I didn't allow his name on the strip." It still is not there.

In the mid-sixties, Kane negotiated a new deal and the timing couldn't have been better for him. Batman, after many years of not being a hot property, was on TV and bigger than ever. Moreover, the folks who owned DC Comics were itching to sell the company to a big corporation and so had to make sure that Mr. Kane would not queer that sale. He got an awful lot of money or at least what seemed like an awful lot at the time. Thereafter, his working arrangement with DC changed and he no longer supplied pages that he'd allegedly drawn. Instead, DC editors hired all the artists and those men were credited. So, for the first time, were the writers.

Sadly, by this point, Bill Finger was not one of them. As reported by author Les Daniels in DC's official history: "A group of veteran writers, including Bill Finger, Gardner Fox and Otto Binder, pressured DC to provide pensions and insurance; they ended up losing their jobs." (Gardner Fox was the other writer who wrote early, formative Batman stories, as well as being the unquestioned creator of many of DC's top characters.)

Since then, DC has credited Finger for writing certain stories and credited ghost artists for drawing them but the company continues to take heat, probably undeserved, for the absence of any creator credit for him. I don't know the current status but a few years ago, certain folks at the company were actively trying to persuade the Kane family to waive that provision and permit, "Created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger." Last I heard, they refused to entertain the notion despite the fact that sole credit is probably doing Bob's reputation more harm than good.

In the meantime, friends and fans of Mr. Finger have done what they could. Each year at Comic-Con International in San Diego, I present the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing, a trophy that goes to a writer whose body of work has not received proper recognition and/or reward. It was suggested by Finger's old friend and co-worker, Jerry Robinson, who himself made early, important (and anonymous) contributions to the world of Batman. DC is one of the sponsors of this award and next month at Comic-Con, I will co-present this year's alongside Bill's granddaughter, Athena Finger. I'll also be on a panel with her to discuss her grandfather and his work.

If I can, there are a few things I will say on that panel in defense of Bob. One is that his original sin of credit-hogging was committed at a time when the industry was not as sensitive on this issue as it is today. No, Bill Finger did not get his name on work he did on Batman. He also didn't get it on 95% of the non-Batman work he did and there's no indication he objected.

Most writers and artists of comic books before the mid-sixties remained largely anonymous and didn't seem to mind. Many writers regarded comics as something they were going to write until something more prestigious and/or lucrative came along. Even the man born Stanley Lieber has spoken of inventing "Stan Lee" as his pen name for comics, figuring to save his real moniker for novels he would someday write. Most artists did not sign their work even when working on comics where it was permitted and all they had to do was write their name somewhere on page one.

Also worth mentioning is that back in the forties, the role models for most guys who did comic books were most guys who did comic strips. In the newspaper strips, it was pretty much standard for one person to get all the credit no matter who did what. That didn't make it right…just sort of customary.

Someone else could write without credit. Most of you know the feature Flash Gordon and many of you know it was created by the great Alex Raymond, who drew it from its inception. I'll bet not ten people reading this know the name of the guy who wrote it for a lot longer than Raymond drew it and who some think contributed as much to Flash Gordon as Finger contributed to Batman. The writer's name was Don W. Moore.

Someone else could draw without credit. Almost all artists who produced newspaper strips had ghosts to help them with the workload and sometimes, those ghosts wound up doing more of the art than the guy whose name was signed to the strip. In fact, sometimes they did it all, including the signing of that name.

Someone else could even write and draw without credit. After the Mutt n' Jeff comic strip was established and bringing in enough cash to permit him to do so, Bud Fisher reportedly never did anything on it; just enjoyed life and let someone else sit at the drawing board day and night. The unrelated Ham Fisher did much the same thing with his Joe Palooka and the Fishers were hardly unique. All those great guys who wrote and drew Disney comics in the newspapers and comics? Anonymous.

The absence of Bill Finger's name on the Batman feature back then has to be viewed in the context of that era. And it might also be fair to recall that Finger did not seem to make a huge stink about it during his lifetime…a little stink but not a huge one. Finger passed away in 1974. He lived through the Adam West era, reaping virtually no attention or rewards as his characters and storylines, for which he was paid meager, comic book money, turned up on a hit network TV series. He did co-write one episode but that was about it. Then came the period when DC wouldn't hire him at all. Fortunately, that ended though not in time to do him much good.

