Among the many mysteries I find in this world is this: How could a man like Rudy Giuliani — who was once the most respected heroic figure in this country — wind up being recommended for disbarment as an attorney? I mean, I understand that greed and a love of money seems to have had something to do with it but aren't there ways to cash in on people thinking you're a man of honor and courage? And did it ever look like there was a lot of wealth to be gained fighting for Donald Trump?

Here's a link to the bar report. And notice these lines…

Respondent's frivolous lawsuit attempted unjustifiably and without precedent to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters, and ultimately sought to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election. He claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence of it. By prosecuting that destructive case Mr. Giuliani, a sworn officer of the Court, forfeited his right to practice law. He should be disbarred.

"Had no evidence of it." How does an attorney go around spreading claims but when it comes time to prove his case in court, he has no evidence? I'm not sure that was hair dye leaking on Giuliani's skull. It may have been brain matter.

Livio Sellone wrote me (several times) with this question…

In Garfield and Friends, why do some animals actually talk? I always thought that Garfield and other animals could never talk in the comic strips, but in Garfield and Friends, for some reason, Mark Evanier added actual talking animals. I'm talking about those awful Buddy Bears. They are shown to speak and able to communicate with both animals and humans. Can they talk, or it depends on the episode?

For example, in some episodes, Garfield can talk to humans, such as "The Legend of The Lake," but he usually can't speak to humans. Another animal character, such as Ichabod Cricket is shown to be understood by humans (in "Half Baked Alaska"), in fact, when he yells in Jon's ear, Jon can hear him. I've always wondered why they decided to add "talking animals" in the show, since Garfield's animals were never able to communicate with humans, and they rarely were understood by humans (In both comic strips and the show, sometimes Jon can hear Garfield, but it's usually, just a gag).

The answer, Livio, is that when you have to do 121 half-hour episodes, you find yourself breaking your own rules. The original working premise of the Scooby Doo cartoons was that all ghosts and unearthly creatures were hoaxes…and also, dogs could only mutter occasional words as long as Don Messick added an "R" sound at the beginning of each word. Then later, after umpteen episodes, they were looking for ways to "freshen" the show and not do the same unmasking-the-fake-ghost story line for the eighty zillionth time. So they added some relatives of Scooby, including Scrappy Doo, and allowed them to talk and they added in real ghosts and werewolves and such.

If the show had been canceled after Season Three or Season Four, they would have adhered to the original premises. Since the show goes on and on and on, the premises need to widen. It even works that way sometimes in live-action shows. My favorite TV sitcom is The Dick Van Dyke Show. When it started, the plan was that the audience would never see the star of the show Dick's character worked on. We'd never see Alan Brady.

Then the storyline in one episode seemed to need us to hear his voice so we heard his voice (provided by producer-creator Carl Reiner) but we didn't see him. Then there were stories that seemed to demand his presence in scenes so Alan Brady (Mr. Reiner, again) was seen but you only saw the back of his head. Then they came up with ideas for good episodes that needed us to see him for real so Reiner was seen on-camera in the role. What some people feel was the best episode ever of that series — "Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth" — wouldn't have worked if we'd only heard his voice or seen the back of his head.

In the case of Garfield, the original convention was that the cat didn't speak aloud. What we, as readers of the newspaper strip, read were his thoughts. His words were in thought balloons. And Odie the dog was so dumb that he didn't "think" at all so we never knew his thoughts. Furthermore, Garfield and his owner Jon were so close, Jon could sometimes intuit what Garfield was thinking.

That was fine for newspaper strip gags that were short enough to be done in three panels. When Garfield turned into a TV star in animated specials, they had to decide what to do about this "thoughts." For Peanuts, Charles Schulz and the producer decided that Snoopy would make sounds but would not have a voice. In some episodes, we heard Charlie Brown telling us what Snoopy was thinking, which worked pretty well. But Snoopy was not carrying the plots of those stories and, of course, they were much longer than your average daily (or even Sunday) newspaper strip.

For Garfield, Jim Davis and the producer (the same producer as the Peanuts specials, Lee Mendelson) decided that viewers needed to hear what Garfield was thinking. Garfield carried the storylines and the commentaries in his thoughts were a major feature of the strip. That was why Garfield's mouth didn't move. We were hearing his thoughts because he didn't talk but, again, Jon sometimes kind of guessed what Garfield was thinking.

