I have a weakness for flash mobs — like this one…

This one's about my mother but it's more about her cats. WARNING: A lot of this story is about cats dying and at the end, my mother. But they all died of natural causes — each cat after living what would be considered a long life for a cat; my mother, once she was in her nineties. For a woman who smoked a pack or two of cigarettes every day since she was a teenager, that's a helluva long existence.

If reading about all this death will not bother you, proceed. If it will, click here to be directed to a website that will check and see if your computer is on.

Now, if you're still with me: Some people love dogs. Some people love cats. In my house when I was growing up, we loved cats…one in particular. We had a wonderful one we called Baby and she was everything you could want in a pet. She was affectionate. She loved to lie on my father's stomach when he sat in his easy chair in the living room. She loved to crawl under the covers with me when I was asleep in my bed.

And no mouse ever dared venture onto our property when Baby was on patrol. She was unrivaled when it came to catching and killing rodents. The only thing Baby ever did that my mother didn't like was to occasionally snag a lizard or a bird. At some point, I think Baby actually sensed that the woman who fed her didn't like those kills and she thereafter confined her hunting to mice. Here is a photo of Baby…

Actually, Baby did one other thing we didn't like. She died. She lived a pretty long life for a cat but eventually, she left us. It was very sad in our house when that happened and my parents resisted the idea of getting another cat…not right away, at least.

A few years later, I moved out of the house and into my own apartment. To deal with the new sense of emptiness they felt in their home, my folks decided it was time for another cat. So one day, I drove my mother to a cat orphanage she knew about.

It was a big house — two big houses, side-by-side, actually — filled with cats. There must have been 150+ in each house and if you were allergic, you would have dropped dead inside of three minutes in either building. Even if you weren't, the aroma from several dozen litter boxes might do you in.

Some of the cats, sensing a chance to be adopted, came up to us and rubbed up against our legs. A few of them even performed. I'm not sure if it was on this visit there or a later one but there was one adorable little feline who rushed to us, hopping on its hind legs and clapping its front paws together. You could almost hear it chanting, "Please take me home with you! Please take me home with you!" We wanted to but the lady who ran the cat orphanage said that cat was not available for adoption and she wouldn't say why.

That first visit, my mother was overwhelmed by the choices. She said, "I wish I could take them all home" before the smell in the place reminded her that might not be a good idea. She finally selected a lovely tan pussycat who seemed very affectionate. My mother signed the adoption papers by which she promised to treat the cat well, never let it out of the house and to bring it back to the orphanage if things didn't work out. The superintendent lady said, "Too many people, if they don't get along with the cat, just open the door and kick it out to become a stray."

I made a cash donation to the orphanage and we took Aurora — that's what my mother named her — back to my parents' house and released her from the cat-carrier…

…whereupon Aurora instantly turned into a snarling, hissing, spitting monster. She hated her new home and she wouldn't let anyone within three feet of her. I have no photos of her because I couldn't get close enough to take one…and she also wasn't around that long. After a few days of hoping Aurora would get acclimated, my mother decided to give up. She called me and said, "That cat just howls all night as if she's in pain. Can you come over and somehow trap her and take her back?"

It wasn't easy but I did it. I put on a heavy jacket and gloves and chased her around the house for a half-hour. Finally, I grabbed her up and she screamed and tried to claw me into confetti. Somehow, I managed to stuff Aurora back into the cat-carrier and drive her back where she came from. We released her back into the house there and she instantly reverted to a friendly, affectionate and docile creature. She gave out with a happy purr and a "meow" that almost sounded like: "Thanks but don't do that again!"

The superintendent of the orphanage told me, "That's pretty much what happened when someone before you took her home. I think we're going to have to just keep her here the rest of her life."

A few weeks later, we gave it another try. I drove my mother back to the orphanage and she picked out another cat. This one really wanted to live with my parents so all was happy until it died a few years later. Back we went to the cat orphanage where my mother picked out another one which she named Black. For obvious reasons…

Black was a good cat and I think she served my parents well for four or five years. I may be a bit off on my cat chronology here but I think there was one more before I took my mother back to the cat orphanage for what turned out to be the last time. She took a long time considering each potential pet in the two houses — perhaps as many as 300 of 'em — before she'd narrowed it down to two. One was almost identical to Black.