I met Bill Finger ever-so-briefly less than a year before he died. I was up at the DC offices and an older man I did not recognize was walking around. With my vast interest in veteran comic creators, I had to know who he was and Nelson Bridwell, an editor there, told me. I immediately went looking for the older man to express my long admiration for his work but to my great disappointment, could not find him. It seemed like he'd left the office and I'd missed my chance to meet Bill Finger.

A half-hour later as I was leaving the building, I spotted him coming out of a little newsstand and notions shop in the lobby. I went up, introduced myself and said something like, "Your writing has always been an inspiration to me…which is a nice way of saying that I steal shamelessly from you." He laughed, asked me a little about myself and we then spent five minutes talking about New York taxi drivers and the subway system. Not a word about Batman or Bob Kane or anything that I would have liked to discuss with him.

I knew Bob somewhat better. I met him in 1968, which was a time of transition in his life. He'd made that new deal with DC and under it, the guys who actually drew the comics were finally being credited. In fact, that first day I met him, I showed him the current issue of Batman which was the first to credit anyone else — in this case, Irv Novick. Kane knew it was coming but I don't think he was emotionally prepared to lay eyes on a Batman story with a name on it that was not his. He stared at it a long time then closed the comic and changed the subject.

I probably spent time with Bob on about a dozen occasions, not counting his funeral. I was one of only four people connected with the comic book field present at Forest Lawn that day, the other three being Stan Lee, Mike W. Barr and Paul Smith. We'd all decided independently to attend but one of Bob's friends or relatives kept pointing to us and announcing, "The comic book industry sent an official delegation to honor Bob." I can't recall "the comic book industry" ever acting as one in anything.

The other twelve or so encounters were interesting, though I was never sure which Bob Kane I was going to get. Sometimes, he was the Bob Kane who'd single-handedly created Batman and drawn every single story for around 27 years. Other times, he'd realize that I — and others present if others were present — knew better and he'd talk about the other artists ("my ghosts") and Bill Finger, acknowledging, though perhaps undervaluing, what he believed they'd done.

I may be dead wrong about this but my sense is that he was troubled by Finger's lack of recognition and financial benefit but at the same time, terrified that even the slightest thing he did to rectify matters might slightly diminish his own income and celebrity. He is not the only person in comic book history credited with creating lasting, valuable properties who feels that way about past collaborators. One in particular has really disappointed me over the years.

None of what I wrote above defending Kane mitigates my belief that Bill Finger's name should appear in connection with Batman every time Bob Kane's does. It isn't so much that I object to Bob having his name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Bob Kane was at the very least one of the two people responsible for the creation of one of fiction's most enduring, popular characters. That sidewalk up in Hollywood is full of the names of people who achieved a lot less than Bob did by any accounts. The problem is all the places, including that pavement, where Milton "Bill" Finger goes — and if nothing changes will continue to go — unmentioned.

Before I close this off, I want to get back to that line in Bob's autobiography and I'll quote it here again to save you the chore of scrolling back up to it…

Now that my long-time friend and collaborator is gone, I must admit that Bill never received the fame and recognition he deserved. He was an unsung hero. I often tell my wife, if I could go back fifteen years, before he died, I would like to say "I'll put your name on it now. You deserve it."

When that book came out, that little admission — the first-ever, I believe, from Bob — gladdened the hearts of some who said, "Well, at least it's something." I didn't feel that way. If anything, it had the opposite effect on me.

It would be one thing if Bob seriously believed he deserved sole credit; that what he recalled doing constituted the act of creation and what Finger and others did was all merely embellishing his creation. I wouldn't agree with that but I have met some people — in comics and other forms of entertainment — who have some strange, self-serving ideas about what constitutes the act of creation or even writing. Often, their definition is, "Whatever I did."

If that had been Bob's view of who created Batman, I wouldn't have concurred but it would be a matter of his definition of "creation" versus mine and others. When he admitted Bill deserved credit but did nothing to make that happen…well, that's when I lost a lot more respect for the guy.

I did not lose it all. Bob was kind of intermittently nice to me. Our first two meetings, he was willing to spend an awful lot of time with a 16-year-old kid who was interested in comics and when he figured out that I wasn't buying this line about him drawing it all, he told me about Dick Sprang and Jerry Robinson and many of the other folks who did the work signed with his name. Finding out I was an aspiring writer, Bob asked to read some samples of my work, did…and told me I had no talent for writing and should give it up. I still intend to take his advice but I've been working so steadily as a writer for the last 46 years that I haven't had time to look for another career.