Also, animals could hear each others' thoughts. Garfield could hear Arlene's thoughts and vice-versa. Garfield could even hear Odie's thoughts even though they weren't articulate enough to be translated into words we could understand. As more and more of the prime-time Garfield specials were done, more and more animals turned up and each could "hear" the others' thoughts.

In 1987 when I was hired to write a weekly Garfield show for CBS Saturday mornings, we discussed all this. Jim Davis came out to Hollywood. I flew back to his studio in Muncie, Indiana. CBS asked that Jim consider having Garfield talk on this show. They didn't demand it; just ask that he consider it.

We talked a lot and finally decided to continue the policy that Garfield would not talk, per se, but we'd hear his thoughts. His lips would not move…which gave me the idea of having him say something different at the end of the opening titles of each episode. No lip movements meant it was very easy to change what he said there.

We also agreed I'd be adding a lot more animal characters here and there because, well, we had a lot more storylines to invent. The new animal characters could exchange thoughts like dialogue.

But there was another thing: The year before, Jim had started a second newspaper strip — U.S. Acres, which was also called Orson's Farm in some other countries. It was about a bunch of barnyard animals who definitely talked to one another with moving mouths. It was going to share the half-hour with Garfield…which is why the new series was Garfield and Friends. When it went on, it was such a hit that the next season, they were sharing an hour.

From the start, everyone wanted Garfield to occasionally pop up in a U.S. Acres cartoon to unite the two properties…so Garfield (who didn't talk) was intersecting with animals who did. It seemed to work fine. If anyone noticed, they didn't write in.

When I decided to add in the Buddy Bears, I decided to have their mouths move. There were three of them and if their mouths didn't move, you wouldn't have known which one was speaking. Also, the idea was that they were singing their song on TV shows and…well, I just decided it made them more effective as characters to talk. Yeah, it was kind of breaking our own rule but that's the great thing about making your own rules: If you make them, you can decide when to break them. We broke the rules a few other times as you note.

I do not recall anyone ever asking about this before or giving any indication that they noticed. And those shows have been running pretty continuously on television for thirty-five years now. We have literally gotten more mail from viewers who felt that Garfield was eating too much lasagna or who wanted to know what the deal was with The Klopman Diamond.

So I hope this answers your question, Livio. We made a rule and we decided to break it now and then for the good of the show. I hope you won't hold it against us.

An agent I know who represents actors once told me that to be a movie star, it was no longer enough to be good in front of movie cameras. You also, he said, had to "give good panel," meaning you had to be able to go on a talk show and be witty and charming. According to this agent, you didn't even have to be that good at plugging your new movie. You just had to be entertaining…and if you were, people would then flock to see that film. Maybe.

Want an example of someone giving good panel? Here's Tom Hanks on the final episode of Late Night with David Letterman, which aired 6/25/93. He's everything a talk show host could want out of a guest…and take note of the skill of Mr. Letterman in his role.  Someone obviously told him that Hanks had a great anecdote to tell involving Cher.  Dave brings her up in a Carson-like manner, making it sound like conversation as opposed to a planned set-up…but Dave mistakenly thinks the story is about Hanks working with Cher. Not a problem in the least. Tom effortlessly redirects the dialogue to his days as a bellhop…which helps lead him into the story about Slappy White.

And then when he's aware that time for the segment is running out, Letterman slides into the plug for Tom's new movie, which is a lot less awkward than forcing Tom to bring it up.  And through it all, Dave lets Tom do his panel with little interruption and the host makes no attempt to top his guest or do what some might call a "Milton Berle."  That's when the other person on stage gets a big laugh and you try have to interject something to piggyback on that laugh and get a piece of it, even if it means stopping his flow.  A lot of talk show hosts think, "If the guest gets a laugh, I have to get a laugh."  The best ones know there are times when you have to be satisfied to be Bud Abbott.

And after Hanks, stay tuned for Dave's final words as an NBC on-air personality…

Two weeks until Preview Night at Comic-Con. They should start posting the Programming Schedules any day now on their website. I highly recommend that if you're attending, you spend the time to read over the schedule, make notes on what you want to attend…and make notes on what you'll attend as your second choice if you can't get in to your first choice. I will be posting my schedule here after the con posts their entire schedule over there. Other parts of their website may be of great value to you also, especially their COVID Policy.