"I can't decide between them," my mother said. I reminded her, "There's no law that says you can't have two cats." She smiled at me and said, "I was hoping you'd say that." A half-hour later, we were unboxing two pussycats. My mother named the smaller one "Kleiner," which is a name that in some languages means "smaller." Kleiner, whose name soon turned into "Kleina," was as friendly and affectionate as Baby had been. The black one got the name "Black II." Here's a photo of the two of them…

I took that photo the day we brought them home and it was almost the last time I saw Black II. She was never as openly hostile as Aurora but not long after she moved in, Black II developed a strong fear of men. She would roam the house freely and even let my mother pet her but only if there was no male in the building. If there was, she sprinted for my parents' bedroom and hid under their bed.

Since my father was retired and home almost all the time, Black II was under that bed almost all the time. During sleeping hours, she'd sneak out to eat and use the litter box. Most of the time, she was under the bed and probably directly under him. He almost never saw her…

…and the only other time I did was a few years later when my mother called and said she hadn't seen Black II for a day or so and there was a foul smell in the bedroom. I had to go over, extract the body and take it away as my mother sat in the living room, not wanting to see any of this.

By this point, my father had passed away. Black II and Kleina — and later, just Kleina — were good company for my mother. Both cats lived good lives and Kleina was around for quite a while. When my mother was hospitalized, as she often was during her last twenty years on this planet, she was more concerned about the feeding of the cat(s) than she was about her own welfare. I would go over to tend to that and to litterbox cleaning…or sometimes, her neighbor Betty Lynn would attend to such matters.

Eventually, Kleina passed away. When I asked my mother when she wanted to go back to the cat orphanage, she said (sadly) that she didn't. She was having enough trouble taking care of herself by then and she was afraid she wouldn't do right by a cat. She asked, "What if when I opened the door, it got out? I wouldn't be able to chase her. What if I was hospitalized for a long time? You or Betty would have to come over every day." So she never had another cat.

But I did, sort of. As some of you may remember, I used to feed stray cats in my backyard and for years, always had between one and five out there plus occasional guests for dinner. One regular tenant was an extremely affectionate older feline we called The Stranger Cat. He eventually never left my yard except when my lovely friend Carolyn would let him inside. He'd sleep on a towel in my kitchen while she prepared a meal for us. He truly was a cat who loved being petted and held.

During my mother's catless years, I had to take her to Kaiser Hospital every week or two for some sort of checkup or in-patient treatment. When we were ready to leave Kaiser, I'd say to her, "Would you like to stop off and visit The Stranger Cat?" Sometimes, she was too tired and just wanted to be taken straight home. But sometimes, she'd smile almost impishly and say, "Maybe just for a short visit."

My mother was at that point usually in a wheelchair. She could walk around her house because she knew it so well and it was such a small house but when she went out, she used a wheelchair. There was no way she could get up either the front or back steps of my house or even into the backyard so I'd just pull into the garage and she'd wait in my car while I went and got The Stranger Cat.

He was always there and he seemed to enjoy what transpired as much as she did. I'd carry him over to the open passenger door of my car, place him on my mother's lap and she'd pet him and rub his face and just love the feel of his fur and the soothing, contented purr he sometimes gave off. This would go on for five or ten minutes before she'd hand him back to me and say, "You'd better take me home now." I'd return The Stranger Cat to my yard and drive my mother home.

On that drive to her house, she'd be about as happy as I saw her the last few years of her life. She was very depressed about her deteriorating health and while her doctors prescribed cheer-up medication, nothing made her feel as good as a few minutes of petting The Stranger Cat.

The Stranger Cat died peacefully at an unknown but very old age in May of 2012. I didn't tell my mother and when she asked how he was, I'd lie and say, "Great except that he really misses you." By that point, her medical problems were more acute. When I drove her home from Kaiser that last year, it was always after a long stay, usually including a week or more in a nursing home elsewhere. So she never asked about swinging by my place to pet The Stranger Cat. If she had, I don't know what I would have done.

She died the following October. All through her last few years, as she kept being hospitalized and as it became harder and harder to see or hear or get around, she kept telling me that she wished Assisted Suicide was an option; that she wanted it to be over. When it was, I was glad she was out of physical pain and that she went before she became totally blind, which was probably only a few months away. And I was also glad that she never found out about The Stranger Cat.

Sorry I missed posting yesterday. I'm trying to get work done…both the professional kind and the remodel-my-blog kind. I have a couple of long articles that I wrote some time back and have been saving for times when I was just too busy to write anything new here…or at least anything much longer than this message. I will post one of them before the day is out.