Later, I logged hours with him at conventions or at gatherings involving Jack Kirby or Julius Schwartz. Twice, he joined dinner parties I was hosting up at the Magic Castle and a few days after one of them, I ran into him in Greenblatt's Delicatessen on Sunset Boulevard. Sometimes — not always but sometimes — he was quite cordial and I was able to talk to him the way I talk to any veteran of the comic book field. (If you're ever in Greenblatt's, check out the back stairwell. There's a nice framed drawing up there of Batman and Robin that Bob did for the proprietors.) I helped arrange for him to make a guest appearance on Bob, the situation comedy I wrote for in which Bob Newhart played a comic book artist and later, Mr. Kane phoned to thank me for that. That was gentlemanly.

Even after a few unpleasant encounters in which Bob (Kane, not Newhart) was too busy being The Creator of Batman to talk to anyone, I still did not lose all my respect for the man. The guy did something that gave us one of the five-or-so greatest characters ever in comics. How many people reading this can ever claim that? I would love to be able to celebrate him for that without my mind instantly going, as so many minds do at the mention of Bob Kane, to how Bill Finger remains seriously undercelebrated. Bob could have fixed that and he didn't.

Since then, the cry to credit Bill Finger has only grown and it will not go away. When Bob receives that deserved honor of a star on or about Hollywood Boulevard, there may well be protest signs about and I may be holding one of them. I just hope that someone in his family or close to them will realize that unless they do what Bob said should be done and didn't, an ever-expanding group of people will not think of him as the creator of Batman. They'll think of him, first and foremost, as a guy who didn't do right by the man he himself called "…my long-time friend and collaborator."

I just noticed that the Internet Movie Database believes that Paul Pompian (a TV and movie producer who passed away last January) is the same person as Paul Pumpian (A TV writer who worked on a lot of variety shows for Dean Martin, Lucille Ball and many others). They are not the same person and never were. I haven't spoken to my friend Paul Pumpian lately but I believe he is still alive and funny.

I've given up trying to correct anything on the IMDB because it seems to take forever to enter the data and even longer for them to make the changes. Perhaps someone with more patience or skill than I possess can let them know.

I have a post coming in a day or three that mentions folks who ghostwrite or ghostdraw newspaper comic strips. Paul Pumpian also wrote Blondie for a very long time.

In this video clip I posted here recently, a young David Letterman spoke of being about to tape a pilot for a game show he would host. This brought an e-mail from David Feldman, the writer who pens those great Imponderables books…

That link to the David Letterman interview brought back some memories. The game show pilot that Letterman alludes to was shot just before I started working for NBC daytime in New York City, but one of my first duties when I started working in NBC Daytime Programming department was attending the focus group for The Riddlers. Here, minus the Elvira wraparound is what our group of women saw:

At the time, Family Feud was the hottest show in daytime, and the VP of NBC daytime was looking for a comedian who could create the kind of byplay with contestants that Richard Dawson accomplished on a daily basis. I believe we already had a holding deal with Letterman. Everyone knew he was a great talent and game-show hosting was unlikely to be his ultimate gig. Wheel of Fortune and Hollywood Squares were performing reasonably well for us, but Knockout and The New High Rollers were not. Since we were paying Letterman anyway, why not see if he could fulfill a need for us?

I remember how much fun it was to sit on the "police side" of the one-way glass and watch the focus group watching The Riddlers. There was a lot of laughter on both sides of the glass. Everyone knew the premise of the show was flimsy: The crucial element would be how much the audience liked the host, and whether Letterman's wisecracks would be perceived as affectionate witty banter or cruel sarcasm. As much as the audience laughed at Letterman, they were clearly taken aback by Letterman's banter, especially toward the "civilians" (celebrities were fair game). Combined with research indicating that the gameplay itself generated no interest, The Riddlers was destined for oblivion. But as copies of the pilot circulated around 30 Rock, Letterman's stock went up rather than down, and helped cement the idea of giving Letterman his morning show.

They don't seem to do it a lot these days but there was a time when the networks loved to sign "talent" (performers, writers, etc.) to holding deals and the following would happen: The talent would think, "Great! They love me and they're going to pay me a lot of money and because they're paying me all that money, they really have an incentive to find the perfect show for me!"