It's kinda fun watching Chris Christie running for some job like Tucker Carlson's old one on Fox News. Pundits keep saying that he has no chance of getting the Republican nomination but really no one does if Trump stays in the race. If fact, if Trump has to drop out, it strikes me that Christie may have a better chance than the rest of that mob. All he might have to do is demonstrate that he can do as fine a job bashing Democrats as he's currently doing bashing Trump. If the Trump Fans have to look for another guy, they're not going to go with someone polite. They'll want an Attack Dog.

I had a call today from a lady who claimed to be with Medicare and almost immediately, she asked me to verify that I was a member by giving her my Social Security number. I told her, "If you were really with Medicare, you'd just be asking me for the last four digits because you'd already have the whole thing." She sighed, said "You're right…I'm not with Medicare" and hung up.

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When I wrote here the other day about the SAG-AFTRA negotiations for a new contract, I forgot to make an important point I was going to make…

Ordinarily when you have one of these negotiations or a threatened strike, there's a rift in the union that may be subtle or it may be somewhat overt. Imagine two kinds of members of the actors' union. One is the Tom Hanks/Scarlett Johansson type. The other is the guy or gal who's living from bit part to bit part, hoping to get a few lines in this movie or a decent role on that sitcom…and maybe having to supplement their acting income with other kinds of employment.

In the cause of unity, the union has to serve both kinds but their needs are very different. Tom and Scarlett aren't working for minimums and with their clout, they can probably get all or most of what they want when their agents negotiate their deals.

The difference has caused schisms in SAG and AFTRA negotiations in the past…but this time, a major part of the battle is over Artificial Intelligence. And that's an issue that both categories of actors care deeply about. Both kinds want some control over how their voices and likenesses will be used and how they'll be compensated for that usage.

So this may be the strongest the actors' union has been in many, many years. The topic has certainly united a lot of the richest writers with the poorer ones in my union.

I mentioned Dodger Stadium here yesterday and casually remarked that when it was built, people were probably sad to lose whatever it displaced. As several correspondents have reminded me, "sad" doesn't begin to describe what happened. "Furious" would be a better word as it was one of the most shameful episodes in the history of this city.

Naturally, I was too young to follow the story at the time but I remember some of the lingering outrage in the sixties. I knew a lot of people had been displaced from their homes in order to build Chavez Ravine but I didn't realize how many…or how poorly they'd been compensated for the seizing of their property.

It's one of those stories that should be remembered if only so we never do anything like that again. An e-mail from Chris Powe led me to this video which tells the sordid tale. Warning: If you have an ounce of humanity within you, it will make you angry…

CBS Television City still kinda stands at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles.  At the beginning of many a TV show, an announcer would say, "From Television City in Hollywood…" which was true if you think of "Hollywood" as a concept, not as a geographic area defined on a map.  If you go by the map, Television City is and always has been more like "Hollywood Adjacent."

A long, long list of TV shows were made there, not all of which appeared on CBS.  For example, Bill Maher's Real Time (and before that, his Politically Incorrect) were done at CBS Television City.  Among the CBS shows that were housed in that facility at times were The Jack Benny Program, The Red Skelton Show, The Carol Burnett Show, The Judy Garland Show, The Late Late Show with its Various Hosts, The Danny Kaye Show, The Young and the Restless, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, All in the Family…

Oh, it's foolish of me to start listing them.  Hundreds and hundreds of shows, including many you watched, were done there — game shows, specials, sitcoms, daytime dramas, variety shows…everything. Its most famous tenant for over half a century is The Price is Right, which is now relocating to a studio in Glendale. Everything else has moved…somewhere.

I hear mixed things about what, if anything, remains in that complex. If any sort of production is still there, it won't be there for long. A whole new media city with some production and lots of retailing will soon begin appearing on that piece of real estate. Reports vary on how much, if any, of the existing structures will be incorporated into the new layout.

Online, you'll find a lot of people bemoaning the loss of all that history…a lot of folks wishing Television City could live on forever. Part of me is sad to see it go but another part of me has long since come to terms with the fact that the world moves on and old buildings are torn down to make way for new buildings. I worked for a number of years in the old Hanna-Barbera building on Cahuenga Boulevard and a lot of TV shows I loved were made there.