I'm not providing much entertainment here this weekend but maybe this will. Here's a rather long Lewis Black special from 2009, much of which is still timely. Caution: Contains language.

And I'm paying so little attention to the news that by the time I wrote about it, a fighter jet from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia had already shot down the alleged Chinese Spy Balloon. Personally, I think we should have let it float around until Thanksgiving and left a space for it in the Macy's Parade.

Still trying to trim that "To Do" list down to a manageable length. I'm not looking at the news much but what I see is a lot of people panicking over that "Chinese spy balloon" that seems to be drifting over parts of the U.S. — and there are reports that there's more than one and also that these have been there before but the government just kind of hushed that news up because the balloons were harmless and there was a fear people would react like…

…well, like a lot of them seem to be reacting right now. I don't have the energy to read all the articles so maybe someone has a solid take on what these balloons might be spying for and what it is we really don't want them to see that isn't visible on Google Maps.

Meanwhile: The second issue of Gods Against Groo is on sale now. Two more to go and then the next Groo mini-series will follow a few months after this one is completed. One of the things on that "To Do" list of mine is doing whatever it is I do on that series, which I shall do as soon as I figure out what it is I do on these comics.

My pal Arnie Kogen — oft-mentioned on this blog — explains what it was like to write on The Dean Martin Show…

My "To Do" list is approaching the length of the lists of George Santos Lies that some news sites are keeping. I am spending today trying to whittle my list down to size so don't expect a lot of posts here today…or over this weekend, probably. And I'm not slighting you or this blog. Some of what I'm doing involves furthering the migration of this site to its new software.

Oh! I wanted to mention this. Back on Wednesday, I posted links to three video segments from the 9/26/1974 Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The folks who oversea Mr. Carson's archives have now posted the video of that complete episode which also includes a little more with the guests plus Johnny's monologue, a bit at the desk with Ed and a sketch featuring The Ace Trucking Company (including Fred Willard). If you want to see the whole thing, here it is.

I'll be back with more stuff when I'm back with more stuff. Ciao.

Here's a backstage web video done for Stephen Colbert's show: Eight minutes of Nathan Lane reminiscing about a few of the 25 starring roles he's played on Broadway. I saw him in Guys and Dolls, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (twice!), The Producers and November. Those are the ones I actually saw on or around Broadway and I saw a few others on video. I've liked every show I've seen him in except November and I even liked him in that show. I just didn't like the show. Wish I'd seen the others…

Mike W. asks…

I'm looking for someone to agent my writing. Tell me a true story that ends with the phrase, "And that's when I knew I shouldn't sign with that agent!"

With your kind permission, I'm going to change it to "And that's when we knew we shouldn't sign with that agent." The "we" is myself and my partner at the time, Dennis Palumbo. We had accomplished something that few beginning writers were able to do. We had gotten a script assignment for a prime-time series from Norman Lear's company and we did it without having an agent. True, it was The Nancy Walker Show, which was canceled sometime during the middle commercial of the debut episode. And also true was that none of what we wrote got in front of a camera.

But at the time we got the job, it was a big thing. And suddenly, every agent in town wanted to meet with us and pitch us on hiring him or her to represent us. So in one amazing week, Dennis and I went to see nine or ten agents. The first five or six all did their best selling job, telling us how they'd get us jobs galore and fulfill our every dream about Show Business. That's, after all, what agents do: They sell. You wouldn't want an agent who wasn't a skilled salesperson.

So we go see the sixth or seventh one, already a bit weary of telling our life stories and explaining where we saw our careers going. This one agent greets us warmly, sits us down, offers us refreshments and then begins his "pitch" with, I swear to you, the following words…

"Now, I'm not good at getting you work…"

Honest. He said that. He said that to two beginning writers he was hoping would become his clients. Dennis and I looked at each other like we were Abbott and Costello in one of those monster-meeting movies of theirs meeting the monsters. It was like a guy who wants to be your dentist telling you, "Now, I have no idea how to fill a cavity…" or a pilot welcoming you on his plane by saying, "Now, I don't have the slightest clue how to fly this thing…" We were both waiting for the "but" and what would follow.

Which is when the agent guy added, "But when you do get a job, no one will get you more money."

He went on, getting increasingly animated as he said, "I will kill for you. I negotiate like John Wayne storming the beach in war movie, only I take no prisoners. I will leave them bleeding…bleeding and begging for mercy! I will hurt them for you and hurt them bad and get you every fuckin' cent there is to be gotten. I have never left even a nickel on the table…"

That was when one of us — I think Dennis — said, "Boy, you're some tipper." But the agent didn't hear it and went on for five minutes more saying things like, "Did you ever see one of those movies where the hero slaughters two dozen opponents and steps triumphantly over their bodies, all lying there in a pool of blood? That's me after I negotiate with those Business Affairs guys!"

