Some time ago here, I linked you to videos of some great American musicals performed — sometimes translated, sometimes not — in Korea. Here's another one. It's Sweeney Todd and I'll bet someone suffered long and hard to translate all these songs but especially the first one in this video…

I have so far gotten through The Pandemic without getting COVID.  The main reason for that probably has to do with how much of the last few years I've spent not going anywhere.  Apart from a few days in San Diego for last year's Comic-Con, I haven't traveled far…and when I've left the house and been around others, I've usually been masked.  Some combination of those two things and prompt doses of Moderna have done the trick…I guess.  But we'll never know for sure.

We may also never know for sure how necessary or effective all that masking has been.  Liz Highleyman reviews a lot of the studies on this matter and comes to the conclusion that you can't come to a conclusion.  The surveys are all over the place and this looks like one of those questions where the one most folks will believe is definitive and matter-settling is whichever one gives them the answer they want to believe.  One friend of mine who masked but hated it is way too quick to believe this is settled law.

I masked because my doctor told me to mask.  As I think I've written here more than once, I don't think my doctor is infallible; just that on matters of medicine, he's way less fallible than I am.  Actually, 100% of my doctors — and I have, I think, seen twelve of them since this thing started — are still all pro-masking. A few months ago when I went to a big medical building for an MRI, there was a sign on one wall that just said, "There's a reason doctors wear them around sick people or in surgery."

I'm wearing them less often now but I ain't throwing mine away. I'll probably mask up at WonderCon whenever I'm not on a stage or dining. If anyone tries to tell me that's over, I'll tell them I'm cosplaying as a time traveler from March of 2020. What I probably won't do is ever assume the question of whether masking has lessened COVID or just been a waste of paper and elastic has been settled beyond a shadow of a doubt.

This is going to be a long post. Among the many components I've always loved in MAD magazine were the poems and song parodies, most of which were written by either Frank Jacobs or Larry Siegel. For decades, those two men were among the magazine's most prolific contributors. I used to tell folks I know who worked at MAD that they had to get a recording studio and a batch of singers and musicians and record an album of these tunes.

No one has ever done this but I recently did find the video below that was recorded years ago at a gathering of F.R.U.S.O.P., which stands for "Free Range Ukulele Society of Oak Park." That's Oak Park, Illinois and the performers here are two folks whose names I believe are Laura and Mike. They sing five song parodies from the pages of MAD and the audience not only sings along but many of them are also playing ukuleles.

I'm thinking it would be neat to have everyone doing that at my funeral. You don't have to dress up but you're required to bring your ukulele.

The first three numbers are "Hello, Deli," "Ground Round" and "Chopped Liver," all from MAD #110. "The Bluefish Lie Dead in the Ocean" is from MAD #135 and "The Alfred E. Neuman Anthem" is from MAD #151. The Bluefish one was written by Larry Siegel and the others were penned by Frank Jacobs. Let's watch that video and then I'll have more to say…

Here I am with more to say. The gent I think is named Mike got the history of MAD's legal battle a bit wrong. He said it was spawned by their parody of "Moon River" and they were sued by its composer, Henry Mancini and others. The suit was actually over the song parodies in Sing Along With MAD, a special insert in More Trash From MAD #4, an otherwise-reprint collection that came out in 1961. The parodies in it were written by Jacobs, Siegel and members of the MAD editorial staff, which mainly meant Nick Meglin and maybe Jerry DeFuccio.

The lawsuit was Berlin v. E.C. Publications, Inc. and it was filed in 1961 about songs written by Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. Henry Mancini was not involved. His song "Moon River" was first heard in the 1961 movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's, but the MAD parody of it — "Chopped Liver" — wasn't done until 1967, long after the legal battle was over.

After the suit was filed, MAD continued to do song parodies, though less often and when they did, they usually omitted the footnote, "Sung to the tune of…" In their famous parody of West Side Story in MAD #78 in 1963, Jacobs wrote his versions of Stephen Sondheim's lyrics but you had to figure out which tune in the play to sing each one to. It wasn't difficult.

There were 57 song parodies in Sing Along with MAD. Many of the parodied songs were in the public domain and I think a few composers declined to sign on to the legal action so the lawsuit was just about 25 compositions. The court decided that while the lyrics in two of the MAD rewrites were too close to the originals, the other 23 fell clearly into the realm of parody and protected speech.