But there came a time after years of sitting empty when it was semi-demolished and turned into, I believe, some condominiums and a health spa. Hanna-Barbera was no longer a functioning studio. It had become a mere trademark for Warner Communications to apply or not to certain properties that had their origin decades ago on that property. I had every reason to be nostalgic about the place and to think of its repurposing as destroying something that was meaningful to my life…but when asked to join a "save the studio" campaign, I couldn't work up the emotion.

If Bill and Joe were willing to sell it, why should others raise funds to preserve it? And we weren't talking about something you could fund with a couple of bake sales and a Sunday afternoon car wash in the parking lot. We're talking about tens of millions of dollars so the building could remain…for what purpose? What would you put in it to fund the upkeep and the property taxes? Some people said it should be a museum of H-B history…but no one volunteered to make that happen. They just wished someone else would do it.

The folks who are sad about the closing of CBS Television City today probably sound a lot like people who were sad in 1952 when Gilmore Stadium was torn down. Gilmore Stadium was the home of the Los Angeles Bulldogs, the first professional football team in Los Angeles. It also at times housed other football teams including the Los Angeles Mustangs, the Loyola Marymount Lions and the Pepperdine Waves. It was also the site of two National Football League Pro Bowls.

And it sometimes housed a baseball team, as well. Long before L.A. had its first major league team, the Los Angeles Stars played there until the construction of Gilmore Field next door. And Gilmore Stadium also housed midget auto racing and rodeos and circuses and other events. Surely many people felt a great sense of loss when it was torn down in '52.

Gilmore Stadium was torn down so they could build Television City in its place. And then five years later, Gilmore Field was torn down because Television City needed additional parking…and also because the field was kinda useless once the Brooklyn Dodgers migrated to Los Angeles. The team started playing in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum until their own stadium could be built. Someone probably felt sad over the demolition of whatever was demolished to make room for that stadium.

The point is that sometimes, people miss something when it goes away…but it makes room for something else that is so wonderful that people will miss that new enterprise when it goes away.

I have no idea if what will be built on the site of Television City will be wonderful. There have been some strong arguments against the new occupant of that corner, mostly having to do with what it will do to traffic in the area. Having been personally inconvenienced a few times by James Corden doing his little Crosswalk Musicals outside the studio in the middle of Beverly Boulevard, I shudder that the new development might turn out to be ten times worse…and every day.

But the argument that Television City should remain because it was part of our lives is a different argument…and I'm not saying I won't miss it. I probably will, especially when I'm sitting in gridlock caused by its replacement. I just think we have to accept the concept that the world around us cannot look the same way forever just because we want it to. Some things absolutely should be preserved but there has to be a better reason than "It's been there as long as I can remember." So I'll just tell myself that if the Columbia Broadcasting System can live without it, maybe I can learn to live without it too.

It's probably safe to assume that some of you are going to watch the movie of 1776 today. It's one of my favorite films and it's based on one of my favorite musicals — and the movie probably resembles the original Broadway production as much as any film adaptation could.

I don't know a whole lot about the history of the musical but I know that it underwent major revisions during rehearsals and out-of-town tryouts and that at least ten songs — some sources say double that number — were in and then out and one or two were then in again. It was not an uneventful workshop period.

In the finished play and movie, there's a scene in which via a dispatch, General George Washington requests that the War Committee (of which John Adams is chairman) would travel to the New Jersey training ground in New Brunswick. There is, he writes, much whoring and drinking there that needs to be dealt with. Adams, Ben Franklin and some others go there, in part because Franklin is enticed by the prospect of whoring and drinking. They later return to their congress to report on what they witnessed.

On stage and the film, of course, we do not see what they saw. They merely describe off-stage action. In rehearsal and tryouts, there was indeed a scene in New Brunswick with an actress named Carol Prandis playing one of the local "working girls." To her, Franklin — who came across more like an aging pervert at this stage of the production — sang a song about how more fornication would lead to more births and therefore more people to populate their new country.

It was called "Increase and Multiply" or maybe "Encrease and Multiply." I've seen it both ways. Here's how it sounded in a demo recording. The singer is Sherman Edwards, who wrote the songs for the show…

When it and the entire New Brunswick scene were cut, Howard DaSilva (who was Ben Franklin) quit the show and Ms. Prandis was dismissed. DaSilva was eventually persuaded to return to it while Ms. Prandis pretty much got out of acting and later married composer Stephen Schwartz. At least, that's what some have reported. 1776 was, of course, revised enough to become a hit when it opened in New York so at least that part of the story has a happy ending.