I guess there are some writers who want that. We sure didn't, especially when we were starting out. Not that this ever happened to me at least, but you don't want to walk into your first creative meeting once the deal is set and have the producer say, "After what we went through to get you, you'd better be fucking brilliant!" If it ever happens to me, I'll probably say, "If I give back some of the money, could the goal just be for me to write a good script?"

Dennis and I made polite conversation for a few minutes with the bloodthirsty agent and we said we'd think it over and get back to him. We thought it over for three seconds in the hallway outside his office and then never got back to him.

But that moment when he said, "I'm not good at getting you work"…that's when we knew we shouldn't sign with that agent. Is that kind of what you wanted, Mike?

Things got a little outta hand on The Tonight Show for 9/26/1974 and I'm not sure how much of this was planned. On a talk show today if these kinds of things happened, they would all be planned and the host would never not know what was going to happen.

Here are three segments — one each with Dom DeLuise, Burt Reynolds and Art Carney. You may see why I think Mr. Carney was one of the five best comedians of his generation. But watch the clips in sequence…

Mitchell Senft sent me an e-mail with that subject: "How Kirby Worked" and then further asked…

Did he use any notes for the story at hand?

Did he breakdown a page either with thumbnails or on the board? If I recollect, I read somewhere that he he would just start at the top left of a page and start drawing.

I can't quite turn this into a question but I recently reread both his New Gods (the book, not the concept) and Eternals runs. The former struck me as having the rhythm of a monthly while the latter flowed much more smoothly.  Am I imagining something?  Was something going on that I've picked up??

Jack Kirby had an amazing story sense and it was sometimes hard to tell, when he suddenly started telling you a plot or a concept, if that was something he'd come up with at that moment or something he'd been carrying around in his head for some time.  I am absolutely certain that he could do both.  There was almost nothing put down on paper before he began composing a page he was drawing for publication.

Over the years, I've had dozens of people come to me and say, "Let's assemble a book of Jack's rough sketches and outlines and plot notes" and I have to tell them that there are almost none.  And the few things in the category that do exist were almost always produced because his publisher or editor insisted on seeing a "rough" or an outline.  If they hadn't demanded that, Jack would never have done one.

My then-partner Steve Sherman and I were sometimes used as a kind of "sounding board" for stories Jack wrote and drew when he went back to DC in 1970.  We'd sit in his studio next to his drawing table.  Jack would be sitting at the drawing table but not drawing as he told us the entire plot of the issue he was about to do next…and we'd make invaluable suggestions like, "That sounds great, Jack."

I would have loved to have given Jack an idea to make his story better but there was very little room for that.  What he told us was complete and it did sound great…so the few suggestions of ours that got in were pretty trivial. And one of our other big contributions was that at the proper moment — when we'd done whatever Jack asked us to do that day and he needed to focus on putting a story on paper, we'd leave. Steve and I should get a lot of credit for leaving. We were very good at it.

Jack would start committing his story to paper…and what he put down might have been pretty much what he told us. Or on our next visit when he let us read the story in pencil off the original art, we might have wondered how the heck he got from what he'd told us to what he then wrote and drew. If it was significantly different and we told him that, he was genuinely surprised.  He didn't know how he'd gotten there either.

He never wrote any sort of outline on paper for himself.  A couple of times, I wrote one down for him but only based on his ideas. When Jack did the first issue of Kamandi, Carmine Infantino (he was the head of DC at the time) wanted to see an outline first…I suspect so he could make some comments and then pretend he'd co-created the new feature. At least once or twice later on, he claimed he was the sole creator of Kamandi and when people ask me about that, I give this reply: "I did a lot more on that first issue than Infantino did and I don't think I deserve any kind of creator credit."

Basically, what I did was this: When Jack told us the plot of Kamandi #1, he had me take notes on it, then I went home and wrote up an outline which Jack then sent east for Carmine's approval. Once that was secured, Jack followed it pretty closely. As far as I could tell, the one bit of input that Infantino had was to insist on imagery of a wrecked Statue of Liberty — a fresh, clever idea if you'd never seen the movie, Planet of the Apes.