The songwriters should have quit there but they appealed to Second Circuit which ruled that all 25 were fine. Then they appealed that adverse (to them) decision to the U.S. Supreme Court which in March of 1964 refused to hear the appeal so that ended that. MAD immediately began running more song parodies and resumed telling you which song was being parodied. As Mike noted in the above video, the magazine did indeed make history.

One other thing I should mention: Years ago at Comic-Con in San Diego, I moderated a MAD panel with Frank Jacobs among the panelists. I asked each of several MAD contributors there which piece they did for MAD got the most reaction and Frank, after a little thought, have this answer: He said that it was the parody he did of the song made famous by Petula Clark, "Downtown." His version was "Ground Round" and he said that for some reason, long after it had appeared in the magazine, people were still singing it to him.

Whereupon I dug into this silly memory of mine and recited the lyrics, recalling them somehow from MAD #110, which at the time was at least thirty years earlier. The lyrics can be found on several webpages on the Internet but all the ones I've seen get some of the words wrong — obviously, the result of someone doing them from memory, not looking them up. I looked them up…

When you eat meat / but hate the meat that you're eating / Then you've surely got
Ground Round!

It's so unnerving / when they're constantly serving / in an eating spot
Ground Round!

It may be called a Chopped Steak, a Salisbury or Beef Patty!
No matter what it's called, it's always overcooked and fatty!
What can you do?

Sound off to your waiter there / And loudly pound on your table
Stand up on your chair / And shout Ground Round!
Piled on my plate I see / Ground Round!
Always you're conning me! / Ground Round!
Why must it always be? / Ground Round! Ground Round! Ground Round!

I quoted these lyrics before here and back then, I said that if someone would make a video of them singing Frank's parody and would post it on YouTube, I would feature that video here. No one, as far as I know, did. The only time I've seen his parody on YouTube is the one from our friends above at the ukulele society, plus I've heard (but have not found) that somewhere there's a video of Drew Carey singing it. My offer stands.

Back in this message, I posted a link to a medley of Hal David/Burt Bacharach songs performed by The Carpenters. A lot of you wrote in that you really enjoyed it so perhaps you'll enjoy what's basically the same medley performed by The Carpenters on The Ed Sullivan Show for November 8, 1970. This episode was shot at at Walter Reed Army Hospital, Washington, D.C. and the audience was mostly wounded soldiers. In addition to The Carpenters, the lineup included Freda Payne, The Four Tops, Hank Williams Jr., Rodney Dangerfield, Ron Carey, the comedy team of Skiles and Henderson, and magician Dick Ryan…

By the way! I run a lot of clips here from Mr. Sullivan's show. Though a few episodes of that series no longer exist, most of them were preserved and moments from them have been quite available in syndication and on specials. Much credit for that should go to producer Andrew Solt, who in 1990 acquired the rights to that library and has taken very good care of them.

For the first ten years that Solt's SOFA Entertainment controlled those shows, much of the editing and caretaking was done by a lovely and wonderful lady named Susan F. Walker, who wrote, directed and/or produced a great number of excellent documentaries on show business. I believe she received at least two Emmy nominations and she certainly had the love and respect of all who knew her. She died way too young in 2000 and any time I see one of these clips, I think about her.

An anonymous person — anonymous to you but I know his name — wrote…

I'm expecting your usual infallible Super Bowl prediction that you won't be watching but I'm curious why. You're an American Male. How can you not be interested in football?

I'm just not and I don't think that's as rare as you probably do. I'm not much of a spectator of spectator sports…and to the extent I do watch, it's a smidgen of baseball — and a smaller one since Vin Scully stopped broadcasting. I also like to watch gymnasts from time to time but not even live. I like to watch clips of past excellence. I can't tell you the last time I watched an entire sporting event and cared about its outcome. Most likely, Sandy Koufax was pitching.

I was trying to think of a good reason to give you, my anonymous friend, about why I have so little interest in football. At first, I thought it might be because of my father. He had no interest in football but he loved baseball. Maybe the fact that I have even that teensy interest in baseball comes from the fact that he loved it and it was a father/son bonding thing once in a while. Then again, he loved basketball almost as much and I know as little about that sport as I do about football.

Or hockey. Or golf. Or any other sporting event. I never "got" how people could get so head-over-heels ecstatic when "their team" won. I always think, "Unless you had money on the game, you didn't win anything!" And clearly most folks' love of sports is not based wholly on wagering.

Later today when the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles square off — and yes, I just had to Google to find out what teams were playing — I can see no reason to root for one over the other. Even if there was an L.A. team in there, I couldn't gin up a gram of caring. And approaching the age of 71 in this country, I still haven't paid enough attention to football to know how it's played.