The big strike news as far as I'm concerned is that there's no strike news. Talks with SAG-AFTRA continue and, as is appropriate in such situations, there's kind of a news blackout. That's not bad or good. It just means that they're talking to each other and not to the press. A person who's very active in the actors' union said to me the other day, "The issue of Artificial Intelligence and how it's going to be used and not used in this business has united the actors in a way I've never seen before." And this person has been involved in actor-management labor dealings for a long time.

One possible scenario is that — and remember I say this with no inside info — is that SAG-AFTRA makes some sort of deal with the producers regarding A.I. and then that becomes the precedent/framework for a WGA deal regarding A.I. I don't think SAG-AFTRA can get its membership to vote for ratification of a new contract without a sensible, fair A.I. deal.

Whether that will then work for writers is an open question. The first time any of the above-the-line Hollywood unions made a deal involving cable channels, the Directors Guild made a deal that was great for them, not so good when the same formula was applied to writers. The strike that year was because the producers were saying "You must take the same deal we gave directors" and we said no.

I have several e-mails asking me if such-and-such a writer or show is violating the Writers Guild strike by being in production or doing promotion. The answer is "it depends" and whether the project is covered by the Writers Guild contract. Some animation is and some isn't. You can read the WGA Strike Rules here and if you have a question, it may be covered over on this page.

Yesterday, I posted a video of the 5 Neat Guys from SCTV and I said they were my favorite musical group. A reader of this site, Jeff Blair, wrote in to ask, "You like them more than Big Daddy?" And I thought, "No, I guess I don't."

For those of you who started following this site recently: Big Daddy was an L.A.-based group that took hit songs recorded (more or less) after the Kennedy Assassination and rearranged them to sound like they'd been recorded in the fifties. I thought (and still think) their records are very clever and very well-executed…and I'm sorry that the group seems to have disbanded. I have no idea if there's any chance to them reconvening.

You can sample some of their better work here, here, here and here. Their music can still be found on Amazon and Spotify (and I would imagine other places) but no matter how you search, you have to wade through a number of other recording artists with similar names. This is one of theirs.

Here's a video from what may have been their final performance. It was in September of 2017 and, yes, I was in the audience. This number, which never made it to any of their albums, is "Light My Fire," the big hit for The Doors, as it might have sounded if it had been recorded in early 1963 by Johnny Cash…

One of the recurring fights on the Internet is whether a ketchup bottle, once it's been opened, should be stored in a refrigerator or not. There always seems to be someone arguing that since restaurants leave 'em out on the table, it's okay for you to leave yours out on a table or some other non-refrigerated place. Yeah…but most bottles on tables in restaurants are used-up in a day or two, sometimes less. In my house, a bottle lasts a couple of weeks so I keep mine in the refrigerator.

Here is what should be the final answer. It's from the folks who make most of the stuff and they say it goes in the refrigerator.

But here's what seems to me to be a more important issue — two more important issues, really…

Restaurants like to "top off" their bottles of ketchup. When one is half-full, someone takes it in the back, sticks a funnel in it and pours in enough to fill it to the brim. And often, they're pouring in some brand other than the one (usually Heinz) on the bottle's label. I often taste ketchup from a Heinz bottle that is definitely not Heinz.

So isn't that kinda false advertising? How would you feel if you ordered a Coca-Cola® and what they served you was Pepsi® — or more likely, some other brand you never heard of — poured into a Coke® bottle?

And just how old is the ketchup at the bottom of a bottle in a restaurant? If they keep "topping off" bottles that are two-thirds full, that bottom third could be there for weeks, months, in some cases years of non-refrigeration. Never mind investigating Donald Trump. We need Jack Smith to get to the bottom of this.

My favorite musical group…

One should always be cautious about believing news that tells you that what you'd like to see happen is about to happen. But it sure looks like Donald Trump is in for a veritable cornucopia of further indictments…and soon.

Last night, I ordered something I needed from Amazon at 11:45 PM and they promised "overnight delivery." This morning, it was left on my doorstep at 4:55 AM. There are many valid criticisms of Amazon but I think five-hour service is pretty impressive. I assume it helps that I live in a densely-populated section of a large city…but still.