But outline or not, Jack worked from what was in his head. He would start roughing out sequences on the illustration board, designing with light figure placements, working out how the story would flow from panel to panel. He did a fair amount of erasing during this stage to get things the way he wanted. Then once he'd designed each panel lightly on the page, he would do the finished penciling right over his light roughs.

He did very little erasing in the "tightening" phase…and when he did, it was not because he thought the drawing could be better but because he decided that other things should be happening. If we were present, he might hand a page to Steve or to me and say, "Erase those three panels" because he'd decided he wanted something different in them.

He did not always start on page one. He'd start drawing sequences and then jump around and rearrange pages and fill in between those sequences.  Occasionally, he'd omit an almost-finished page here and there to arrive at the story he wanted to send in.  These were all pages where he knew roughly what each caption and word balloon would say but he hadn't written the copy in.  He would do that as the final step.

The line you read about how he'd start at the upper left hand corner and just draw from there is a line I said on a few occasions.  I was talking about him drawing one of those amazing double-page spreads he'd do.  It was like the drawing was all there already but in invisible ink which only he could see…and then as he went over those lines with his pencil, they became visible to everyone.

I hope this is the kind of answer you were seeking.  I'm not sure I completely understand the question about the New Gods having "the rhythm of a monthly" but a key difference between the work Jack did for DC then and what he did for Marvel when he went back there in '75 was that at Marvel, he was his own editor, deciding what should be in each issue.

At DC, he had the title of Editor and much latitude came with it…but Carmine Infantino had definite ideas of which of the many ideas Jack had told him should appear in each issue.  Left to his own devices, Jack would have introduced new characters and new concepts in a different order, perhaps dwelling more on one before introducing the next.  The character of The Black Racer, in Jack's mind, was a standalone comic unrelated to Darkseid and the Fourth World…but Infantino wanted it in there and he wanted it in New Gods #3 so Jack complied.

At Marvel, he got some direction — like, he was told they wanted a Hulk guest appearance in The Eternals — but he got less of that kind of order and he didn't have to comply as totally. In that case, he was able to make it a Hulk robot instead of the man/creature himself. Perhaps that kind of difference is the answer to your question.

Costco is offering this round Brilliant 0.85 ctw VS2 Clarity, I Color Diamond 14kt White Gold Ring in Size 7. It's made of 14kt White Gold (Rhodium Plated) with a total diamond carat weight of 0.85 ctw and the total number of diamonds is 55. While supplies last, this elegant piece of jewelry can be yours to place on the finger of that very special lady for only $1,112.99.

That's Costco…for when you care enough to buy wholesale and while you're at it, get her a 30-roll pack of 2-ply Kirkland Signature Toilet Paper and a rotisserie chicken.

Jordan Klepper is back visiting Trump rallies…only they're not really rallies. They're more like intimate conferences or some other name you give a rally when not many people show up.

No, I don't think all the folks who turn out for one of these Trump whatever-you-call-them are like the ones he selects to put on camera and into his videos. But I think it's kind of scary that there are people like that at all…

Matt DiCarlo wrote…

Even as a reader of the blog for years, I've found you to be relatively reluctant to talk about your current work. That means that even a few years later, sometimes we don't get the same sort of stories and insight on the level of what you did in the 80s. I know you're not doing this for self-promotion but now that we're a few years away from something, like, in this case, your collaboration with Scott Kolins on the Darkseid Special.

I'm curious if you'd be willing to discuss some of the nuts and bolts of it, how you were approached, how you broke the story, what it was like to work with Mr. Kolins, if you'd been familiar with his work prior, even just how you found producing something for DC in 2017 relative to prior years, what was easier, what was harder, etc.

There's not a whole lot to tell here.  An editor at DC, Jim Chadwick, called and told me they were doing a bunch of comics featuring Kirby characters and they wanted me to write one.  I think I had my pick of several and I picked Darkseid.  Jim lined up a Very Good Artist to draw it.  I came up with a story.  I ran it past Jim.  He told me to proceed.  I wrote the script.  Before I'd even sent it in, that Very Good Artist became unavailable so Jim called and said, "I think I can get Scott Kolins to draw it."

I'd never met Scott.  At least, I don't think I had.  But I knew his work so I said, "Oh, he's a Very Good Artist, too."  Scott drew the story.  Everyone whose opinion mattered was happy with it.  I didn't really collaborate with Scott since the script was done before he was on the project.  I prefer to have some contact with the artist but I thought it came out fine.

See?  Not a lot to tell.  That's how it is with a lot of projects.