This is not intended to lessen anyone's enjoyment of the game today and I'm sure it won't. I don't care about the game and if you do, you don't care that I don't care, nor should you. I'm just trying to answer the question for my anonymous-to-you correspondent and maybe for myself as to why I don't care. And I think the answer is that I simply don't…nor do I care why I don't. Enjoy the game if you might.

The Beatles made their big splash on American TV the night of February 9, 1964 on, of course, The Ed Sullivan Show.  Two days later, the following article appeared in some newspaper written by someone named Paul Jones.  Read it and we'll discuss it…and if you need to see it larger, click on the image below and it should magically grow in size…

I have no idea who Mr. Jones is but I would guess that he was astonished at how popular enduring the music of John, Paul, George and Ringo has been. It may have been garbage to him at the time but to folks of my generation — I was on 2/9/64, less than a month from turning twelve — The Beatles were and remain pretty darned important. Still, to be fair to Jones, he was hardly the only member of his generation who at the time felt that way.

I came across this article online and I thought I'd post it here to preface a number of pieces I'll be posting here in the coming weeks. They'll be about something that bothers me more than it probably should. And what this thing is that bothers me is this…

A lot of friends who are my age, give or take about ten years — folks who revere The Beatles and other groups of their era — are starting to sound a lot like this guy.

They're dismissive and sometimes even contemptuous of the music of today, the movies of today, the television of today…anything created by folks of the current generation. And they're aghast and sometimes outraged that "These Kids Today" don't know and love everything that we knew and loved back when we were in our early teens.

I shall have more to say about this topic in the coming weeks.

Having seen it on streaming video, I'm sorry I never got to see the Broadway musical of Mr. Saturday Night on Broadway…and we've heard nothing about any future productions anywhere. An awful lot of you wrote me, back when we were talking about it here, to say you'd seen it and that it deserved to run longer than 116 performances.

Here is a video of the curtain calls on its closing night with speeches by Billy Crystal and a few other folks…

When I was learning how to play Blackjack the "right" way, I often came across the name of Persi Diaconis in the books I was reading. The first few times I saw that name, I wasn't sure why he kept being cited as an authority but I eventually learned, he was the world's greatest expert on card shuffling. He's a magician-mathematician who, among other accomplishments, determined the number of shuffles it takes before a deck of cards is thoroughly randomized. If you shuffle cards the way most people do, that number is eight.

Roger Green sent me this link to an article about Mr. Diaconis and his amazing work. Thanks, Roger.

In memory of Burt Bacharach — and for that matter, Karen Carpenter and Hal David — here's a medley of Hal David/Burt Bacharach songs performed many years ago by The Carpenters…

I think I mentioned that I had extensive plumbing work done on my home recently. The other day, I got into the shower and was all lathered up when the water suddenly went down to a tiny trickle. I managed to unsoap myself, dry off, get dressed and run outside to the main water valve to see if it had been shut off. It had not. There was no visible explanation for the lack of H2O so I called my plumber guy to whom I paid an awful lot of money just weeks ago.

I assumed he had done something wrong but I didn't say that. I just told him what had happened and he reacted in horror and promised to speed right over just as soon as he completed the job he was on. I have a real good plumber guy now. Remember how I used to say I had the best plumber in the world? Well, I did but he died and I'm pleased that I now have a new guy I can say that about.

I returned to work, itching a bit from the soap I'd been unable to rinse off. About fifteen minutes after the water had stopped, I saw a truck out my window. It said "LADWP" on it and even I knew that meant it was from the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power. Its driver was putting up a sawhorse-type barrier to signify that my street was being closed off for work. I ran out and he told me the whole block was out due to a water main leak at the other end of it. My water, he said, would be back on in fifteen minutes.

I called my plumber just as he was getting in his truck to come over and stopped him…and I apologized for even thinking the outage was his fault. Fifteen minutes later, I rinsed me off. Sometimes, we shouldn't be so hasty to assign blame even when we don't say it out loud.

Some folks asked for more stories about the time when I was spending about a fourth of my life in Las Vegas. This was mostly back in the nineties when I was (a) playing a lot of Blackjack, (b) sometimes seeing a showgirl there, (c) getting away from L.A. so I could get writing done…and I guess there was also a (d). I knew or met a lot of Vegas performers so I could get backstage easily and I had a certain fascination with how that corner of show business worked.