For some reason, the latest wave of spam phone calls I've been receiving consists of folks working for some kind of company with "Medicare" in its name even though it's in no way affiliated with the real Medicare. The caller claims to be consulting medical records of mine that say I have either back problems or Diabetes. I'm guessing all they have is my age but they figure that anyone who's 71 is likely to have one or both of those. I've found that the most fun way to get rid of such callers is to demand they tell me where they got my medical records and I also want their names and their company's contact info for my lawyers. They tend to hang up in a hurry.

Seventeen days until Comic-Con International 2023. One year, I got into a conversation with a serial cosplayer who told me that at each con, his goal was to come dressed as someone unique. He said, "I never dress up as Batman or Spider-Man because then I'm just one of dozens. I even feel I've failed if there's just one person dressed as what I'm supposed to be." This year, I suspect he'll achieve his goal by cosplaying as a movie star who has a new film coming out soon.

As I should have expected, I have e-mails asking me why I haven't posted some remembrance of the fine actor, Alan Arkin. Answer: Because everyone else has and I never met the man. I admired his work, especially on two of my favorite movies — The In-Laws and The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. But I can't think of anything to say about him that others aren't saying.

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The San Diego Comic Fest — not to be confused with the big comic book convention in that city — is a small annual event that seeks to recapture the spirit and the focus on comics that that big comic convention had before it got so big. Or at least it was annual beginning in 2012. It usually takes place in the Spring but this year, the folks who ran it were unable to secure a proper location so they announced they were delaying it until later this year. And now they've announced they still can't find a place to hold it so we're now looking at next year.

That's a shame because I enjoyed myself every time I went. Unlike some who were attracted to it, I am not repulsed or alienated by what Comic-Con has become. I can enjoy both and I always have. It would be wonderful if the people behind the Comic Fest can find the right spot for it in 2024.

Working my way back into regular posting…

The Internet abounds today with speculation and rumors about the extension of talks in the SAG-AFTRA negotiation. Most of it — maybe all of it — is based on absolutely nothing. If you're behind your union, as you should be, stay behind them until you have a concrete reason to decamp. Imaginations running wild do not constitute a reason. Like the WGA, the actors are very well organized and they have the support of ~98% of the membership and a stunning number of prominent, working-all-the-time members. Remember what Ben Franklin said about hanging together.

Like a lot of folks, I'm disappointed in a couple of recent Supreme Court decisions. Kevin Drum thinks the one on Affirmative Action will not affect that many people. I hope that's the case but it's a "win" for a very bad attitude towards one's fellow human beings. And President Biden seems to already be on top of a workaround regarding Student Debt. Still, maybe Liberals should have taken more Supreme Court Justices on expensive luxury vacations and maybe bought homes for their mothers.

Comic-Con is eighteen days away — unless I'm not ready, in which case I think I can get them to postpone it 'til late August. I am currently moderating ten panels and appearing on three others. The Cartoon Voices panels, Quick Draw!, the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel and Cover Story will all be in their usual time slots, though a few will be in different rooms.

Ignore all articles that claim that the paucity of Big Stars this year spells doom for the con. The unavailability of hotel rooms proves there will be no diminution of attendees and there will be no strike by writers or actors in at least the next few years to come.

I still haven't been able to watch the rest of the Tony Awards.

If you're in Los Angeles — or even if you aren't in Los Angeles — the Nuart Theater in West L.A. is running It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World twice a day on Monday and Tuesday.

Every time I mention a screening, people ask me which version is being run. There's only one that is available in any kind of projectible shape either on film or digital. It's two hours and 39 minutes and it's the one that was in theaters a few weeks after the film's original release, after it was cut down. But it's the one the film's director-producer Stanley Kramer called the official version. I'd go if I wasn't so busy and if my friend Amber was available to go with me.

From what we're hearing, there is cause to be guardedly optimistic that Turner Classic Movies will remain the same channel we know and love. I wish I was as confident about some other divisions of that corporation.

Back soon. It'll be a few more days before the next installment of "Border Crossings."

Here's the entire episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, minus commercials, for 11/12/1976. The guests are Frank Sinatra, David Janssen, Olivia Newton-John, ex-con Ray Johnson and there's a "surprise walk-on" by Don Rickles. There were very few actual surprise walk-ons on Johnny's show and he was reportedly pissed about every one of them.

Two quick thoughts: Rickles fawning over Sinatra reminds me a lot of certain Republicans talking about Donald Trump. And it's interesting to me that when you remove the commercials from this 90-minute show, it runs about 64 minutes…