And then they'd do one or two failed pilots — or maybe none — and everyone at the network would lose interest in the person. The talent would wind up realizing that at a moment when they were hot and others might be bidding for their services, they'd accepted money to be taken off the market.

Letterman was an exception to that. A couple of guys at NBC liked him. Legend has it that Fred Silverman had to find someone to entertain at a big, important dinner and when no Big Star was available, someone suggested that Letterman kid. Dave did well and that led to Silverman putting on Dave's morning show which led to replacing Tom Snyder. I don't recall all the details but I do remember how close Dave came to being one of those gifted guys who disappears into a network deal and is never seen again. Leno almost did, too. I believe Jon Stewart actually did vanish into such a contract for a while there.

The Riddlers really does look like an unsold game show pilot to me. It was done by Bob Stewart and everyone else who was doing $10,000 Pyramid (or whatever denomination they were then up to) and I'll bet after it was dropped, Letterman started thinking that NBC didn't have a place for him. And if Bill Cosby had agreed to speak at Silverman's dinner, that might have turned out to be true.

I officially love this news story…

On Tuesday, Timothy Ray Murray (pictured) challenged longtime incumbent Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) for the Republican nomination in Oklahoma's 3rd Congressional district. Murray lost, but he did manage to pull in 3,442 votes, good for 5.2 percent of the total. Now Murray says he will contest the outcome of the election. Because, he says, Lucas is dead and has been replaced by a "look alike."

"The election for U.S. House for Oklahoma's 3rd District will be contested by the Candidate, Timothy Ray Murray," Murray wrote in a press release posted on his campaign website. "I will be stating that his votes are switched with Rep. Lucas votes, because it is widely known Rep. Frank D. Lucas is no longer alive and has been displayed by a look alike."

On the website, Murray claims that Lucas and "a few other Oklahoma and other States' Congressional Members," were executed "on or about" Jan. 11, 2011 in southern Ukraine.

"On television they were depicted as being executed by the hanging about the neck until death on a white stage and in front of witnesses," the website claims. "Other now current Members of Congress have shared those facts on television also. We know that it is possible to use look alike artificial or manmade replacements, however Rep. Lucas was not eligible to serve as a Congressional Member after that time."

Oh, I hope this is true. I hope this is true. I know it's nuts but can still I hope it's true.

This is a lively rendition of one of my favorite Noel Coward songs. The singer is Broadway actor Greg Hildreth…

I was up much of last night. Around 3:30 AM, just before I thought I was going to bed, I went out to reset my trash cans. My gardener had placed them curbside for this morn's pickup but some scavenger person had gone through them and moved them out of position. While out there, I noticed several gushers of water shooting out from a neighbor's house, mostly through the garage, like a big water pipe had burst somewhere on the property. I knocked on the neighbor's door but got no answer so I ran back into my home and phoned the Department of Water and Power.

I defy you to get someone at the D.W.P. on the phone at 3:30 in the morning. I did, however, hear a lot of recorded announcements about how I could pay my bill over the phone or online.

Giving up on that, I phoned the non-emergency line of the police department, explained the situation to them and they connected me to the fire department. I explained what was going on to a nice man there and he said, "We'll send someone out." About eight minutes later, a full-scale hook 'n' ladder rolled up with lights flashing but no siren. I showed them what was going on and they were able to roust the neighbor.

It turned out that it was just a garden hose in the back yard that had been left running but it had apparently been left running for a long time. The back yard and garage were flooded and there was much damage.

With all the running around, I didn't get to bed until after 5. Then at 8 AM, the phone rang and I wasn't in sufficiently-deep sleep to not be awakened…

ME: Hello?

MAN: Mr. Evanier [he said, trying to put the dreaded French inflection on it], this is Bob at Annoying Construction. We're out on your street today doing some construction for one of your neighbors and he said you had some work you needed done on your property.

ME: Really? Which house are you working on?

MAN: Uh, I don't have that information here.

ME: Which neighbor of mine told you that?

MAN: I don't have that information, either.

ME: Well then, how can I call them and see how satisfied they are with your work? Wouldn't you do that if you were me before you hired you?

MAN: Yes, I just don't have that information right here.

ME: Is it possible you don't have that information because there is no neighbor and you're not working on my street?

MAN: Uh, something like that. Sorry to have bothered you.

It was a shame he went all dishonest on me. I don't need any work done on my house but I could have sent him to a neighbor who suddenly needs a lot of it.