I usually stayed on The Strip because I had a lot of comps for free rooms and sometimes meals at hotels there. I stayed in most of them at one time or another but most often at the Imperial Palace, The Hacienda, The Maxim, Harrah's and Bally's. Of these, the first three are gone and Bally's has recently been renamed The Horseshoe. Although I played a fair amount of Blackjack downtown, the casinos there were stingy with comps for players so I only stayed downtown twice — once at the Golden Nugget and once at what is now called The Plaza but which was then called The Union Plaza.

It was called that because it adjoined the station for the Union Pacific railroad. Years after there stopped being rail service to Vegas and that station was gone, the hotel became Jackie Gaughan's Plaza and after Mr. Gaughan sold his interest in it, it became The Plaza. By any name, it's located at 1 Main Street and when it opened in 1971, it had 500 rooms and was billed as the largest hotel in the world.

These days, 500 rooms is like a large motel. The MGM Grand now has more than ten times that number.

When I stayed at the Plaza in the eighties, it didn't seem to have been cleaned much since its opening. Even though the room was free, I briefly considered switching to somewhere else where I'd have to pay…but I didn't. I don't care much about fancy in a hotel room when it's just me. Gimme a bed, a toilet, a sink, a shower and a desk on which I can work on my laptop and I'm fine. My room at the Plaza met those requirements…barely.

I got there one afternoon and spent the day alternating writing in my room with sessions at Blackjack tables, mainly in a downtown casino called Benny Binion's Horseshoe. Benny Binion's Horseshoe is still there but a few years ago, it lost the "Horseshoe" part of its name to the folks who own Bally's and as it says above, what was Bally's over on The Strip is now The Horseshoe. I made a little money at the tables, earned a little more writing and somehow went to bed without having eaten anything since breakfast.

Around 5:15 AM, I awoke with a desperate need to eat…almost anything. Well, I thought, I'm lucky I'm in Las Vegas where something is always open. I got dressed, went downstairs, didn't find any appealing options within the Plaza and ventured out onto Fremont Street in downtown Vegas.

It was still dark but not too dark with all that neon everywhere. It was also spooky at that hour. The street had very few people on it and they all looked somewhat homeless and sad, shuffling along without making eye contact with anyone. There was also a steady cold drizzle falling. It hit me intermittently as I passed under one marquee after another, looking around, finding no particularly inviting places to get chow.

And in the midst of this dank mood and damp weather, I suddenly saw a completely outta-place oasis. It was a very old casino — not a hotel-casino, just a casino — called The Golden Goose.

The Golden Goose, I later found out, opened in 1974. A sister club next door opened soon after — then called Glitter Gulch, at other times called by other names. Both were slot joints, filled with one-armed bandits which, it was said, paid off at roughly the same frequency at which Halley's Comet reappears in our skies. That would be once every 75-79 years. If you had a bag of coins and wanted to make sure you got rid of them once and for all and never saw them again, there was no surer way than to put them in a Golden Goose slot machine.

To lure you in to forfeit that money, the place offered all sorts of free stuff.  In the photo above from I-don't-know-what-year, they offer a free LCD digital watch, free ice cold drinks, a chance to win a "golden egg" every 30 minutes and you could also get a "colossal shrimp & crab cocktail" for 99 cents.  I remember on that drizzly morning, they offered a free 3-minute phone call to anywhere in the United States.

How did you get all this free stuff?  You had to go to the Prize Center, which was located in the back of the casino. The back.

You had to walk past all those slot machines…then wait a few minutes next to other slot machines…then apply for your free popcorn or your free LCD digital watch (one such request per hour)…then come back in thirty minutes to get it.  Which of course meant hanging around or walking several times past all those slot machines.  I had seen one of those LCD watches once on a previous visit.  If while waiting for yours to be ready, you dropped just one dollar into one of those slot machines, they made about 60 cents profit right there.

The same principle is at work every time you go to a Costco. You are almost certain to want one or more of these three things: Paper towels, toilet paper or a rotisserie chicken. Where are they located? In the back of the store.

I became rather fascinated with the place.  You see scams and swindles often in this world but you rarely see them that naked and obvious.  Every time I saw the Golden Goose, I thought of a politician who begins his speech by saying, "Before I begin, I just want to alert you that pretty much everything I say will be an outright deliberate lie, operating on the assumption that you're all so friggin' stupid that you'll believe every word of it!" We've gotten very close to elected officials or those who wish to be elected actually saying that.

That drizzly morn, I stopped out front of the Golden Goose and I could see people, none of whom looked like they could afford a room for the night, feverishly pumping coins into the machines.  And out front, looking way too sunny and cheery for the moment, there was this young woman dressed like Mother Goose or maybe Little Bo Peep: Big hoop skirt, bonnet, a wig with pigtails…the works.  She was standing next to a colorful dispensing machine filled with plastic eggs and she was displaying a smile that showed all 32 teeth and maybe a few more. After greeting me, she asked the only question that mattered at that moment…

"Would you like to play The Golden Goose Game?"

The sheer contrast — all that sunshine coming off that woman, all that light rain falling on my head — was stunning. I just stood there as she explained to me that all I had to do was pull the handle and an egg would come down the chute for me. Nothing to buy, nothing to sign. Absolutely free. And in that egg would be a coupon for a "valuable" prize that I could redeem at the Prize Center in, of course, the back of the casino.

"It might be a hundred dollars," she said.

I asked her how long she'd been doing this. She said about six months. I said, "In all that time, has it ever been a hundred dollars?" She said, "No…but there's a first time for everything."

I asked her, "What is it usually?" She looked around to make sure no one could hear and she said, "A personalized key ring with your initials on it." Then she checked again and whispered to me, "It's always a personalized key ring with your initials on it. Every egg in there has a coupon in it for a personalized key ring with your initials on it."

I asked, "Do I at least get to keep the plastic egg?" She said, "No. I have to get it back and reload it with another slip that says 'personalized key ring with your initials on it' and put it back in the machine."

Then — and I could sense she was just bursting to say this to somebody that morning — she added, "Listen…I don't run this thing. I came to Vegas to be a dancer and this was the best job I could get that didn't involve turning tricks or swinging on a pole. You think I like being out here at 6:00 in the morning in the rain dressed like this?"

There was no one else passing by so we stood there talking for maybe fifteen minutes. Her name was Audrey. She had a three-year-old daughter that her roommate was taking care of at the moment. Later in the day, the roommate would be serving drinks to gamblers at the Riviera and Audrey would be taking care of the roommate's five-year-old son. Both children were the result of short-term romances with guys who hadn't been seen for a long time.

She seemed smart. She seemed like she could achieve much in this world. But she was standing out on Fremont Street at 6 AM dressed like Mother Goose or maybe Little Bo Peep, trying to persuade mostly-drunk passers-by that they might win a hundred bucks but they'd actually get a key ring which might be worth…oh, I dunno…fifty cents maybe?

She couldn't resist telling me all the secrets of The Golden Goose Game. The reason the key ring was personalized with your initials was because, first of all, it made it seem more special. But the larger reason was that the personalization made it seem reasonable that you had to hang around for a half-hour waiting for it.

And the real truth was that they almost never had to make up a new key ring for you. They had a rack there with hundreds of pre-made key rings with every likely combo of initials. When you came back for yours, they just grabbed one off the rack and gave it to you, remarking on how unbelievably lucky you were at the moment. She said, "They're supposed to tell you, 'Gee, if I was on a lucky streak like that, I'd pick out one of those slot machines and cash in on it.'"

She asked me what my initials were and I told her, "Believe it or not, M.E."

She said, "They probably have fifty key rings already made with your initials but they'll still make you wait the half-hour. If your name was, like, Quincy Xavier, they might have to actually make one up fresh for you. But I'm not sure the lady at the booth at this hour even knows how to work the machine. You might have to come back later in the day for it."

I had to ask: "Would Quincy Xavier actually make another trip here for his free personalized key ring?" She replied in a "That's a stupid question" tone, "Of course. It might not be worth anything but it's free." We talked for a few more minutes but suddenly there were people strolling past and she had to do her job, trying to get them to play The Golden Goose Game.

So I walked on until I found a McDonald's and there, I ate my standard McDonald's breakfast order: A sausage biscuit with egg, that thing they call a hash-browned potato, and an orange juice. I took my time dining and a little while later, I passed the Golden Goose again on my way back to The Plaza. Audrey was all excited and she told me, "You should have played The Golden Goose Game! You should have played The Golden Goose Game!" I asked why.

She said, "I swear I didn't put it in there but someone else must have! This guy pulled the handle and in his egg, it said he'd won a hundred dollars! The manager said that he's worked here like five years and that's never happened!"

I said, "Your manager must have been upset. Are you in any trouble?"

She replied in that same "That's a stupid question" tone, "Of course not. They gave the guy a bucket of a hundred silver dollars and he yelled out, 'This is my lucky day!' and immediately started pumping them into slot machines! They had them all back in under six minutes."

COMING SOON TO THIS BLOG: Another Tale of the Golden Goose.

Here's Sergio Aragonés and some other guy talking about the new Gods Against Groo mini-series, the second issue of which is now on sale…

We were talking here recently about the recording by Brewer & Shipley called "One Toke Over the Line" and how, amazingly, Lawrence Welk had a clean-cut, well-scrubbed couple sing it on one of his shows. No one — not the orchestra, not the other performers, not the crew, not anyone on the production staff — said, "Uh, Mr. Welk…you do know that this is not a song about Jesus, right? It's a song about marijuana."

Or maybe someone did and he didn't care. Or didn't think his audience would. Or something.

Apropos of all this, my longtime pal Joe Brancatelli sent me this note…

So this would have been 1988, the weekend my wife (who flew in from Honolulu) and me (I flew in from New York) met in San Francisco and decided to get married.

We're walking down Richmond Avenue and come across a little music club with a sign in the window: Tonight Only! Maria Muldaur and Brewer and Shipley. How could you not, right?

Brewer and Shipley is the opening act. it's years since "One Toke was a hit." Of course, and they felt compelled to explain to the audience who they were. "We were on The Ed Sullivan Show, you know," Brewer explained. "He booked us as a gospel act. We even met him backstage and he encouraged us to play our Jesus song, said he was looking forward to hearing it."

"We were puzzled," Shipley chimed in. "And nervous because we didn't want to upset him. So we found someone backstage and asked what Ed might be talking about."

You know, the guy said. Play your big hit about Jesus.

Again. We were confused.

"Then," Brewer adds, "we figured it out. We were booked as a religious act because Ed only knew the first line of our song: 'One Toke over the line, Sweet Jesus, one toke over the line…'"

The crowd roared.

You know, my first thought upon reading Joe's e-mail was along the lines of "I'm not sure I buy this." I mean, I'm sure he's accurately reporting what was said from the stage by Mr. Brewer but it's hard to believe that even if Ed thought that, he had a pretty efficient staff and network censors. It's hard to believe that someone on the crew or in the orchestra or from the network or in Ed's employ, didn't say, "Uh, Mr. Sullivan, you do know what a 'toke' is, don't you?"

That was my first thought but my second was this: You wouldn't think that could happen on The Lawrence Welk Show either but we have video proof that it did. So I'm withdrawing my skepticism on this.

In case you haven't heard: CBS will not be replacing James Corden on The Late Late Show…

…we hear that a reboot of @midnight, a series that ran for 600 episodes on Comedy Central from 2013-17, has been chosen for the 12:30 a.m. time slot currently occupied by The Late Late Show.

I have no idea if this is a wise decision. That'll probably depend on who they get to host it…and reportedly, it will not be Chris Hardwick, who I thought was about 95% of the reason to watch the original @midnight. My guess is that CBS is thinking they can get the same numbers with a much cheaper show…and if they get the right host, they might be right.

Sorry I haven't been around as much as usual but things have been busy here, plus I've been fixing this 'n' that on the new software…which, I know, looks an awful lot like the old software. Since this site has been around for a while, a lot of our old video links don't link to anything anymore. But right after the changeover to the new codes, about 400 of them that should have worked didn't and I've now fixed that. Any video links now that don't work never will. A few more other bugs will soon be exterminated as well.

I have written a lot on this blog about my neighbor back when I was growing up, Betty Lynn. Folks know her best as Thelma Lou on The Andy Griffith Show but she was on a lot of other programs, sometimes as a guest and sometimes as a recurring character. The fine folks at MeTV have whipped up a little quiz about her TV appearances not as Thelma Lou and I thank Eduardo Duran for letting me know about it.

Didn't watch The State of the Union live and I only caught a few snippets online. I'm just not in the mood for "Everything my party does or wants to do is right, everything your party does or wants to do is wrong." And too often when I hear those kind of people, my main thought is: "You don't really believe what you're saying. You just think it will get you cheers and donations from your base."

Lastly for now: A number of friends of mine in the comic book business are wrestling with this question: What do you do when someone gets hold of your address and without asking first, ships you one or many comics you worked on, asking that you sign them and send them back? They may or may not include return postage and packing material. The options seem to be (1) sign them and send them back or (2) consider them a gift for you to do with as you please. From now on, I'm opting for (2) and what I'll do with them will probably be philanthropic. Anyone have a problem with that?